kate rothwell

I swore I wasn't going to make this blog about promo, but then I notice it showing up on Amazon and Goodreads (I put it there so this shouldn't be a big shock) and I had to wonder: do people want to read about the dog's bloody ears? Will that make them buy our books? Or will I do better linking to THIS NEW REVIEW OF OUR NEW BOOK and THIS OTHER REVIEW OF OUR NEW BOOK.  I think you can see where I'm going with this.... A NEW BOOK OUT TODAY! YAY US!  This one is a little darker than our usual story. It was easy to write in some ways (built in conflict, two characters we liked) and harder in others. For a while in Maryland, I worked at a halfway house, and as we wrote, I got to remember that part of my life and draw on it, a bit. I worked the weekend shifts in level 4 houses (level 1 residents were almost independent, level 4 meant they were teetering on going back into the hospital.) I have some of that experience in another short story I wrote soon after ...

Another Amazon Countdown! The Earl, A Girl and a Promise was $2.99 and for the next few days is only 99 cents! Cheap!Victorian Romance! Fun! Hot! In other news, our poor dog.  We put the holiday lights on her cone and she really didn't mind. This is because she didn't actually notice. This evening the vet will unstitch her ears and they won't be pinned to the top of her head anymore. Less comic pathos, but not a lot less. The way she negotiates her life wearing that cone is still pretty comic, and pathetic--and painful when she comes up behind you and smacks into your legs.

My dog is pathetic with her ears pinned to the top of her head--and she's wearing the cone of shame 24/7.  She's 11 and a little ga-ga, but she's our pup and she spent all of her time shaking her head, floop floop, with that damn ear filled with goop. Eww. Many hundred dollars later, she's got her ears pinned.  * * * I have another book doing the amazon countdown soon. The Earl, a Girl and a Promise will be 99 cents starting Christmas Day. You are warned. You'll get to load it onto your new Kindle. And the Countdown Fun is Over. My last one didn't sell worth beans. * * *  I'm listening to Parasite by Mira Grant and I wish that Mike was listening too. He'd rant "no way! No!" all the time. The personal stuff is interesting but the heroine is sort of a dope. Come on, we knew The Big Truth all along. I knew as soon as that whole drums, hot-warm stuff started. Chapter one, I knew. No, I knew before the book started because of the back-cop...

Thank You, Mrs. M is doing the Kindle Countdown thing now. For the next 4 days, XX hours, XX minutes and XX seconds, it's only 99 cents.  I'd go look up and copy/paste the right numbers, but it would all be a lie by the time you read this anyway. Yep, still like that countdown thing. This book also recently showed up in an article. * I like it; Kathy like it; someone at RT likes it. ***  Otherwise? This book has never sold very well and when I tried to give it away, people wouldn't meet my gaze--they checked their wrists when everyone knows no one wears watches anymore. BE A TREND-SETTER AND READ THIS BOOK. ONLY 99 CENTS. __________________________________________________________ * it [uses] the basic plot of Jean Webster's Daddy Long-Legs in a way which captures its essential spirit but also creates something intriguingly new...Rothwell's story is wonderful in its own right, but it also added something new to my understanding of Daddy Long-Leg...

another of those personal notes.  I was an unforgiving twerp (not twerk, like I first wrote) back in the day, entitled and injured. My father basically lost who he was when I was 22 -- he had a stroke and, though he lived for years, he wasn't a grownup after that. That meant I didn't get a chance to get past his imagined and real sins when he was fully present, not that it mattered to him. Didn't matter to me that much either, but now it does, probably because I'm a parent. Also because at a certain age (maybe after your 20s?) love/affection isn't as easily attained, retained, sustained. Anyway this letter--the message hit me hard for some reason. Most of us mean well, okay? Don't despise anyone who loves you to any degree--not if their affection doesn't harm you.  So....yeah. What it says. From Carolyn Hax's column. Dear Carolyn: Haven’t spoken to my father for 2.5 years, for various reasons that boil down to his being very selfish and re...

That countdown clock makes me smile every time I see it. I have no idea why--it's old news by now. Something so portentous about having the minutes and seconds tacked on there. Probably bringing back memories of all those movies with bombs...just....about....to.....blow. So anyway. Go look at the clock here. And buy the book cheap!  Which title is this, you ask? It was once published by Loose Id as Powder of Love but enough people read that as "Power of Love" that the whole title thing got awkward. I got the rights to the book back and published it on my own. Now some people are shocked that a story about an aphrodisiac has sex in it. ( "The sex scenes towards the beginning were what you might find in a slightly saucier than normal romance novel, but towards the end of the book it surprised even me how graphic the sex scenes had become. Not that I minded... Much .") Or they're shocked that a story about an aphrodisiac doesn't have sex in it soo...