Tag Archives: funny

This tumblr meme passed me by

April 16, 2016 Louise Taylor 1 Comment

Apparently Tumblr went crazy over a short video of a dad and a son having a really cool time with a trombone and an oven door. I missed it completely, not understanding how Tumblr works and all.

That prompted fan artists to go a bit crazy and put their favourite pairings in a trombone/oven door cartoon, asking who would be playing the trombone and who would be slamming the hell out of an oven door. There’s a funny Scully/Mulder one – no prizes for guessing who gets to play the trombone in that pairing. All this, however, was completely unknown to me.

Then, thanks to Buzzfeed and a round up of funny Harry Potter Tumblr posts, I came upon this gem:

A Tumblr poster asked what Hermione was doing on the train when Ron and Harry were flying to Hogwarts in The Chamber of Secrets. This was posted in response, by this Tumblr user.

Now, remember, I had completely missed all the fuss over the video of the dad and the son having a blast in the kitchen. I had no idea what this cartoon was referencing. Yet somehow, the idea that in the absence of her best friends Hermione would take the opportunity to let rip on her trombone, with Crookshanks backing her up on oven door, just made me laugh outrageously. Yes, I know, Crookshanks didn’t appear until The Prisoner of Azkaban, but I’m still laughing at his shades so I’m going to let it go.

I think the reason that I laughed so much – and still do, it’s my phone home screen – is that I just love the character of Hermione so much. She’s plunged, age 11, into a completely different world, a world unlike anything she’s ever known before, and she just throws herself into trying to understand it, and excel in it. She doesn’t let anything stop her or get in her way of being the best witch she can be, even when she’s ostracised by her classmates. That’s why she’s a Gryffindor – somebody else, from a Muggle family completely separate from the wizarding world, might be too overwhelmed to cope with all the changes you’d need to make to fit in with a whole new life. Not Hermione, though – she went at it warp speed. It takes bravery to reinvent your life like that.

So, that’s why I laugh when I see this silly cartoon, based on a sillier 15 second video, because I’m pretty sure that when life hands Hermione lemons, she breaks out her trombone and rocks out. Once again, Hermione is an inspiration. And she looks pretty damn good in a pair of sunglasses, too.

(Just in case you were wondering, I think Annabelle Spencer (now Duchess of Rothmuir) would definitely be the one rocking the trombone, while her husband Daniel banged the hell out of the oven door.)

My first bad review!

September 20, 2015 Louise Taylor 4 Comments

It happened! My cherry has been popped! I received my first bad review on Amazon!

Oh well. That five star review monopoly had to be lost at some point.

I honestly don’t mind the criticisms the writer has of the book; I actually think some of the things she says are valid. They are choices I made when I was writing the novel, and perhaps, in hindsight, I should have made different ones. I’ve written three books since then, and I’m almost finished with a fourth. Each book has taught me something different about plotting, characterisation and pacing – some of the most important parts of constructing a book. I’m going to be learning how to write for as long as I write, that much I know.

It’s just the mean-spirited contempt that the review was written with that makes me pause. She – and I assume that the person who reviewed the book was female – seems to have gone out of her way to be as offensive as possible while giving her opinion, down to accusing my friends and family of being the ones giving the positive reviews!

My friends and family largely have no idea that I write romantic spanking stories. They have no idea that I write at all, let alone that I’ve been published. I can’t tell people; I run the risk of getting in trouble at work and I don’t think that my parents would be overjoyed at the thought of my choice of genre although I know that they would be proud of me for succeeding in attracting the attention of a reputable publisher.

I think that particular barb, of all those that she so callously threw, hurt the most because it was so far off the mark. I’m a big girl, both literally and figuratively speaking. I can take constructive criticism. What I can’t take, and won’t take, and refuse to tolerate is mean spirited nastiness.

This review has reviewed only three books since 2011, and chooses not to give her name. Or a pseudonym. Or even a nickname. Two of the three reviews are of one star. Mine is the only book she’s reviewed in her extensive experience that had been given two stars.

I have to wonder if my book is that bad (which of course, it could very well be) or whether I was unlucky enough to catch the attention of a bitter, unhappy, mean-spirited person who gets some kind of enjoyment from deliberately confusing constructive criticism with vomiting up spurious insults. A person who is not brave enough to sign their name, or any other name, to their writing, unlike myself or the other authors she has taken pleasure in leaving an unpleasant review for.

Well, I’ll probably never know the answer to that question. But as annoying as that two star review is to me, I know that she’s far more annoyed than I’ll ever be by the “amateur and disappointing” Spanking The Governess.

After all, she paid a whole $4.99 for it!

Just think, if she’s bought it when it was released for $2.99, I’d have made far less money from her!

“Very enjoyable”, “a great plot and sweet characters”, “suspense, action and romance” or “amateur and disappointing”?

Decide for yourself at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk where Spanking The Governess is currently sitting at #2 in the Victorian Erotica section and #4 in the Historical Erotica section!