kate rothwell

Whine no one buys my books anymore stop writing then. Whine what else am I supposed to do? Mike suggested being a greeter at Walmart and he wasn't kidding. I'm not qualified to do squat. I'm too old to be a waitress. then keep writing. Whine but I'm not making enough money then get a part time job Whine but there's nothing out there and I've looked. why are you so unsympathetic? you know I go into these declines every now and then. Particularly at holiday times when everyone says make goals! improve your life!  and what do these introspection moments do for you? anything? Whine they make me take stock of my life. hey, admit it. your life is pretty good, right?  whine it's okay, except for the writing. and the occasional glitches in the life and the being fat part. No, stop, I don't want to hear about that . fine, we'll stick to the writing. you like the writing. you even sort of enjoyed editing that godawfulbookfromhell l...

I was locked out! Can you believer it? Google and gmail LOCKED ME OUT. I couldn't get into my own places, like this blog or email or my writing group . Disabled, shunned and banned, I was a pitiable sight. (I wrote site , which is also accurate) I sent off long, pleading letters, and short, angry notes. I filled out forms. I'm not sure which of those things eventually worked, but I'm back again. The days of no gmail served as a severe reminder that my online world isn't really mine, I'm just borrowing it. I know who holds all the cards in this relationship. The only real power I have is to walk away and Google Gmail etc wouldn't even notice if I should do that. Well. Damn. They can just forget about the card I was going to send for their birthday, is all I have to say. Now if we were paying customers they'd at least sigh when we washed our hands of them. I'm still here though so they win. Again. Curse you, useful free services. Stop playing with my sou...

I swear I'm just going to spend today lying in bed wearing these comfy fleecy pants things that my neighbor dumped for the Bosnians and I'm keeping. Because I am in a whiny snit again. And don't even bother to kvetch about my whining, anonymous. Just close the door quietly and keep your eye rolling to yourself. Anyway. I've done what I was supposed to. Lost weight, adjusted diet, added this, subtracted that and my stomach still hates me. So now I'm regressing to someone who's about four years old and saying unfair! it's unfair! I held up my end of the bargain! [Didn't your four-year-olds talk like that? Mine sure did.] And I write books, taking my time being careful---okay, careful-ish--and where are the gazillions of sales? I follow the rules and still don't win the stuffed pink monkey? That's worth at least a two-hour snit, right? I'll count my blessings later, but don't expect a post about that. For one thing I have to go to the denti...

I spent way too long trying entering the gift card numbers and getting a "buzz off" message. And then way too long on hold to find out the system is down. The site was down a couple of weeks ago right after the new independent site went up. Makes one wish for the return of the amazon/borders connection, or for a life, whichever is easier to acquire.

but that's not what's going on around here. That's all moan whine kvetch whimper complain fret rail grumble in other words, nothing new, nothing, nothing new inside or out (except truly outside there's a lot of snow which is a PITA for picking up Aya). One big question on our minds: why are onions bad for dogs or perhaps Alton Brown is full of baloney?

You know that old wheeze about how you can tell the true nature of a person by how they treat The Help? So okay what about this one: You can tell how humane editors and agents are by how they treat the uninteresting people who submit to them.** No one should expect personalized rejections. These people are busy and don't have a lot of time to send along reasons why they don't want our stuff. I'm happy when they do, don't get me wrong. But these days? I'm grateful for a simple goddamn rejection. There are a whole bunch who Don't Even Bother. They can't bring themselves to do these simple steps: 1, hit return. 2. type "sorry not for me" 3, hit send. Yes, yes, YES, I know they don't ask for the damned queries. (although it could be argued that the words "will read unsolicited queries" is sort of asking for 'em.) The professionals aren't responsible for the thousands of people they aren't going to work with who contact them. ...

I broke a record today. FOUR REJECTIONS in one day. Now that's a record I hope remains unbroken. For me and for any of you, too. Do you know what I did in response to those rejections? I have a system and I followed my system. I stopped work, ate chocolate and sent out four more queries/manuscripts. Today even the choccies were bad. They were almost worse'n the rejections. It was crap left over from nutrisystem box. This writing life is no fun today. I think I'll go to the library and suck in some words instead of spitting them out.

Don't ask the bitter, snarling female in the corner (heavens, that would be me) about the publishing business or getting your books in print or romance--or anything at all, actually. Just drop the quarter in her Dunkin Donuts cup and, for God's sake, don't make eye contact. She's not quite as bad as the glittering-eyed, skinny-handed loon, but she's getting there.

I will go very far, farther than those hills, farther than the seas, close to the stars, to beg Christ the Lord to give back the soul I had of old, when I was a child, ripened with legends,with a feathered cap and a wooden sword. --Federico Garcia Lorca For regular parents of regular kids** there are a lot of common milestones that come as a surprise. We weren't told, for instance, that we'd have to go to school again. I was so glad to get out of those institutions and to some minor degree I'm there again, living each year three times over. Ugh. In the fall, some of this Surprise! stuff makes me sad, and I'm not just talking about Back to School. A more internal, private parental pain is rarely mentioned or mentioned in such a treacly manner I discounted it: A growing kid always leaves behind something, a part of himself, and we lose someone we know and love. The kid I know this year isn't the one from two years ago, and there are so many things I miss about that l...

I've been kind of unhappy about the real world lately. Not my little corner of it, mind you. Just the part I visit now and then. The thing is, when I'm there it's not so bad--the work is actually fun. But I haven't been to work for a while--summer vacation--and I think I have some sort of cumulative horror. I heard we have new Turks coming in, began to snuffle and wrote this. A life of beer and skittles is never going to exist no matter how many people I teach the alphabet.