Trout Nation Posts

Apparently while I was on vacation, our friends at Stop The GoodReads Bullies posted this shocking exposé about what a horrible, jealous person I am. And they discovered my closely guarded secret by reading a blog post I made in which I said I have professional jealousy. You know. The one in which I explained why writers experience professional jealousy over the recent P2P glut in traditional publishing. But they put together these obscure clues and boy, did they ever show me! They didn’t even have to write their own post, they just used screencaps of the one I wrote! Man, how did they do that? I was being so sneaky and dishonest in covering all that up.

Because the bloggers at STGRB lack any sense of self-awareness about how ridiculous and idiotic they are, I thought I’d do everybody and favor and refute some of their post. They begin with:

Professional jealousy is a topic that has been brought up several times on our blog in reference to some of the bullies. These are the bullies in our lists who are not just readers, but also authors who seek out other authors to harass, threaten, bully, and otherwise destroy their careers. Namely, these are authors like LH, AH, AS, etc. They are the ones who’ve bullied other, more successful authors like Jamie McGuire, Jessica Park, Amanda Hocking, EL James, Anne Rice, etc.

Ah, McGuire, Hocking, James, Rice… all authors whose careers have been cut tragically short by bullying. They showed such promise, yet now languish in obscurity, nary a penny to their names, because they experienced criticism. And as STGRB has warned us– oh! how they have warned us!– any amount of criticism whatsoever endangers an author’s important fee-fees. I remember that time when I made fun of 50 Shades of Grey and everyone returned those books to the store and it ruined E.L. James’s career.

More than once, our blog readers have made the comment that professional jealousy plays a HUGE role in this bullying and we at STGRB have to agree. However, we’ve never shown you actual proof of this fact until today.

Yeah, well, their blog readers also once rejoiced that they’d vanquished me by getting Blogger to slap a content warning on my old blog, even though the content warning was put there by me and had been there before whatever demented little crusade they thought they were waging even happened. I’d even made a post explaining that in order to abide by Blogger’s new TOS, I had put that content warning up, but clearly the changes in the TOS were affected by six or seven logic-impaired morons at an “anti-bullying” bully site, so they won! Good for them!

What I wrote in my post obviously doesn’t reflect the feelings or opinions of every single author who ever disagreed with STGRB. I know this because there are soooooo many people who disagree with them, it would be impossible for me to make a statement on their behalf without at least some kind of informal town hall meeting wherein we could vote to a consensus as to what would go into that, er, statement. Lost where I was going there. I feel like I should stop and clarify for anyone from STGRB that is reading this that in the paragraph after the first quote I was exaggerating for humorous purposes. I need to make that clear before they run off and make a post about how I really, truly believe that I’m powerful enough to destroy author careers. Because they cannot grasp irony. I do know they’re reading this, by the way, I’m not paranoid or flattering myself:

Now, ever since Jenny Trout was banned from Anne Rice’s blog a few weeks ago, we’ve been keeping a close eye on her.

Huh. Well, that’s a weird fucking thing to say. I feel like I should check my body for electronic tags or something.

If you all don’t remember that wonderful episode, we covered it in Anne Rice Bans the Bullies. Basically, Anne left a link on her Facebook page to our blog post covering Carpet Bomber #9, Nenia Campbell. Upon hearing of this, Jenny Trout, along with several other of her bully friends, hopped on over to Anne’s Facebook page, harassed her, and tried to get her to believe lies about about our website in order to discourage her from supporting us.

Now, in Jenny’s recent blog rant on author Anna Todd and Anna’s immensely successful book, After, Jenny Trout not only harshly criticizes Anna’s book (or more appropriately, her manuscript) for very minor, very fixable problems, she insults Anna personally, coming very close to calling her a plagiarist.

