My friend Gavin used to move a couple of blocks every couple of months. He'd use maybe five boxes. We'd fill up our box, carry them two blocks over, dump out the box and go back to his old apartment and do it again.

He also used those convenient squishy green plastic mover's bags which worked just fine unless you left them near the curb too long on trash day.

It got better once he got a job at Wordsworth. Yippee! more boxes and access to the bookstore van. That damn sword though . . .

I'm moving my blog like a Gavin move. A bit less here and more there. Maybe repeating myself in both blogs. But I think this'll be my last official bravenet blog that isn't a contest. So if you want to find me at home, you'll have to click here.  I plan on leaving posessions lying around this spot though--until the landlord demands rent on the tatty furniture. And if I do any Bosnian sox contests, it'll be here, I bet.

 

i forgot to mention that the new contest ends July 12.  I'm going to pick a winner randomly. (blah...but at least the prize is nice.) Today's the day Summer's e-book is out. **

Don't forget to say hello over at the new blog.

And tomorrow there will be yet another contest over at http://romanceunleashed.com/blog. THAT one will require the entrants to do something fun. . .and because there are a bunch of authors taking part, it'll be a great prize. I hope.

Why all the contests? I like the local post office? It's an answer, right?

 

** no matter how hard I try, I can't do Summer in the first person. 

 

You won the write a caption contest (not the one that's still running to celebrate Summer's new book). You send me your address and I'll send you a book and some fantabulous sox. If you don't...oh no! Someone else will get the sox! ACK!

1. Summer's got a book coming out in a couple of days. We're going to have a contest about it. Yessireebob! We love contests. This is one of those entirely promotional sorts of contests. Nothing fun to read for me. . . but the prize is pretty good.

I'm giving away a  SELF-INDULGENCE BASKET(Self indulgence: Excessive indulgence of one's own appetites and desires)

The basket will include copy of one of Kate Rothwell's print books, an ebook copy of Summer Devon's Perfection (not literally in the basket, of course) and plenty of good Stuff.
Soap, body lotion, a candle, chocolate--and other goodies that fit the bill of frivolous gratification.This contest is only for people 18 and up.  

I'm going to make it easy on you for a change. No creativity required!  You have to go to the Summer Devon site http://www.summerdevon.com , read the excerpt and answer these questions:
1. What's on the hero's arm?
2. How'd he get it?
3. What does the heroine do for a living?

You're going to have to email me the answers this time. Send your answer to summerdevon @ comcast.net

2. I have a new blog. I think I'll use bravenet for contests and whatnot. I can't see abandoning Hyde's gorgeous labels, for gawd's sake. But in the meantime, check out the blog at http://katerothwell.blogspot.com/  Very professional, eh?

 

It's a beautiful day and I've been droopy and moping for most of it. Why is this? And then I recall that this is the anniversary of my mother's death. Or... is it?

Huh? Damn! I can't remember the date my mother died. I call my big sister, who always remembers these things.

She didn't. 

Sister: It was sometime around now. I remember it was early July.
Me: Yeah, 2001
Sister: No, 2000
Me: Oh, right. I knew that.  And Dad died November 2.
Sister: I thought it was November 3?
Me: The second.
Sister: I can't really remember that one either. Do you want me to look up mom's date? I have the death certificate.
Me: Nah, that's okay.

See this is odd because the other big death date in our lives is engraved permanently in the family's collective memory. December 17 rolls around and we still get sad. That's the date our aunt got hit by a drunk driver--in 1973. I was a kid, for crying out loud. 

My theory is that our parents wasted away for literally years and years, and our mourning lasted for quite some time before they actually quietly shuffled off this mortal coil. My aunt went from living to dead in a matter of seconds. Other theories: We're getting old and can't retain dates. We're bad daughters. I know that's not true of my sister. (I still have some guilt stuff.)

Aren't you glad you stopped by on this lovely summer day? Oy, this is ridiculous. I'm calling an official end to despondency. Maybe I'll force my kids to go outside with me to play with our new squirt fish. 

Whoops, it was my day to do the romanceunleashed blog.

Words of wisdom do not come to me this morning, O my minions, acolytes and disciples. I have sipped from cups and cups of The Brew and yet my main thought for the day has been "......"

