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Month: October 2022

Crash

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The light at Sprinkle and Gull had been green for a long time. Although it was eleven on a Friday night, and I knew the cops would be out, and even though I was already going about five miles over the speed limit, I punched the accelerator because I was tired and just wanted to get home.

It had been a good night. I’d left rehearsal for Frozen Jr., the show I’m directing, unusually early; I tend to stay around until the last staff members are on the way out the door. Friday night, though, Rollerworld was having its soft re-opening after closing for months to install a new floor, and I put my foot down that I was going to leave rehearsal as soon as it was over so I could get there in time for 18+ Retro Skate.

At retro skate, by the way, they play stuff like Ludacris and Destiny’s Child, and I almost always leave feeling older than when I arrived. Which, technically, is accurate, anyway.

My friend Delma, one of the costumers from the show, met me at the rink later; she’d stayed behind to deal with some frustrations behind the scenes. We skated those frustrations out and practiced going backward in the beginner’s section of the floor. At one point in the night, a fast skater maneuvered around me a little too close for comfort, and I said, “I almost got in a collision!”

I’d known when I went out that I had an early morning the next day. Saturday was a scheduled “dry tech,” a day when all the set pieces needed to be placed and spiked, drops needed to be moved, and crew assignments needed to be worked out. It’s a long day, followed by the longer “tech Sunday,” and my stage manager, Delaney, had insisted on a hard nine a.m. start time.

But I’d really wanted to go roller skating.

Delma and I didn’t ride together. In fact, she didn’t know I was in the red minivan that made it through the light while she sat in the left-hand turn lane. The van is my husband’s car. Usually, I drive a beaten-up Jeep Compass with a big dent in the back from hitting the pole by the stage door at the auditorium. But it was me, rapping badly along with Megan Thee Stallion’s “Thot Shit,” going ten miles over the speed limit to make it through one of the longest lights in town.

I made the light right on the line, “I’m the shit per the recording academy.”

The next thing I knew, I was standing in the middle of Gull road beside my husband’s Town & Country, screaming for help. It’s a busy area with lots of traffic, strip malls, fast-food restaurants, and lights. I might as well have been in outer space standing there, cradling my arm and clutching my chest, wondering what had just happened. It was only a few seconds, I’m sure now, but it felt like I stood there for a long time in pain, screaming for help that wasn’t coming. It was the loneliest thing I’ve ever felt in my entire life. I thought I was having a heart attack. I thought I’d been shot.

Then, I saw the other car.

Back at her house, Delma told her husband she’d just seen a terrible accident. An SUV blew past her going so fast it shook her car. The SUV swerved to avoid hitting another vehicle. It lost control, smashed into the back of a red minivan, and spun off into the exit area of the carwash, where it burst into flames.

No fewer than eight police cars had been in pursuit of the SUV.

She didn’t know she’d seen her friend get involved in a high-speed crash, just like I didn’t know that the man in the burning SUV was still, somehow, miraculously alive. Just like I didn’t know that the officers who came to help me had been chasing that driver. As they led me to a patrol car to wait for an ambulance to arrive, I sheepishly admitted, “I don’t want to sit in the seat. I peed my pants when he hit me and I don’t want to put my wet pants on the seat.” They assured me it wouldn’t be the worst thing that had been on that seat “tonight,” which did not reassure me. I asked them, “What about the guy who hit me?”

An officer young enough to be my son immediately assured me that the man would be held responsible. I had to clarify that I was asking if he was alive. I was going sixty when he slammed into the back of the van; he’d been going so fast, I hadn’t seen him or the lights from the police cars behind us. “He was going about a hundred when he lost control,” the officer said grimly. “He’s pretty lucky.”

Lucky would have been not getting caught, I thought, and did not say, because police make me nervous. And because I was hyperventilating and my teeth were chattering, which also makes it difficult to speak. The chattering teeth, I have now learned, were due to the massive amounts of adrenaline that also caused me to refuse medical treatment because, “I don’t feel that bad.”

If you are ever in a car accident, do not send the ambulance people away in the direct aftermath. You will almost certainly feel “that bad” later and regret that decision.

I texted Delma. “I got into a bad accident. Can you tell the group chat I won’t be there tomorrow?” And then I felt guilty for letting everyone down. Delaney messaged me, “We did insist on a hard nine a.m. start time,” to make me laugh, which I did.

Mr. Jen came to get me and took over talking with the police and arranging a tow for our vehicle. He wanted me to stay in the car but I couldn’t sit still. I went to the van and got my roller skates out, and my script, because I’ll need that this week. I took a picture of the crumpled rear of the vehicle and thought, that doesn’t look all that bad.

