Author: JennyTrout

Twas the week before Christmas and the video was late.
For ’twas Jenny, personally, the entire world did hate.
They scheduled appointments, pageants, and things,
on top of the frenzy Christmas itself brings!

How could she edit, how could she cope,
when of finishing all the gifts she could have no hope?
And on top of that, a recap was due!
That meant she had two jobs… plus two!

One as an author, and one as a blogger!
One as a mom and professional kid schlogger.
(Kid schlogging is a type of a thing moms have to do for their broods,
such as schlogging kids to school and to go shopping for food.)

Besides all of that, she had crafting to do!
That made another job, two plus one, plus two!
So TV producer added too much to her plate,
which means she had to deliver the show… late.

Here’s the show, about the end of the world that wasn’t, and tune in tomorrow for the first chapter of Fifty Shades Freed.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFp191-C4kk]

This may go down in history as the geekiest of all the Christmas presents I am making this holiday season:

Yes, it’s the Weighted Companion Cube. That’s all it is. It’s not a box to conveniently store things, it’s not a stool or an ottoman, it’s just a Weighted Companion Cube my son can use when he’s pretending to be navigating the Aperture Science testing program. Which is always and constantly.

I’m not going to pass this off like “Oh, that was totally easy,” because it wasn’t. You’re looking at a 9 hour paint job. Did you know I scrunch up my face when I concentrate? I didn’t, until I got this burning pain in my forehead. And yes, the final product did end up costing more than just buying the stuffed version, because durable paint is expensive, but damnit, this one is better. Because it’s got LOVE.

I’ll be spending the rest of my day editing Roadhouse, working on presents, and writing up tomorrow’s 50 Shades Freed recap. I’ll also be going to my son’s school assembly, where he’ll be singing “Still Alive” (yes, the one from Portal) for the enjoyment of all of his peers.

But before I go, have this picture of the cutest little sleepy rat ratty rattigan face you’ve ever laid eyes on:

OMG LOOK AT HIS LITTLE NOSE!

I got tagged for a “The Next Big Thing” post, and I was supposed to do this yesterday, but I didn’t because I was busy sewing like a little Christmas bee. A bee that can sew and guzzle malt liquor like a goddamned champion. Now, I’m doing it today, with a massive hangover that feels like someone is inserting metal rods through the extremely dry husks where my eyeballs used to be. I have two “The Next Big Thing”s happening in January, and since I can still taste the Mike’s Hard Black Cherry Lemonade in my sinuses, I’m doing both and no one is going to say boo about it. Unless they say this boo very softly and without turning the lights on. Because both books are dear to my heart, and both of them are coming out within a day of each other.

What is the working title of your next book?

Silent Surrender and The Boss.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

The idea for The Boss came from a line I read in a review of Anything He Wants by Sarah Fawkes. The review was totally not complimentary, and referred to books like Anything He Wants and Fifty Shades of Grey as belonging to a genre of “poorly written, badly researched erotica.” I thought, “A genre, huh?” And I thought it would be fun to write a book that has the flavor of Fifty Shades of Grey, but not the non-existent conflict, the abuse masquerading as romance, or the heroine who dumps her entire life to be owned by some dude.

The idea for Silent Surrender came to me years ago, when I was studying American Sign Language. I realized that in all my reading, I’d never found a single Deaf heroine in a romance novel. I’m sure they’re out there, but I had never read one. Then I thought, “Wow, it would be shitty to be a woman in the past. Shittier than it is now,” and it all kind of fell together.

What genre does your book fall under?

Both are erotic romances, but The Boss is contemporary and Silent Surrender is historical erotic romance.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

For The Boss, I would have to say Amber Heard for Sophie, and Anthony Stewart Head for Neil:

My rage, loathing, and despair at the success of 50 Shades of Grey fueled The Boss.

Silent Surrender came from the myriad projects I had to research while learning ASL. One of my text books was called For Hearing People Only, which is an amazing, surprisingly fun book answering Hearing people’s questions about Deaf culture and life. I thought, “You know, there really aren’t any Deaf heroines I can think of in romance.” Over the years, my heroine, Honoria, sort of percolated in the back of my mind, and it blossomed into a story of what it would be like to be a woman in 1841, facing the reality that you don’t get a lot of say in your life, your life is kind of chosen for you by one man or another.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

The Boss is free, and Silent Surrender is romantic as fuck.

Look, I’m not tagging anyone for this, because I hate tagging. It’s obligating one group of people, and excluding a larger group of people. If you’re a writer, and you want to do this thing, just do it, and tell people I tagged you, if you want.

Armintrout out.

Geek is a genetically inherited trait. My husband has the recessed gene, and I’m chock full of geeky goodness, so our son is super, extra geeky. He can also obsess like nobody’s business, due to autism.  Unfortunately, his obsessions usually lead me off the beaten path when it comes to Christmas time, because although he grasps the fact that they don’t generally make toys for video games only adults play, it still bums him out.

