Month: June 2024

Phew, there’s a lot going on in this one, and while I know you’re saying you want validation and good wishes, I’m going to have to be Tough Love Jenny a little bit, so hold tight, okay, and then I’ll have validation and good wishes at the end.

Your family does have a toxic dynamic. You see the same dynamic developing between you and your brother as between your father and your aunt… but you largely blame only your brother for that, and you seem to expect him to change it all on his own.

Don’t get me wrong: you are one-hundred percent totally justified in not wanting your brother to belittle and insult you. I don’t know if you’ve had that conversation with him: you treat me the way Dad treats Aunt, and I want a healthier and more loving relationship than that with you. If you have had that conversation and he’s continuing to ignore it, if you’ve tried to explicitly convey to him that his behavior toward you isn’t okay and he keeps violating that boundary, cutting him off is probably the best option. What you’re describing, though, isn’t cutting someone off. It’s taking a break and resting up for the next battle. Ignoring him, then making excuses for why you ignored him without ever addressing the issue, only reinforces that he’s allowed to treat you this way without any consequences. And it sounds like that’s exactly how your aunt handles your father.

But if you haven’t explicitly discussed your feelings about this at all with him, and you’re just waiting to see if he figures it out himself… he won’t. You’ve both been raised in the same family, with the same toxic examples of familial love. Your brother is likely treating you the way your father treats your aunt because that’s what’s been modeled for you both. His actions are shitty. Does he know they’re shitty? Or does he believe this is how a brother shows love to a sister? My bet is the latter, based on his confusion at your refusal to be in his wedding. His behavior toward you suggests that he believes you’re in a mutually loving and healthy relationship, and seeing your aunt endure this same behavior without objection has just reinforced that belief.

If you have had a boundary-setting conversation with him, don’t tell him you just got busy and couldn’t call or text. Tell him flat out that you didn’t message because he violated that boundary. And if you haven’t had that conversation yet, don’t lie and say it was just something else keeping you from messaging him. “I stopped messaging you for a while because I was trying to think of the best way to approach this subject with you, but it’s time we had this talk.”

Now, I can’t guarantee that he’s going to hear you out and change his behavior immediately. He might dismiss your concerns entirely. He might say you’re overreacting. He might not be able to accept that your family has flaws. And in that case, unfortunately, you have to decide whether or not you want to stay locked in the role of your aunt for the next fifty years, or if you need to step away from your brother entirely until he recognizes the toxicity inherent in your relationship.

Here’s the validation and good wishes part: You’re not imagining that you’re in a toxic situation. You really are. And recognizing that was emotionally mature. I hope that things work out for you and your brother and hashing this out brings you closer together. But if it doesn’t, I hope (and believe) that getting this out in the open and setting boundaries is going to bring you peace.

While I think I have come up with my own answer to this question, I am curious how others answer it as well. Growing up life was a series of goals: high school, college, live overseas for a bit, grad school, a job, etc. But, after getting a job I enjoyed, I realized that I no longer knew what came next. For some, they go down the family path (find an SO, get married, have kids, usher kids down the education path), but that never appealed to me. So, I felt like I’d reached a plateau. It was not great for my mental health. So that is my question: what do you do once you’ve reached your goals and don’t know what to do next? When life has always been a series of mountains to scale, what do you do when you can’t see the next peak to climb?

Make another mountain.

Life isn’t like the game of the same name. You don’t have to make it to the finish line with a carload of pink and blue pegs and a paid-off mortgage. If the traditional path doesn’t appeal to you, you’re not a failure if you don’t take it. But that does leave you with the job of making another path. Maybe that can be your first goal.

It doesn’t have to include culturally approved milestones. It doesn’t have to be productive or look important to anyone else. You could just get up every single day and make a goal of doing something you’ve never done. Make a bunch of them. Make them big and small. “I’ve never run as fast as I can to the stop sign on the corner.” “I’ve never learned Russian.” “I’ve never run for local office.” Actually, that last one might not be good advice; you might end up drain commissioner or something. But you get where I’m going with this.

Nobody on the planet has ever lived the same life as someone else. So nobody on the planet should be measuring the worthiness or validity of their lives on someone else’s. Celebrate that you’ve completed the goals that you cared about. Now, you get find out what’s really going to make you happy.

That’s my three cents for the week. Got a question you want to ask Trout? Leave it here.

On June 23rd, literary agent Hillary Harrell of KT Literary took to Twitter to discuss a submission with a concept they* loved:

Just read a query that was essentially THE ROAD meets DELIVERANCE (#YA) and now I want someone to write this for me, please?

It was followed by hashtags, a starry eyed emoji, and utter bafflement across author social media on every platform.