The next morning, Mr. Jen examined the van in the light of the day. The interior had detached from the exterior. The airbags in the headrests had deployed. The driver’s seat was broken and twisted. All of the safety features that had been engineered to protect me had done their jobs.

I’m a fan of the brand now.

I was also broken and twisted, and deeply regretting not making a trip to the emergency room. In a couple of hours, I’ll be seeing my doctor to address the throbbing pain in my head, the visual disturbances and occasional loss of clear sight in my right eye. The searing neck pain. The fact that my right boob is two cup sizes larger and a lovely lavender hue. The bruises on my abdomen and thighs. The fact that I can’t raise my arms to shoulder level or hold even a full mug of tea without becoming impossibly fatigued. I had no idea I would feel this way when I sent the ambulance away.

Don’t send the ambulance away.

I tried to go to tech Sunday for my show. It was a mistake that ended in a tearful breakdown and an early exit. I felt like a failure, though I know it’s not my fault. “I dropped the ball,” I sobbed to my co-director, Jeremy, who reminded me gently that I did not drop the ball. The guy who hit me did.

But as I sit here, my brain fully fatigued but desperate to get all of this out, half-listening to Mr. Jen on the phone to the insurance company, I wonder whose fault it really is. I was going fast, sure. But if I hadn’t made it through the light, the guy would have hit me while I was at a standstill. I know I wouldn’t be here at all if that had happened. Clearly, the person who stole the SUV in the first place made a horrible choice, and followed it up with the absolutely baffling decision to run from the police.

“I don’t know why people run from the police,” Jeremy said as we sat in the auditorium, waiting for tech Sunday to kick off. “They always get caught.”

Myself? I don’t know why the police chase anyone. It seems like someone always gets hurt. The suspect. An officer. An innocent bystander.

This time, the person who was hurt was me. I already suffer from C-PTSD. I’m already disabled. I didn’t need another traumatizing incident or more pain. And from the details I know, the chase didn’t accomplish anything other than the accident, which wrecked the stolen property, anyway. There wasn’t an abducted person in that vehicle. There wasn’t, as far as I can tell, a reason they needed to nab the criminal right at that very moment I was going through the light.

I’m glad I was driving a little irresponsibly; it’s possibly the only time it’s going to save my life. I’m thankful the driver fleeing the police didn’t die; stealing a car shouldn’t come with a death sentence. I hope very much that whoever it was will have a better life and make wiser choices after this. I hope the person whose SUV was stolen had good insurance on it and won’t face too much of a financial hardship over this. And I very much hope that the high occurrence of these incidents in Kalamazoo lately (this was the second chase in the same area in the same week) will make city and county leaders reconsider whether or not high-speed pursuits are a sensible solution to public safety.

I don’t know what I’m going to hear when I go to the doctor’s office today. Probably, “rest,” which I think we all know that I will not be doing during a show week because I can’t let these kids down. I’ll keep everyone updated. In the meantime, drive carefully and stay safe.

Surprise! It’s a new release!

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Good Monday, everybody! What has Jenny Trout been up to all summer? Well, I will tell you. I was writing HER BROTHER’S BILLIONAIRE BEST FRIEND, the hottest, filthiest, most fun, sexy contemporary romantic erotica I’ve ever written. But it was under contract with a brand new serial fiction app, so I couldn’t tell you about it until the app launched. So, now I get to tell you about the serial and the app it’s on, and I get to give you a freebie!

YONDER is a new serialized fiction app from Webtoon (yup, the Wattpad people!). They offer “Bursts of far-fetched escapism, bite-sized, binge-worthy, thrill-packed storytelling written by a new breed of writers for a new species of readers.”

In other words, you’re going to find a selection of fast-paced, high-quality stories curated by the YONDER editors (who are amazing), including brand-new content written exclusively for the YONDER app (for example, HER BROTHER’S BILLIONAIRE BEST FRIEND, which I have been waiting to tell yous all about since frickin’ June).

Since I can gush to you about my book and how much I love it, here we go!

Sparks fly when serial flirt Charlotte meets her brother’s best friend, Matthew—a billionaire who wants to dominate her but might lose his heart to her instead.

Charlotte’s older brother, Scott, has always tried to keep her from meeting his best friend, Matthew. Charlotte is a notorious meaneater and Scott knows that Matthew, a slick billionaire who just went through a tough breakup, might not survive her. But when Charlotte and Matthew finally meet at Scott’s wedding, sparks instantly fly. Their affair feels so good—and so wrong. In order to get it out of their systems, Matthew invites Charlotte to Ascend Red, an invitation-only kink hotel that he owns, for two weeks of total submission to him. Two perfect, sexy weeks, and then they’ll part forever. But will they be able to say goodbye for good?

WARNING: This story contains explicit sexual content and BDSM, strong language, and depitctions of substance abuse that may be upsetting for some readers. Read discretion is advised.