Alas, empty, my brain is.**  If I were Buddhist, this might be cause for celebration. 

Ah, wait! A fleeting urge, a thought has come to me...Yes. And it grows stronger even as I compose this post: I will lock the kids out of the house if they watch this and start bellowing "Yer pure dag-nasty evil!" and "Dis helmet is chafing ma eyebwows. I swear!" again.

________

** Yoda-speak the fault of the children also is. "Cereal, I will not eat," the boy declares. "Cinnamon toast is that which I crave."

kids, teeth, dogs, kids, heat avoidance, schlepping kids, dogs, kids, dogs, kids

 

difficult: revising erotica while kids are in the room.
nearly impossible: composing erotica while kids are in the room.
impossible: typing with the screen turned off. No, wait, that's really no problem. Figuring out what those words are supposed to be by figuring out where I'd really put my fingers for touch typing. That's impossible.

Ari, I'm thinking of moving blogs. That's why you're not there and no one is updated and duct tape is holding the flappy bits of the blog together. No real repairs on a house you don't have to sell!

 

Hey contest winners! This time I'm not tracking you down. Nosirreee! You'll have to go to my formal website (listed on the right side of the screen) and find my email address and send me your snail mail. I've been tracking down weeners for months now and now it's time for the mountains to come to Mohammed. If I don't get answers from you all by ummmmmm some time in the next couple of weeks, I'm sending everything to Merry just for her volume of entries.  And Cheryl for the mud in her eye.

I've been thinking about this being invisible thing. More advantages, especially for those of us who look AMIABLE:

1. you can ogle cute young men (and women) and they don't appear to notice. Really. Try this one. It's fun.
2. you can probably start a lucrative career as a burglar. A middle-class, middle-aged woman walking down the road lugging a tv? Not the same as a the teenaged guy. Someone might even offer you a lift.

3. you can probably form a gang of women like you and hang around the Burger King or, if you're willing to change out of the sweats, even a chi-chi Connecticut small town center. No cop is going to come along and tell you to break it up --  unless you get too obvious passing the paperbag-covered bottle of Pinot Grigio. Or maybe that should be a bottle of margaritas.

4. you can give people unwanted, unwarranted and/or just plain wrong advice and they won't feel the urge to hit you because they won't be listening anyway.

....any more advantages?

 

I came, I saw, I judged. Hard though it is to believe, some of these stories sound as if they could really work. So if you're a writer in need of a plot, the lesson is - hunt out some weird photos and challenge yourself to tell their story. Judging them was another matter entirely, as the entrants are a witty bunch. The shenanigans of the Seven Dwarfs is enough to make Snow White have to change her name. And what *did* happen to Maureen and Murgatroyd?  But since I have to make a decision while my attention span still holds, here goes.

The winner is ... High Crime, High Five by t-beth. I actually want to read Joshua's story.
Closely followed by:
#2 - Intergalactic Monkey Love by Danica, warped but inventive, given what you had to work with.
#3 - Cade's Last Mission by cheryl s. Shame his payback plans don't include the costume.

And the sympathy vote (maybe some socks?) to cheryl b. Here's mud in your eye!

Valerie

Gina and Beth are nice women. Interesting that nice for Gina means avoiding confrontation. Seems like a smart choice -- keeps you from getting into arguments with people who enjoy that sort of thing.

But the nice bit? I did that for years and years. I went out of my way to be polite and not step on toes. But somewhere in my late thirties... something happened. Suddenly I WAS INVISIBLE. Utterly, completely, totally Not Registering on the radar. I could step on toes and no one seemed to notice.  Chubby white middle aged women must give off invisibility vibes. Actually this might be just a time of life thing. I've mentioned this to other middle aged women and even my friend L (who's 40 and gorgeous) has said she's noticed it too. About herself, I mean.  On good days I think maybe we simply register as safe on most people's detectors and therefore not worth paying close attention to.  In the animal brain we pay attention to potential threats and sex, right?  Once a fellow human doesn't fall in either category, then they're a blip on the screen. I might have made that up, but seems right.

Remember Ralph Ellison's the Invisible Man? Sure you do. You had to read it in high school right? Anyway, the only scene I can recall is when he's on a crowded bus and he's mashed up against a white woman and she just stares ahead. I recall he reacted with outrage and grief at not being seen as an individual. That made sense in the larger context.  