Morgana Bourggraff, whose Twitter username indicates that they are currently querying agents, asked:

but not the querier?

To which Harrwell responded:

Hi, no, the author did not pitch it as such nor was the opening strong enough.

Another Twitter user, Jamie Damato asked:

with respect, do you not see how it’s actually kind of insidious for an agent with industry influence to reject a querying writer with no power and then try to get someone ELSE to write THEIR concept but “better” just because they didn’t use those specific comps?

echoing the rest of us, who were understandably apoplectic with rage. Absolutely, it’s “kind of” insidious. It’s despicable. It’s unprofessional. It’s unforgivable.

And it happens all the time.

In 2019, I tweeted extensively about the link between Kim Richardson’s The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek and the blatant similarities in JoJo Moyes book The Giver of Stars. The plagiarism was obvious: Moyes “wrote” a scene allegedly based off a historical anecdote that also appeared in Richardson’s book. But it wasn’t a historical anecdote at all. It was fiction, written by Richardson, who coincidentally wrote for a different imprint at the same publishing house as Moyes. And while tons of questions remain unanswered (why and how did Moyes, an author from the UK, become so gripped with interest over a niche bit of Appalachian history? What incentive did the publishing house have to investigate these claims? Are we supposed to believe that their in-house lawyers ever had any intention of bringing suit against themselves?), the scandal itself went quietly away. Moyes will continue her career as a wildly selling author and staple of celebrity book clubs. Richardson will probably always feel a pit of injustice in her stomach when she looks at the book she poured her heart, soul, and countless hours of research into. And, as always, traditional publishing and name recognition have won.

This is the way traditional publishing works.

Take the ongoing lawsuit brought by Liz Freeman against Tracy Wolff, Emily Sylvan Kim, Entangled Publishing, and Liz Pelletier, among others. The original filing is an eighty-six page catalogue of similarities from plot, scenes, character names, and sometimes clearly reworked passages of text. While some of the similarities wouldn’t have been damning on their own, the sheer number of “coincidences,” along with the basic facts that Wolff was Kim’s client and good friend, and that Freeman’s book was submitted to Entangled and pitched to Liz Pelletier herself (facts which Entangled’s lawyers don’t deny), seem suspicious, don’t they?

If you haven’t heard of the lawsuit, you’re not alone. It hasn’t received the industry-wide attention it should be receiving. Why? Because Crave was a hit, as was Fourth Wing, and therefore aspiring traditional writers can’t discuss it. What if they miss their big chance to be the next Fourth Wing at a publisher that’s experiencing such success that a pre-order listing with no title or blurb shot to #1 on Amazon within hours? If they keep their head down (or publicly dismiss the severity of the infringement as “there are no new ideas”), they might get into Pelletier’s good graces. And they certainly won’t cross anyone else in traditional publishing.

In 2003, an aspiring author I knew submitted to a major publisher. It was rejected on the basis of the heroine being an exotic dancer, something the imprint “doesn’t do.” Less than six months later, a book with a very similar plot (including the exotic dancer heroine that the rejection letter claimed was verboten by imprint rules), was published, written by a successfully midlist author. Though there were slight changes to the story itself, the back cover copy was the aspiring author’s query letter. Word-for-word.

What recourse did that aspiring author have? Social media didn’t exist in the form we’re familiar with now. There was no way to call them out. And even if she had, this was before Amanda Hocking blew the doors wide open for self-publishing. The only chance this aspiring author had at being a “real author” was to court traditional publishers. If she’d sought justice, she probably wouldn’t have gotten it, anyway (authors in her position rarely do), and it would destroy her chances of ever successfully submitting to any publishing house.

And this is how traditional publishing always wins: they hold the power. If a publisher or agent decides that your manuscript is good enough to publish, but would make better sales with someone else’s name on it, they’ll just have someone else rewrite it.

KT Literary Agency did make a statement regarding their now-former agent’s behavior:

We at KT Literary have decided to part ways with an agent whose recent public statements directly contradict our values and the trust we work to build with our clients. We are reaching out to affected clients to discuss their representation options and ensure continued support. Thank you for your patience and understanding. KT Literary.

But what did this agent get fired for, other than getting caught? Is it truly about damaged trust between author and agency, or did Harwell break a code of silence within an industry that continues to exploit querying authors to pad their wallets and elevate their more profitable clients?

I think we’d all like to believe it’s the former. But any realist knows that it’s the latter.

*All unknown pronouns have been replaced with the gender neutral singular “they”

Correction 6/25/24 – Agent Emily Sylvan Kim was misidentified as Emily Silver Kim. Kim is not affiliated with author Emily Silver.