Are you thinking to yourself, “Wow, that sounds good?” Well, believe me, it is. I’m so happy with it. Matthew and Charlotte have entered my pantheon of God-tier favorites with regard to couples I’ve written. There has been a kinky, bisexual-shaped hole in my heart since THE BOSS ended, and it is now filled and then some. Look forward to age-gap, swinging, public sex, rough sex, phone sex, merciless teasing, a lube-soaked orgy that might be the filthiest thing I’ve ever written, and anal sex in a birthday cake. The heroine isn’t perfect, the hero is going through some stuff, it’s all the ingredients for a smashing Abigail Barnette story.

So, how do you get to this treasure trove of naughtiness? You can download YONDER in the App Store or on Google Play. Right now, there are fifteen chapters of HER BROTHER’S BILLIONAIRE BEST FRIEND available, with new chapters dropping every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday, and the first eight chapters are free. But hey, speaking of free…

green, purple and black background. Text: Celebrate the lauch of YONDER, claim your free coins. Cartoon gold coins are dotted around the cover of Her Brother's Billionaire Best Friend, which features a man shown from the chin down. He has a dark beard and ripped chest and abs under an open button down shirt and undone tie.

For a limited time, you can get free coins by using the code ABIGAIL at https://bit.ly/3EPdV71. This code is only good through November 7, 2022. The code will work once per person, and the free coins will expire after 180 days but trust me: you’ll have used them up on all the steamy goodness by then.

So, download YONDER, get your free coins, and binge HER BROTHER’S BILLIONAIRE BEST FRIEND. You will not regret it.

The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp chapter 12

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Need to catch up?

Jealous Haters Book Club: Crave, chapter 14, “Knock, Knock, Knocking on Death’s Door”

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As it turns out, this chapter’s title does have something to do with the text! The downside is, this chapter is only five pages long, so the recap will be short.

It’s weird, I start to feel guilty that I’m not pumping out these recaps as fast as I possibly can, and then I read the chapter and go, “Well, that wasn’t long. At all. Why didn’t we get this done before?”

The answer is that Abigail Barnette came out of retirement to great demand and I have projects I wish I could tell you more about, but I can’t yet. Just trust and believe that while I want to keep the content rolling here, Abigail suddenly started paying my bills.

So, back to whatever school this is, I forgot the name. We’ll call it Sexy Hogwarts for now. Grace is still suffering from her “altitude sickness,” which we all know was caused by Lia poisoning her. Look, the girl was in a secret room chanting in a strange language. Something’s going on with her.

The altitude sickness has gone on long enough, and the nausea has been severe enough that Macy wants to involve the school nurse, but Grace is insistent upon doing nothing that might cause further attention. Grace promises that if the sickness lasts for another twenty-four hours, she’ll do something about it.

I ride it out, trying to ignore how much I wish my mom were here to baby me a little, and eventually fall into a fitful sleep, one I don’t wake from until an alarm blares at six thirty the next morning.

I very much like how Wolff refers back to Grace missing her parents when it comes to little, non-trauma-related things. Remember when we read Apollonia and the only time we really heard about the dead mom was during PTSD flashbacks to her actual death? It really made it difficult to connect with the character as a whole, entire person, because the loss of her mother only seemed to be important to the character if it was employed at moments of high drama so the reader would think, “Oh, this poor woman, she’s so broken and special.” Grace being sick to her stomach and wanting her mother there to comfort her is more natural, regardless of the trauma involved in losing her parents. She’s thinking about her mother not just when the trauma can be deployed to maximum dramatic effect, and this makes Grace seem like more of a person than…

I can’t even remember that character’s name from Apollonia. Because she was never a person.

Grace does some dry-heaving and ends up achy, but the effects of the altitude sickness have worn off. She’s still not going to go to class, though, even when Macy gets up.

The first thing she does is slap at her alarm until it stops again—something I am eternally grateful for, considering she picked the most grating, annoying sound ever created to wake up to—but it takes her only a second to climb out of bed and come over to me.

If this were basically any other YA genre fiction, we’d hear all about how terrible and annoying Macy is for constantly hovering. It’s so nice to finally read a book in this book club that wasn’t written by a selfish asshole.

Grace tells Macy that she’s fine, but really sore.

“Yuck. That’s probably dehydration.” She crosses to the fridge in the corner of the room and pulls out a pitcher of water.

What the shit? Before, Macy was getting bottled water out of there. Now, she’s got a pitcher, too? How much water does she need?

Oh my god.

Is Macy a mermaid? Are these clues?

Macy tells Grace she’ll come back and check on her between classes, but doesn’t insist on Grace going to class. In fact, she insists that Grace takes it easy:

“Good, then you can consider this a mental health day, of the Holy crap, I just moved to Alaska! variety.”