Whoa there. Wait a minute. In the blog post they’re referring to here, I say that 50 Shades of Grey is borderline plagiarized. I’ve never made plagiarism allegations toward After, but a reader commented on my blog that they found plagiarized content in a chapter. I never called Anna Todd a plagiarist. While I may have come out of the gate hard about Anna Todd, the post featured on STGRB isn’t a personal criticism of Todd as a person. In fact, since I’ve learned more about her, I’ve found her to be the anti-James. She sincerely appreciates the fandom who boosted her to this success, and she expresses gratitude to them for it. I respect her for that, but that doesn’t mean I can’t also have problems with publishing acquiring fanfic, with the poor quality of the manuscript, or with some of Todd’s statements about her writing process.

I don’t know, STGRB, you’re fucking up a lot of your post. You must not have been keeping that close an eye on me.

They go on to scold me for suggesting After is remotely similar to any other book and attempt to educate me on how blockbuster novels are launched. Obviously after spending two years following the 50SoG phenomenon, I’ve never given the subject a thought. And then they offer some advice:

GET OVER IT. STOP comparing yourself to other people and their career success.

I was kind of comparing everyone currently struggling in the business to this situation, but that’s still advice, I guess.

START focusing on yourself, your writing, and your career successes no matter how small they are.

First of all, that is most back-handed compliment-style advice I’ve ever seen. “No matter how small they are.” What gives them the impression that my career successes are small? Or even, that they’re small to me? And what makes them think I’ve survived a decade in this job without focusing on my writing and my career? I’ve heard this “focus on your own writing/career” thing for a while now, ever since I started blogging about 50 Shades of Grey, and it’s never quite made sense to me because… this is my career. This is my writing. Yes, I write books, but without the blog and the readers who have found me through it, those books wouldn’t be nearly as successful as they are. So… I kind of am focusing on my writing… it’s what they’re so pissed off about.

So, what are you going to do? Constantly bitch and moan about other people’s success and sit in your corner of the room with your arms crossed and a scowl on your face?

OR are you going to be an adult and choose to be happy with yourself and your life and your own success regardless of others who are doing better than you?

Neither, bitch! I’m going to decorate this sick ass DIY lawn gnome and I’m going to completely disregard the instructions on the package! WHAT NOW STGRB? WHAT NOW?

Here’s what the people at STGRB, and basically anyone who sang me that same tired song during the 50SoG recaps, are missing: when I, or any other author, gets frustrated, experiences professional jealousy, or is in general disappointed with the P2P phenomenon, it’s not because we’re not spending enough time on our own writing. In fact, it’s the opposite; we’re wondering why we’re spending all this time in the first place. And it’s not just jealous wannabe losers like me who are fed up with the fanfic trend. Plenty of authors who are more successful than I am (and don’t worry about me, STGRB, because I’m doing just fine with my “small” successes) are rolling their eyes at P2P deals. You can be successful, appreciate what you’ve done, and still think the industry does shitty stuff. And you can do it while still maintaining your own career.

If you’re a regular commenter here, you might have been featured in screencaps in the STGRB post, as well, because STGRB has a bone to pick with you, too, damnit! You’re all jealous! JUST JEALOUS! IN A POST ABOUT PROFESSIONAL JEALOUSY! HOW COULD YOU?!

The only thing about their post that really bothered me was when the author of the post, Johnny B Good, made the following statement in the comments:

In her post, Jenny does complain about publishers, but if you read the rest of her blog, she has a very unhealthy obsession with Anna. She is constantly talking about her and ripping her book. She is so green with envy, it’s sad.

And:

Blog, not blog post. Check out the rest of her blog. In other posts on her blog, you’ll notice she has an unhealthy obsession with Anna. It’s jealousy.

Another commenter, Tweedle Dum, chimed in with:

She has an obsession with Anna because they all have an obsession with successful fanfic. Jenny T. is not the frist person to stalk a successful p2p author.

Now, hang on a second there. The “stalk” word is out, and the “unhealthy obsession” word, as well. I’ve made seven posts on this blog about anything to do with Anna Todd and After, out of six hundred and eighty posts total. That means my “unhealthy obsession” takes up a whopping 1.02% of my entire blog… so maybe we need to think twice before linking my name with “stalk.” And I think it’s pretty ballsy, on top of that, to say some shit like, “we’ve been keeping a close eye” on someone, then criticizing them for having an unhealthy obsession.