Quick reminder that June is when I go on my annual writing retreat to the Keweenaw Peninsula, and that will be happening next week. Once a year since like… over a decade ago, I started going up there with some friends for a week of distraction-free writing and being away from administrative stuff. I just realized the other day that I finished writing the recap of the final chapter of Fifty Shades of Grey the night before I left on my very first of these annual June retreats. All of the Boss books have been written on this retreat. I can’t even get my mindhole around it. I missed last year because I was directing The Music Man, and this year I am ready to put the words down.

Anyway, that means no content here, on YouTube, or on the Patreon for a week. But if you head over to my Abigail Barnette Facebook page, you can see the cover reveal and sale date announcement for Alpha God Rising!

Onto the questions!

How do I ask my 73-year-old dad to stop using AI to create art for his books? He recently finished a book which is getting published by a small press later this year. He’s setting up a substack and used AI to make a logo for it, then asked me to fix the text as it was the only part that didn’t turn out well (debatable tbh). As an artist, this makes my stomach turn in a way I can’t explain. I’d offer to just do the art myself but I’m not good at the kind of graphic design thing the project needs (I’m more of an illustrator) and I feel weird asking him to do something differently when I can’t help with it and it doesn’t totally affect me. I guess I’d like him to hire someone, but I don’t have a suggestion as to who. I just really hate AI art on principle, but I have a hard time standing up for myself and my principles and I’m afraid he won’t understand and it’ll be a fight for nothing. He doesn’t use AI for writing, just visual art—he’s a writer and I do both. We get along really well and I guess I’m just scared of rocking the boat.

The internet—Threads, at least, and BookThreads, in particular—sure had your back this week. The popular subscription book box OwlCrate was called out for platforming author Lauren Roberts, who allegedly shared multiple pieces of AI art depicting her characters on her Instagram. Readers who questioned OwlCrate had their comments removed, or were blocked, and outrage followed. Another author, Cassie Alexander, posted a long, long thread promoting her lecture on using AI art at Inkers Con, and it didn’t get her the reaction she’d probably hoped for. Reader responses to both of these situations made it clear: readers do not want AI. Not in words, not in art, not on social media, not at all.

If I were you, I would send your dad some links to some of these responses. You could approach it as fear for his future success. “Look, Dad, I know you’ve used AI in the past, and I’m worried that you might be hurting your bottom line. This is how readers feel about authors who use AI images.” Because readers have made it clear: if they see AI art involved, they assume the contents are AI generated, and they don’t trust the creator. A reader’s trust, once lost, is lost forever.

You could also introduce him to Canva, an app that every publishing writer should probably have, anyway. Canva has free fonts and images an author can use to make logos and promo, with templates sized for posting on social media sites. It’s user friendly and has a monthly subscription fee for people who want to access the entire library of fonts and elements. The unfortunate side of this is that Canva also makes some AI tools available to users, but maybe once he sees reader response to the technology he’d think twice about using them.

Re: the ‘dig a hole and get in it’ plan to succeed at Naked and Afraid – could you give some advice on surviving in the wild by expanding on that plan? Would you dig a hole you could lie down in and find some kind of cover for it, or is it a vertical hole you could stand in and bury yourself into until there’s just a little head sticking out for passing deers to investigate?

(I hereby declare I do not intend to dig a hole, nor get in it, nor participate in any strange TV shows I’d never heard of until a certain blog post mentioned them, as a result of any advice I may receive.)

The number one issue I see people complain about on Naked and Afraid is bugs. People have tapped out due to the psychological stress of being bitten by bugs over and over. My theory is that if you dig a hole and get in it, the flying type of bugs can’t get you. I’m sure there are bugs in the dirt, too, but not as many as the air has. You also probably won’t get cold, because your body heat will fill up the space.

My hole plan involves something deep enough that you can sit on the bottom with your head at least six inches below ground level. Not long enough to lay down in (that kind of hole requires too much energy to dig), but wide enough to comfortably sit with your knees bent. The hole can be lined with palm fronds or leaves or whatever. And yeah, I guess you could put stuff over your head.

The biggest challenges presented by what I’m just now coining “Hole Survival” is getting out of the hole to go look for food or to tend the fire or go poop. I’m envisioning some kind of rope-tied-to-a-big-rock scenario where I can pull myself up out of the hole. But you run the risk of collapsing the sides every time you exit. Clearly, I still need time to work out of some of these details.

That’s all for this week. And next week, since I’m going on that trip. But after that, I’ll be back with more great advice that probably won’t require anyone to dig a hole. Got a question you want to ask Trout? Leave it here.

