French help please?

[erastes]

Can anyone speak French fluently? Can someone provide me with a few French phrases such as might be heard on the Docks at Calais changing for the boat trains?

hmm – looks like – from Noble Romance's new call for submissions that I won't be submitting there—the emphasis is on "hot and kinky" even for the historicals. There are many people who do hot and kinky historicals (Ava March and Fyn Alexander for two) and I am not among them.

I actually find it hard to write sex scenes these days, so I'm going to try and do a few short stories, it might help get the juices flowing as it were. Plus many submission calls ask that plot and characterisation and build up are every bit as important as the sex, which I find easier to do than the actual sex. I'm often bellowing around the 3k mark "AREN'T YOU GOING TO KISS HIM? EVER???" because they are having a jolly old natter. Note to characters. Less nattering more trouser time.

In other boggle-stuff (and vaguely related to Dear Author's post today about authors behaving badly ) do people really obsess about their star ratings on Amazon and Good Reads and the like?  I notice them, when cruising through to pick up a link—I know for example that Transgressions has a lower rating than Standish because probably of the religious and stockholm syndrome aspect, but … otherwise?  I really couldn't care less. Of course I like it when people like my books, and when they send me an email it's heavenly, but I'm never ever going to stalk the sales places to see OMG I'VE GOT A TWO STAR RATING I MAY DIE.  Plus it's all so arbitrary, someone can go and put five stars on everything you've written just because they've read one book they liked, or worse, are your friend in RL or your mother, so worrying if someone is putting one stars on my stuff seems like a waste of worry.