I guess what I’m saying on this one, STGRB, is, come get it. Continue making posts about me. Lord knows I had fun last night reading your post in an over-the-top, melodramatic voice, and with my crippling daddy issues, it’s not like I don’t appreciate the negative attention. Every time you make one of your laughable little “gotcha!” posts, I’ll probably blog about it to make fun of you, and I’ll have a good time doing it. But eventually it will get boring, because you’re boring, and you’re never going to find anything on me that I wouldn’t have admitted to, anyway. Which is exactly what you tried– and abysmally failed– to do here.

 

Merlin club is a weekly feature in which Jessica Jarman, Bronwyn Green, and myself gather at 8pm EST to watch an episode of the amazing BBC series Merlin, starring Colin Morgan and literally nobody else I care about except Colin Morgan.

Okay, I lie. A lot of other really cool people are in it, too.

Anyway, we watch the show, we tweet to the hashtag #MerlinClub, and on Fridays we share our thoughts about the episode we watched earlier in the week.

Merlin club is a weekly feature in which Jessica Jarman, Bronwyn Green, and myself gather at 8pm EST to watch an episode of the amazing BBC series Merlin, starring Colin Morgan and literally nobody else I care about except Colin Morgan.

Okay, I lie. A lot of other really cool people are in it, too.

Anyway, we watch the show, we tweet to the hashtag #MerlinClub, and on Fridays we share our thoughts about the episode we watched earlier in the week.

It probably sounds dumb to say that my job is stressful. I mean, most days I don’t have to put pants on. But it’s stressful in different ways. Having to work from home requires the most astounding amount of self-control. Most days, it’s all I can do to keep from laying on the couch, binge-watching Netflix until the kids get home, instead of working. When you see me talk about projects here on the blog? I’m behind on them. It doesn’t matter how positive and confident I sound, or what day it is. I assure you, I am behind.

So, I do get stressed, and it helps to have a way to unwind. I’m lucky to have several. For example:

1. Bein’ Groovy. I like to kick back and relax into a mindless, repetitive task the whisks me away from all my cares and allows me to concentrate on the riddles of the cosmos.

I’ve been needle felting that guy for, oh… probably a couple years now. I just randomly pick him up and work on him when I feel like it. Needle felting is just organized stabbing. You have your wool, a set of very sharp, barbed needles, and you just stab. I always have a bunch of projects going at once. The only time I ever actually finish any of them is if someone is paying me for them. And by someone, I mean Bronwyn Green, because she’s the only person who’s ever commissioned me. I made her a little druid Waldorf lady. So yeah. Needle felting. That is the thing in the picture that reduces my stress.

2. Doodles. I love doodling. This is what I’m working on right now:

 

3. Adventure Time! Nothing lowers my stress level like Adventure Time. I don’t know what it is about that show, but I could be in the middle of fighting off a shark with my bare hands and just hearing Lemongrab shout, “UNACCEPTABLE!” would chill me immediately out.  My favorite character is Lumpy Space Princess. Because we understand each other:

Other stuff! I also like to knit (yes, I’m on Ravelry, though I’m not super active) and run and have sex. Individually, I mean. Not all at the same time. That would be strange.

Wonder how the other Wednesday Blogging friends beat their stress? Find out:

Bronwyn Green • Jessica Jarman • Kris Norris • Kellie St. James
Tessa Grant • Leigh Jones

 

 

Well howdy there, friends! What would you say if I told you that we were living in a circle of hell that Dante Alighieri couldn’t have imagined in his deepest fever dreams? Okay, well, does your answer change when I tell you that Anna Todd’s After has been acquired by Simon & Schuester’s Gallery Books in a mid-six figure deal? And then when I remind you that the fanfic already has movie rights? And that the author believes editing will ruin her process? Or that when you google the word “after,” not “after fanfic” or “after Anna Todd,” just the word “after,” the first result is her story and not the definition of the word “after”? What would you say then?