Welcome to the first installment of Dear Trout, my hopefully weekly advice column. Look, we all know shit happens, sometimes I’m gonna skip a week or something. My plan is to do two questions a week, unless this really takes off and I have to bump the number to keep up. You can submit your questions here. The form asks for a name so I can refer to you while still maintaining your anonymity, but some of you put your government names on the form, so I’m worried that I didn’t explain that part correctly. So, I’m dropping the idea of using names at all. It’s still on the form because I’m lazy. Put a good name for a penis in there, if you feel like.

On to the questions of the week:

I wish I had a fun question, but I just lost my mom and I’m a grieving, lonely mess. Do you have advice for someone who is desperate for some kind of sign, to be able to believe there’s an afterlife? I’m so afraid that she’s either forgotten me, or just isn’t out there anymore and I’ll never see her again. Or maybe she realized I was a bad daughter and hates me now.

We all know that I’m an ooky-spooky, twitchy-witchy, new age buffoon with beliefs so extreme that I sometimes bully myself over them. I’ve talked before about hauntings I’ve experienced, the fact that I was in a coven at one time, I’ve even done tarot readings on YouTube. I have no trouble, as Jenny “crystals have energy” Trout, telling you that there is an afterlife. Not just an afterlife, but more actual lives after this one, and some of them may be on Earth, a fact I think about every time I fail to recycle a beverage container. There’s an afterlife. The universe is too specific to be by accident.

One thing I can’t explain is how to believe in it. I was raised religious. I have no mechanism to doubt, so I would be talking out of my ass if I tried to even speculate on how not-doubting works.

What I find really interesting about your question is that you say you want to believe in an afterlife, but the scenarios in which your mother forgot about you or started to hate you are only possible if there is an afterlife. I feel like that’s a pretty powerful sign of two things: you do believe in life after death, and what you’re experiencing is a natural feeling of abandonment that happens after a death.

You know logically that death isn’t a choice we make. We die because we’re ill or we die because we’re old or we die because there’s an accident. But whether the death is expected or sudden, we always want an explanation. Why, God? Why did you take Aunt Hildy away? She was only a hundred and seven! It doesn’t make sense, but our logic brains can’t accept that grief is its own process. We feel our human confusion surrounding death and interpret it as something that can be cleared up with an easy answer, even while we know there is no easy answer. Your brain could be saying, “Since we can’t blame mom for leaving, let’s blame ourselves instead. Then something will make sense.”

I think that when we’re grieving, we have to be careful about how we let our brains talk to us, but doing that is exhausting on our own. I think it would be a good idea to look into getting a counselor, if you haven’t already. There are people out there who can unpack all this stuff way better than I could ever hope to, and guide you through it. And I hope things get better and you can get to a place where you allow yourself to look forward to a joyous reunion with your mother.

What is the best way to overcome executive disfunction with regards to writing? I can break the process down into tiny steps, but actually starting can take me months.

I struggle with executive function (“What? No! But you’re so consistent and organized!” they said, sarcastically), especially when it comes to focusing on just writing the damn thing. I’ve found a few things helpful. The Pomodoro Technique has worked on-and-off for me. If I can do it and really stick to the rules, I can get a good few weeks of work out of it.

When that fails, I use a program called Write or Die 3. There’s a free version online, but I bought the full program for its “Peril” mode. You set the amount of time you want to spend writing, the amount of words you want to write in that time period, and then you hit “Ready?” The program shows you a cute little animated cat, prompts you to name it, and then tells you that this cat you have just named trusts you and has no concept of betrayal before revealing that the cat is dangling over some deadly green liquid. If you stop typing, a chain will slowly begin to lower the cat toward the danger juice. It is incredibly motivating.

I’ve also found that sprinting with others is a great way to get words on the page. One of my group chats has a Discord server where we can drop in any night, from 7pm-11pm EST and use a plug-in that I believe is called Sprinterbot to keep track of our time and word counts. It ranks participants from most words to least, so if you’re competitive, that’s an extra layer of fun. But it helps to just do the activity with someone else. If this is something that appeals to people, we could always add a channel for this purpose to the Trout Nation Discord; just chime in and let me know.

But if it’s not concentration and executive function holding you back from starting, then it might just be imposter syndrome or a fear of imperfection holding you back. In which case, fuck those things. You’re allowed to write. Nobody has to give you permission. You can write the thing just because you want to. Tell yourself a date and time when you’re actually going to start doing the thing. You cannot get out of it. No excuses. The most intimidating part of starting is actually doing it, but once you start, that hard part is over. You don’t have to start from scratch on that project ever again.

That’s all for this week. Submit your questions here or give our friends your (gentle) thoughts in the comments.