In my world, it's just a fact. I mourned for a bit when I realized I'd lost my mojo. But then I figured hey, there must be an advantage to this somewhere, right? 

Sure!

Younger people will talk about the strangest things in front of me. Most people my age and older talk to me without an undercurrent of tension--or actually checking to see if I'm paying attention.

My favorite advantage to being invisible is how freeing it truly is. I could start speaking my mind. No one was listening, so it was fine. Except every now and then someone pays attention and...Oops. I was probably just blathering, okay?  I'm not always visible to myself.  

 

Strident in my blog? Sure. But....I say polite is the way to function in the rest of the world.  The places where people don't expect to find an erotica writer.

I talked to a woman who sets up events in a bookstore chain. When I mentioned I also write for Ellora's Cave, she frowned. One of the GMs in a store had a bad experience with some EC authors.

"They'd called themselves romance writers so I set them up for a 2 pm signing on a Saturday," the events lady said. "They didn't say they wrote erotica. They should have been clearer about that."

When the manager saw the books, he tried to put the signing at the back of the store. The writers protested, saying they wanted to be up front. The events coordinator told me that was just not appropriate with all the families traipsing in and out of the store.

Sure. That makes absolute sense to me. Why make the customers uncomfortable? Or even why make the bookseller worry that the customers might be uncomfortable?

Go ahead and bust my chops and tell me that books with covers that show bombs exploding are far more offensive. Yup, I agree.

But most of the people walking through the doors of the store probably don't agree. Since they're the ones with the wallets, the manager is going to pay attention to their needs. If a guy who's letting me use his space to sell my books (yes, I know it's a two way street, but it's his store) tells me to go to the back of the store, I'll ask how far back.

Grubby, maybe, but true.  So what does this have to do with RWA? Not much as far as I'm concerned because individuals' wallets shouldn't enter into that particular equation. Nor does the unsuspecting mother dragging along the five-year-old as they look for the Wiggles's latest book. [Talk about obscene . . .no, not doing the Wiggles. That's too much for even me.]

A professional knows when to fight and when to smile and agree. So does a toady, I suppose.

 

Tomorrow 1-2 p.m. I'm going to be signing books  and hanging around the Border's booth at the Hartford Women's Fair.

You going to be in the area? Good! Stop by and I'll give you chocolate. It's going to be held in the new Connecticut Convention Center which is (and I've been emphasizing this point a lot) air conditioned. No, don't bother asking me how to get to the convention center. I have no idea.

Anyway there have been ads on the radio for the women's fair and one features a group of "best-selling authors" and I'm listed.

Boy One's best friend heard the ad. I got a call on the cell phone from boys. Not you? Really you?  Wow!  I so rarely rate in the boys' world  these days, it's almost as good as getting a royalty check.

Spealking of prestige, have you entered the contest yet? Go ahead. The bunny is still in danger.

No one's entering my contest -- except merry ( no, I know you're not chopped liver, merde.) HEY! So? What's with this?

ENTER or I'll never give away another pair of Bosnian socks again.
Enter or the cute bunny on that website will be turned into stew.
Enter or I'll sulk even more than I already do. 
Enter or I'll go to your blogs and post weather reports for my part of the world.
Enter or I'll dig up that rotten category romance and send it to Candy.
Enter or I'll eat the last donut and leave the big empty box on the kitchen table.

 

1. I found the contest entries from the last time around. Take a look and then try your hand at being an editor. Not so easy, eh?

2. Look! Bec wasn't whistling dixie when she said she wanted to start doing more web design professionally. She's joined Ciao! My Bella as a designer. That's so cool.

3. Enter the contest. Now.

Your job is to write back cover copy in 65 words or less. Our judge points out that she's got a short attention span so this works best anyway.

You've been handed a cover, but the editorial department neglected to give you a hint about the plot of this Romance or (for else's sake) young adult book. The book can be any subgenre--mystery, comedy, erotica [umm skip that one for the YA] one of those annoyingly angsty Are You There Margaret, It's Me God  things or fantasy.

You need to title this baby and write that backcover blurb. (Title doesn't count in your 65 words) As always, the winner gets some elegant Bosnian sox and a book!