Look, it’s not that I dislike Anna Todd. She hasn’t given me the self-aggrandizing, victim-blaming bullshit quotes that E.L. James did over the course of the 50 Shades media shit storm. She clearly likes to write, and she’s dedicated to her readers– something E.L. James hasn’t exactly been praised for. There’s no reason for me to dislike Anna Todd. Not even her quote about not editing because it will ruin her story; I more or less just shake my head and murmur, “Oh, my sweet, summer child.” My hope for her is that, through the process of editing her fanfics for publication, she will become a stronger writer, and never again say that editing will ruin her work.

But if authors seem butt hurt when something like this happens, a lot of people say, “Well, you’re just jealous!” You know what? Yes. We are jealous. We’re jealous and we’re frustrated and we’re disappointed. We were told for years and years that the only way to succeed in publishing was to keep learning and developing our skills and to respect our work enough to let only the very, very best land in front of other peoples’ eyes. We were told that the only way to land a traditional publishing contract was to deliver a book that was already in better shape than 90% of what was on the market. To submit anything less would be futile. And with that comes the unspoken corollary: if your book does get published, it’s because it was already flawless.

So, aspiring authors spend thousands of dollars flying all over the country to go to conferences and workshops that tell them how to write one of these flawless books. They get up early and stay up late to grab time to write. They beg or pay people to read their manuscripts, so they can get them into publishable shape.

And then “tattoos are not expectable” winds up taking home a bigger advance than most authors can ever dream of receiving.

Believe me when I say that most writers truly do cheer for the success of newcomers. We don’t operate in a state of constant professional jealousy. Well, I mean. I know some who do, but fuck them. Most of us want to see everyone succeed, because there’s room for everyone at the table. But we get frustrated when we read stuff like this:

“Wilson, the acquiring editor, told PW ‘the book is very long, so we’ll edit it down and get to the core of the story. We’re committed to keeping the story people know but we want to reach traditional readers as well.'”

[Full disclosure for ethics’ sake, Adam Wilson was my editor at Harlequin for my last few books there. This story doesn’t have so much to do with him as it does with the recent trends in publishing, but I thought it would be honest to give a heads up.]

Look at that quote: “The book is very long, so we’ll edit it down and get to the core of the story.” This sticks in my craw. It sticks there so hard. So many times, I’ve been at industry events where editors or agents will give the advice to write tight, to keep the story moving, to have it polished enough that in the lucky event an editor’s eyes land on your manuscript, they’re wowed by your narrative skill. So “edit it down and get to the core of the story” isn’t something you’re supposed to do after you get picked up by a major publisher. It’s something you have to do before your book is even ready to submit.

Furthermore, After lacks another crucial characteristic of what we have been told is a salable manuscript: rudimentary grammar and punctuation, two basic things authors have heard hammered home in lecture after lecture from publishing professionals. “We don’t want to see your manuscript until it’s been proof-read to perfection!” Well, then explain this bullshit, traditional publishing. Explain it.

Obviously, when a publisher sees potential money laying around, they’re going to grab at it. That’s business. But they don’t say, “We’re grabbing this for the cash! Whee!” They make statements like:

“Gallery Books is publishing the book fairly quickly. ‘[Publishing this quickly] is not for every book but we have lots of fan-fiction writers and we’re familiar with the Wattpad community,’ Wilson said. ‘We’ve learned to publish quickly when it comes to self-published authors.'”

See how that makes rushing an unedited manuscript with an aimless plot– “And then Steph makes me go to another party! Again! And I hate it! Again!”– sound like a special commodity that can’t be handled through the usual channels? They don’t want to admit that the bottom line is the bottom line here. No publisher is going to come out and say, “We will publish literally anything, no matter how bad it is, no matter what shape it’s in, whether or not it borders on plagiarism, e.g. 50 Shades of Grey. We will publish anything that we think will make us more money than it costs to print the book.”

Look, I’m not saying that I’m shocked. I’m a realist. But traditional publishing works very hard to convince aspiring authors that every book they sell was accepted and published based on merit alone, and only they are the arbiters of what is and is not “a book.” It’s how they sell their product, I get it. But if those authors had just known that it was okay to rewrite someone else’s entire series and change the names, they could have written 50 Shades of Grey. If we had just known that publishers wanted barely coherent boy band fanfic, we’d have all written barely coherent boy band fanfic.