“There’s an actual mental health day for that?” I tease, moving around until I’m sitting up with my back against the wall.

Macy snorts. “There are whole mental health months for that. Alaska’s not easy.”

And do you know what doesn’t happen? Grace doesn’t think about how much harder she’s had it than everyone and how much tougher she is because she doesn’t need mental health days. She’s like, yeah, that makes sense. And she doesn’t try to prove anything.

Macy tells Grace to stay put, watch tv, eat junk food now that her stomach isn’t upset anymore, and just chill until she feels up to starting classes. Grace is concerned that her uncle won’t be as understanding. There’s a knock at the door, which Macy assumes is Uncle Finn, but it’s not.

Except it’s not Uncle Finn at all. It’s Flint, who takes one look at Macy in her tiny nightshirt and me in last night’s dress and smeared makeup and starts grinning like a dork.

“Looking good, ladies.” He gives a low whistle. “Guess you decided to take the tea party up a notch or four last night, huh?”

Tea party? That has to be intentional. That has to be a reference to the tea thing in Lia’s room, right? Because they weren’t at a tea party with Flint. And it would be weird if the tea in Lia’s room, the sudden nausea, and this comment weren’t connected in some way. Please, please, please, don’t let me down, first actually readable book we’ve done here.

Macy goes to the bathroom and Flint asks Grace why she left the party and where she went.

Because telling him the whole reason involves trying to explain my bizarre reaction to Jaxon—not to mention everything that came after—I settle for part of the truth. “The altitude really started getting to me. I felt like I was going to throw up, so I came back to the room.”

I have this feeling that Flint knows she saw Lia and is stopping by to see if she’ll say, “I saw this weird girl last night and I think she poisoned me.” And I feel that way because of the tea party comment and the fact that we’re seeing Grace actively withhold that information.

But I’m more concerned with the fact that we’ve spent more time with hot, kind, non-love interest Flint and we’re still supposed to be super hung up on and invested in the sexiness of Jaxon. Is this going to end up being a Team Edward/Team Jacob thing? Because if it does, we know she’s not going to pick the guy who isn’t white. That’s the formula for Twilight-esque romance love triangles: she will always pick the white guy.

Flint is glad to hear that Grace feels better now, because he wants to invite her to a snowball fight. It takes some cajoling, because Grace is like, yeah, uh, I don’t know how to make a snowball. He insists that it’ll be fine, it’s not hard to be in a snowball fight, and Macy says:

“Careful, Grace.” Macy comes out of the bathroom, her hair wrapped in a towel. “Never trust a…” She trails off when Flint turns to her, brows raised.

Excuseth me? Never trust a what, Macy? Because while I’m aware that she was about to say “Never trust a dragon,” and stopped herself, we’re talking about a white character saying this about a Black character and trailing off. Never trust a what, Macy?

I find it weirder still that Grace doesn’t think, “Never trust a what, Macy?” San Diego is arguably more diverse than an Alaskan mountain. Grace is going to know about racism and, since she doesn’t know about supernatural creatures yet, why isn’t she thinking, “Holy shit, is my cousin a racist?”

It’s a weird remark to overlook.

Grace figures that since she needs more friends at the school, she might as well participate in this giant, planned snowball war. Which I find disappointing, from a real world standpoint. Everybody knows that spontaneous snowball fights are more fun.

After he convinces Grace to participate, Flint gives her a kiss on the cheek and leaves.

I’m left with a wide-eyed, openmouthed Macy, who is all but clapping her hands in delight over one little peck. And the sad knowledge that no matter how adorable Flint is, he doesn’t make me feel anything close to what Jaxon does.

I mean, on the one hand, Flint is kind of treating her like fresh meat. That can’t be very flattering. But I would rather read about Grace thinking along those lines, about being the new girl and fresh and interesting (the way Bella was soured on the boys in Forks) and how it will wear off than the mindset of, jeez, this guy is so super nice, too bad I’m into the guy who treats me like shit and has been treating me like shit since the moment I walked through the door.

But that’s the end of the chapter. I’m left continually wondering if the chapters are this short because they were intended to be released in serial form. Like, did Entangled think about getting into the Radish/Wattpad/Kiss app game and change direction? There are sixty-five chapters here. That sounds like three seasons of a Radish serial, is all I’m saying. Was Entangled flirting with a serialized app of their own? Or did Wolff just write it this way? The short chapters don’t exactly keep the story moving; remember, we’re on chapter fourteen and it’s only been like thirty hours of story. And the next chapter picks up exactly where the last one left off; we’ve gone through every single moment of Grace being at Katmere. So far, there hasn’t been enough story to support this amount of text.

But hey, at least this chapter title can accurately describe the contents of the chapter. I’ll take it.