# 1

 

#2

 

#3

#4

 

 

#5

contest notes: I had an attack of conscience and went for photos in the public domain this time...boooring. I'll post the example of the last contest as soon as I can find it again.

UPDATE:  NUMBER SIX WILL BE ON THE PHONE CAM... You can use that one too.

DEADLINE: Saturday June 25

can we bravenet types blogroll?

are we allowed to RSS?  how? what is RSS?

Joan Rust asked: I'm trying to RSS your blog and there is no title of your feed. My reader won't syndicate it if there is no title. Please add one so I can keep up with your blog by RSS.

If someone can tell me what to do, I'd be grateful. Here's what I know--you can actually subscribe to this journal. Yessireebob, it's a new feature and it's down the page. Down, down..right below the webcam picture (I have to change that thing, but I've forgotten how)

I did post Summer's page today.  I rolled my eyes at her motto but she takes this Romantica/Romance/hot burnin' luvvv stuff seriously. Silly twit. There's a reason we have different names. Too bad she's not better at this computer stuff.

Should  my next contest be 55 words or Write the Backcover Copy?

Well?

I know an awfully wonderful woman ** who is an awful writer. (No way am I gonna reveal the name. Sorry.)

When I pick up one of her books, I feel a deep and thrilling revulsion. The writing is so bad I want to share the most gruesome bits with someone. But I won't. I can't. I can barely admit this to myself. She writes . . .crap. She is a truly generous lovely person.

How will I deal with this? By whimpering in my blog and buying every one of her books and asking her to autograph them and when glancing through them, feeling like a snarky blob of gossipy putrescence. The worst of middle school but, by god, I clamp down. Civilization is wonderful.

Damn. I can't even give the books away because they're autographed with my name. Damn.

_____

**No, it is not you. She doesn't read my blog.

Monica! You've missed your calling. Flinging locks into putrescently purple prose. (inappropriate for children. Boys, it'll make you gag, okay?)

You must make peace with AAR. They need Lord Dickalot for the contest.

Awww, I get the nicest rejection letters.  The NAL people (two of them!)  love my voice, think I'm going great places. But enclosed please find the manuscript. Thanks, anyway.

Technically the latest note isn't a rejection letter. I was told that if I'd remove this one aspect of the manuscript, they'd reconsider it. Problem is, the plot device they don't like takes up 3/4 of the story. Hmmm.

 I'm going to go hack away at my story aimed at Ellora's Cave. It's almost done. And then maybe I'll go tinker with the kitchen sink story again. It's been around for a while and it shows. At one point the hero and some secondary characters are playing poker. I would never have a character play that game now. Too trendy, therefore to likely to crash and burn and look dated. So...how about a nice hand of bridge, boys?

I will too, if only because the topic makes me young and frisky again--damned subject turns me into an adolescent. The phrase that rings through my brain is "screw them if they can't take a joke." The cliche fits so beautifully I can't be bothered to improve upon it.

Someone somewhere said she wants to lend romances to men but can't bring herself to, not with those covers. Why not? Are the men are too embarrassed or is she? If she is, she needs to meet a looser class of men or take a chill pill. (If she's happy with herself and the men, she could also tear off the covers. I used to do that before I got my life-time supply of chill pills.) . . . If the men are the ones who can't touch the clinch cover, they're trapped in a small scary world that's run by Fear of Mockery and you have to pity them.

 But the argument I keep reading  is basically "we don't want people to think badly of us." Heck, why not? Why bother catering to the narrow tastes of the (smaller) masses? If the books sell with those covers--and they do--why deprive some publisher and author of sales because some people are embarrassed by tastes that are different from theirs?

I grew up an elitist. I spent my wonderbread years and beyond as a snob. We snobs enjoy having something to mock, why take the joy away from us? And if we snobs are too narrow-minded to see beauty in a book because we're scared someone will see us reading a romance,  that's our problem, not yours. Snobs are trapped forever in high school where they wouldn't dare express something as blisteringly silly as sentiment or common taste in fear of being rejected. Heck, real snobs can't even own clothes that are considered outre. God forbid you actually wear that shirt that went out of style three years ago, never mind that it's a comfortable shirt and you rather like the bowling pins on the pockets. 

Do you want to allow that uncomfortable and useless concern about image to continue running your life a minute past high school graduation? I hope not.