This is a trap that a lot of commoditized creative ventures fall into; we can’t set out saying we want to make money, because then that means that what we’re making isn’t art, and that’s what we’re supposed to be in it for. Writers are supposed to create for our own pleasure, strive for perfection, and ignore the sometimes disheartening financial realities involved. We’re supposed to buy the line that the books that get published do so by being the best of the best the moment they’re plucked from the slush pile. And we’re supposed to do all this without any public expression of anger when something like After or 50 Shades of Grey achieves staggering success. Who does this model benefit? Not the authors.

I guess what I’m saying is, if you fart and blame the dog enough, eventually people realize where the stink is really coming from. If publishing is a business, then it needs to admit that it’s a business. It would make stuff like this way less insulting authors and readers.

 

Hey everybody! I realize there was no After recap last week. That’s because something neat came up, job wise, and I’m working my butt off on it. It’s nothing set in stone, so it’s not something I can give details on. If anything comes of it, you’ll find out. If nothing comes of it, then we’ll pretend this conversation never happened. In the mean time, cross your fingers and hope vaguely along with me. We’ll get back to After this week. Because it’s hard to stay away.

But in other news, since the end of the serialization of The Boss, I’ve known that I wanted to do another serialized novel. Not another erotic romance; I’m writing a lot of that these days. I decided I’ll serialize a side project I’ve been researching and working on since 2006.

I splurged and bought myself a cover.

The Afflicted is a YA horror novel set in a 19th century Shaker commune. That’s the detail I’m giving right now. It will be serialized on WattPad, because a) I’m interested to know how the platform works, now that I’ve been poking around with it as a reader and b) I won’t have to worry about maintaining a new blog the way I did with The Boss. Updates won’t be on a regular schedule the way they were with The Boss, but chapters will go up at least once a month. I’m gonna do this in a no-pressure, just for funsies kind of way. The first chapter will post in June, and I’ll keep you in the loop here.

I’m sure some of you are like, “but I don’t want to join WattPad to read stuff!” I totally respect that. When The Afflicted is completed on WattPad, I’ll be giving it away as a free ebook, just like how it went down with The Boss, so you won’t be totally left out.

In other other news, I’ll be incommunicado from June 2 – 6. I’ll be rustic camping in Michigan’s majestic Upper Peninsula. Which basically means I’ll be smoking weed in a tent for four days to recharge my mental batteries. During that time, I will have no internet, no electricity, and I doubt I’ll have 4G, so there won’t be any blog updates, and some comments might have to wait in spam moderation limbo. I’ll be scheduling an After post to go up during the week while I’m gone.

So, that’s what’s going on with the Trout.

Merlin club is a weekly feature in which Jessica Jarman, Bronwyn Green, and myself gather at 8pm EST to watch an episode of the amazing BBC series Merlin, starring Colin Morgan and literally nobody else I care about except Colin Morgan.

Okay, I lie. A lot of other really cool people are in it, too.

Anyway, we watch the show, we tweet to the hashtag #MerlinClub, and on Fridays we share our thoughts about the episode we watched earlier in the week.

I’m pretty lucky to be renting a house that has a pretty awesome yard.

Look at that. That is goddamn majestic. It’s pastoral as fuck. Our local government is a village, for god’s sake. I am a villager. My neighbor is a pony.

How, you ask, will Jenny write about her dream yard? When she clearly is already living the dream?

I have fucking allergies.

This is my dream yard. No grass. No actual trees. None of that nature bullshit. Also, it should be indoors.

I never had allergies until like a few years ago. I turned thirty and it’s like, “Hey, your entire life is going to suck from April until December, is that cool? Awesome, enjoy hell!” The Bradys knew what they were doing.

But I’m pretty sure it’s also why they got rid of Tiger, because it cannot be fun cleaning dog shit out of turf.

Take a look at the other, probably more exciting and imaginative dream lawns people have come up with this week:

Bronwyn Green • Jessica Jarman • Kellie St. James • Leigh Jones
Kris Norris • Gwendolyn Cease