For Christmas this year, he’ll be getting a mini Portal Gun, a Potatos “science” kit, and a mini battery operated turret, all from thinkgeek.com. But I wanted to give both the kids a handmade doll they could treasure for ever and ever. These two ideas fused and merged, and now I present to you Chell, heroine of Portal:

I would never put that on a doll for an older kid, but since this is for a ten-year-old who will more keep it than play with it, I think we’re safe.

Now I’m off to finish sewing a similar doll and a mermaid tail to go on it. Tune into twitter tonight, 8:30pm EST, to tweet at us while D-Rock and I are filming our end of the world/year end Roadhouse episode. Hit us up with the hashtag #YOAO. Because You Only Apocalypse Once.

Look at these puppets:

Yeah, that’s right, I’m talking about Phantom of The Opera. I’m talking about The Phantom and Christine (in her “Think of Me” dress, natch), and Movie!Raoul. BAM. What.

Oh, maybe that’s too high-falutin’ and fancy for you? Try these geeky motherfuckers on for size:

This weekend, I uncovered what might be the greatest mystery of all time:

It’s difficult to know how to approach life after a tragedy. With my entire country reeling from grief, there’s a lot of finger pointing, a lot of anger, and a hugely politicized gun control argument. We’ve got people saying this is because we’ve moved into a secular society and removed God from schools. We’ve got other nutjobs saying that Connecticut deserved this because they offer marriage equality to their residents. We have people passionately calling for a ban on guns, with others passionately calling for armed teachers. At the end of the day, every single one of those reactions are coming from people trying to make sense out of the fact that twenty children are dead at the hands of a deeply disturbed individual.

I started a blog post with the intent to look at some aspects of the media coverage that make me uncomfortable. The rush to blame mental illness, the rush to divert gun control into a discussion about violence in videogames. The way that everyone gets up in arms about the tragedy of a school in a “safe” setting being targeted, but collectively we couldn’t care less about the gun violence deaths of children of color in our cities.

The more I wrote, the more mired down in depression, until I couldn’t do anything but stare numb at the tv and watch episode after episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer in my increasingly odorous clothes I hadn’t changed and, yes, had slept in. I recognized this as the beginning of a depression spiral that I can’t afford, and I know it’s having the same effect on a lot of you out there, because some of you have shared your struggles with mental illness.

So, with that in mind, for the next week, this blog will be all fluff. There may be pictures of baby animals (my husband says he can tell how depressed I am based on how many videos of cute baby animals are in my youtube history). There may be mindless chatter about stupid shit. But I won’t be mentioning the shooting, and I’m not going to air any big political opinions.

That might sound callous, but I assure you, it’s coming from a good place. There is no amount of analyzing we can do that will bring those kids back to life. No amount of cultural reflection will mend the families whose lives were irrevocably torn apart. But at times like these, when every channel is airing photos of the smiling faces of the deceased, when every facebook status update is lauding the heroes who laid down their lives, it’s very easy for people made vulnerable by mental illness to get overwhelmed. So, I just want to explain why it’s going to seem like I’m carrying on without a care in the world while the rest of the nation falls apart.

It’s not because I don’t care or I’m ignoring the tragedy. I hope you all understand.

I hesitated posting this, in light of the news of the national tragedy in Connecticut. Then I remembered that I live in America, and if I waited for a day when we didn’t have a gun crime tragedy, it would never get posted. At best, I hope it serves as a diverting distraction.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9ZT70PJZyY]

As you may have heard (and how could you not hear about it?), adorable gamine Anne Hathaway accidentally flashed her vulva getting out of a car, and someone got a picture of it.

The female-celebrity-getting-out-of-a-car-pantyless photo is nothing new. Britney has done it. Paris has done it. In the world of celebrity, you’re nobody until somebody has taken a photo of your labia.

For the most part, Hathaway’s slip might have gone uncommented on. And then Matt Lauer commented on it. Like, on tv. He was basically all, “So, saw your vag, tell us about your new movie.” People were, understandably, outraged. Anne Hathaway is an Oscar nominated actress. Her work is lauded and respected by millions. She seems super nice and her smile is like sunshine (that’s not sarcasm). She has way more teeth than a person should reasonably have, but they’re so straight and blindingly white that it’s like looking into a virgin’s soul (some of that was sarcasm). She’s the closest thing we have to an official “America’s Sweetheart.” Some MAN can’t acknowledge that the whole country has seen her bare crotch. TO THE INTERNET OUTRAGE MACHINE!

Here’s the thing that I can’t quite get my head around. Accidental nudity photos have been an issue for years. There’s a scene in Spice World where Richard E. Grant blocks a paparazzo’s camera and admonishes him for trying to get an upskirt of the Spice Girls. Spice World.