Yo. Want to hear from someone who takes another view--and does it beautifully? Check out Booksquare at RTB   Yes, it's old news. **

___________________________

** I was going to ignore the subject but what else is there to rant about now that we've gone on about the naming of poontang.for days? (from that link. . .  "pudendum" ...  a gender neutral term for genital organs, and whose Latin meaning was "to be ashamed."  Wonderful. It fits with today's theme: shame for something you enjoy. AND Gender neutral. Interesting. Hey did you know that the word "bimbo" used to refer exclusively to men?)   here's some more about sexual slang. Take note, Danica Dream, it has interesting facts about historical word usage.

Okay, yeah I do think about other subjects. This morning for instance, I tried to track down an interpreter, who'd been fired, to help with an appointment that turned out to have been changed.  busy, busy. 

I held a class about names (first name, last name, nickname etc) instead.

While I was explaining the difference between Middle and Maiden (the words sound a lot alike) I realized there's yet another identity issue for the female genitalia. (I'm about to head back into PG 13 territory, boys. Watch out.) 

There is no first name.

Guys have the obvious Lance and Rod, but what about Peter, Dick, Johnson and the rest of the gang? They're just random names.

So as I drove a chattering bunch of women to a grocery store, I tried to figure out what name would work for a woman. No "ey" cutie pie names. Posie= no. Something dignified and adult. Joan? Hey, even better -- Jane because it goes with Dick, after all. But women seem more complex then men down there, all those folds, as Else pointed out. Okay more syllables then. Henrietta. Not bad. The Wife of Bath seems like a perfect raunchy person to give feminine parts a name, but her story is about the patient Griselda and that name is too...grizzled. Isn't the Nether Eye from Chaucer?

Enough. I've actually got some free time and so I'm going to play with a book. Remove drivel, insert plot.

If I blog about the coochie topic again, feel free to leave shirty notes in the comment section.

WARNING: This rant brought to you by Eww -- Erotic Writing Weariness syndrome. (in other words, I stop having PG13 sensibilities at about 11 this morning Note to my two older boys who occasionally read this blog: You've been warned. Grossness ahead.)

 

*****

updated--I forgot who posted this or where I found it, but we're talking inspired ...NOT work friendly, unless you work in an ob/gyn office.  http://loxosceles.org/log_pix/romance_novel_anatomy.png

It's been ranted before, but I'll rant it again anyway: The female crotch needs a better name. Honestly.

As someone who's trying to write hot prose that do not read like every other bit o' hot narrative action out there, I'm getting really tired of this dearth of good words for her. "Feminine heat"? "Core of desire"? No flipping way am I going for those Summer's Eve euphemisms. (Yes, I know "flipping" is a euphemism, but that word works-- got a good spit-it-out quality.)   

Maili doesn't like crotch. ** She's not the only one. This word is not erotic, my crit queen pointed out. Yah duh. But, see, no word for down there is.

Pussy? Sorry. No meowing way. C*nt? (Don't wanna get banned) Doesn't bother me, but a lot of women are highly insulted by it. I really don't mind labia or even vulva (okay, that one reminds me of the car or the word "vulgar") but they've been deemed clinical.

I wish Candy and Sarah or someone like them would hold a coochie nickname contest. I don't get the right sort of traffic for that kind of contest. . . .hmmm. I wonder....Nope, coochie is too cute. Coochie coochie coo, what a sweet little pussy on that volvo.

_______

** She scared me with the rest of the rant because I never get further/farther right ... and I don't mind using belly. 

[Did I mention the phrase that wins the prize for overused ickety in my book is "sheath" as in "he sheathed himself in her" Jeez. She's just a big old accoutrement to store his mighty sword so he won't cut himself with a dangerous weapon. Will I ever use the phrase? Probably.]

Two sightings now: at the Long Island Luncheon and the Washington Romance Writer's conference, Kensington announced that the Traditional Regency program is dead. That leaves only Signet to carry on.

When people like Barbara Metzger and Nancy Butler call it quits writing those wonderful shorter books--for now--it's enough to make me don a black armband. Last I heard Nonnie St. George was writing a contemporary.

But I'm putting off mourning. The Traditional Regency will come back and I'll spend mucho bucks. I'll be ready for witty dialogue and subtle tension again.