Author: JennyTrout

Hey everybody! Just a quick update on the mad haps here in Trout Nation.

The next Buffy recap is on the way! Someone recently estimated that at the rate I’m going, it will take fifteen years to finish my recap of the series. But there’s a blogger who has been recapping the Left Behind series for eleven years, so I don’t feel bad. It’s a labor of love, and well-worth it.

There are two new chapters of The Afflicted! If you’re new to the blog, The Afflicted is my free serial on Wattpad. It’s New Adult, but historical, and horror. So instead of the heroine trying to adjust to college, she’s trying to adjust to life in the Shaker community where she’s been abandoned, and spooky things are happening. Chapters thirteen and fourteen are now available.

Donations are still being accepted to keep Wolf alive! Wolf has Crohn’s disease and desperately needs surgery. If you’re in the habit of donating, here’s the link to his campaign.

This cat needs help!  Also along the lines of donations, this cute cat needs spinal surgery.

I’m going to be in Las Vegas! Come out and meet me at the book signing at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino, from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. on Saturday, April 4. If I’m not a big enough draw, well, brace yourselves… Amber Benson, also known as Tara from Buffy The fucking Vampire Slayer will be signing her books. Yeah, she’s an author and basically awesome. So after you go see her, come see me!

Doctor Who Lady. I was working at a McDonald’s in Richland, Michigan, when Doctor Who Lady came in. She was pretty old. Obviously, I didn’t ask how old, but she had a walker. On the front of the walker, she had a bag with the logo the show started using during the Third Doctor’s run on it. I was like, “Oh my gosh, I love Doctor Who!” and she paused and goes, “I have a secret in there, and I’ll show it to you if you tell me who your favorite Doctor is.” So, I said, “Eight is my favorite,” and she nodded like we were in a secret club, opens the bag,  flips one side inside-out as much as she can without spilling it, and inside it’s been signed by Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, and Sylvester McCoy. Then she says, “I had to make sure you were the real deal,” takes her bag with her Big Mac and rolls away like some wonderful apparition.

The History Nerd. On the inside of my right forearm, I have a large tattoo of a kitchen knife, a French flag, and some sprigs of lavender. A scroll wraps around the bottom and says “J’ai tué un homme pour en sauver cent mille,” or “I have killed one man to save one-hundred thousand.” I was working at the same McDonald’s when, as I was ringing up a guy’s order, he suddenly burst out, “I have to see your tattoo!” I held out my arm, and he read the tattoo. Normally, people ask, “What does that mean?” and then when I tell them the translation, they say, “That is so cool, did you go to Iraq?” But this guy looked at it and goes, “I assume you’re a French history buff?” and immediately launches into a conversation with me about it. The tattoo is in honor of Charlotte Corday, who was a bad ass during the Reign of Terror, so look her up. Anyway, the guy turned out to be a history professor at a college in Kalamazoo, and he was just thrilled to find someone else to geek out about France with.

The Minister’s Fiancee. For a while I worked at a Fredericks of Hollywood store. The people I worked with were awesome, but working in an retail at all qualifies as a shitty job, to me. Anyway, one day a woman came in, she was just the embodiment of every white, Midwestern Christian young woman stereotype you could imagine, and she was so excited because she was getting married to her minister, and she wanted to buy something for her wedding night and honeymoon. I thought she was going to go for like, the lacy white bridal babydoll or something. Instead, she walked out with over six hundred dollars worth of the raunchiest lingerie, lucite heels, and various flavored massage oils money could possibly buy. It was the first time I ever really thought, you know…maybe I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.

The Dude. I was working as a cashier at a grocery store in my teensy hometown when this happened. There aren’t many people here, and I’ve never seen this magnificent person again, so I assume he was either an angel of God or just visiting one of our many splendorous lakes. Anyway, the store closes at ten pm in the summer, and it was like, maybe nine-thirty, quarter-to. The last rush was over, and the only people still working in the customer area were me and my manager, who was in his office. A guy walks in, he was probably in his late thirties/early forties, but rode hard either way. He had a sandy brown, curly mullet, a pair of aviator sunglasses, no shirt, and a pair of jean cut-off shorts that were like, bordering on too-short for a dude to be wearing in the 90’s. He was also smoking a cigarette and barefoot, and I don’t know how they do it in other places, but shirtless, shoeless, and smoking is like, three strikes and you’re out. But he wasn’t even trying to hide it. He walked right past me and goes, “Hey, man,” and keeps on walking and disappears down the aisles. I’m wondering if I should get my manager, but the dude is already coming back with a gallon of milk. But he doesn’t come through my checkout lane, he just keeps walking, gallon of milk in his hand, right toward the doors. Doesn’t even attempt to pay for it. He waved at me, cigarette dangling from his lips, and goes, “Take ‘er easy,” and just walks out. My manage came out like, seconds later, having apparently seen all or part of this on the security monitor, and goes, “Why didn’t you stop him?!” All I could say was, “I don’t know, he was too cool.”

John Wayne. I briefly worked as a nurse’s aid in a home for people who had dementia. One of the guys was so far gone, he had absolutely no touch with reality at all, and he was always cheerful, all the time. He would say bizarre things, like “That’s the eyebrows, isn’t it?” and grin at you like you were getting along really well. You had to be careful, though, because he would try to shake your hand, and once he had it, he didn’t let go. He also had a stuffed dog he thought was real, and its name changed every day. But the best part about him, the thing that made him my favorite patient, hands down, was that he would go through spells where he thought he was John Wayne. Since I was a redhead, he got it into his mind that I was Maureen O’Hara, so he would follow me around and quote lines from Rio Grande and The Quiet Man.

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.

Sorry about missing the post last Friday. With everything that was going on, I was just too exhausted.

Pregnant women (and I am addressing pregnant women here specifically, because I assume transgender men have a different set of body image hurdles during pregnancy that I can’t possibly understand): I’m begging you to stop thinking of yourselves as fat.

I was watching The Mindy Project, and the most recent episode was Mindy lamenting the fact that she’s gaining weight during her pregnancy. A lot of the pregnancy related humor this season just doesn’t ring true to me. Mindy is an OB/GYN; and a lot of the clueless newly pregnant mother stuff seems like the exact kind of stuff she’d be familiar with. Danny’s an OB too, and he’s believing old wives’ tales? Then again, first time pregnancy makes you into a whole new, paranoid person, so maybe it’s more realistic than I’m giving it credit for.

I’ve been pregnant twice. The first time? Was at the height of extremely low-rise jeans. The kind you had to wax to wear. I spent that entire pregnancy watching Britney Spears’s oiled torso gyrating all over VH1. It was rough. And the whole time, I felt like crap, because I weighed two hundred pounds in the last week. It was the most I’d ever weighed in my entire life. And I felt fat.

Look, it’s not fun, especially when you gain the amount of weight I did (between seventy and seventy-five pounds; there was a lot of water weight fluctuation). Your ankles hurt. Your knees hurt. You pee a little when you stand up. You’ve got stretch marks, and you sweat like you’re running hurdles just to get up and go to the bathroom (for the thirtieth time that day). And it’s because you’ve gained weight. Even if it’s just fifteen pounds. Even if you’re carrying a cute little basketball under your shirt that makes every woman you encounter tell you how much she hates you. You feel fat.

But you’re not fat, okay? You’re pregnant. Yes, diet and fitness are still important during pregnancy. Yes, weight gain during pregnancy can be caused by a number of serious conditions. You’ve read the books. You know this. Worry about that all you want (because you won’t be able to keep yourself from worrying about it, anyway). But when you look at yourself in the mirror, don’t hate yourself because your belly sticks out, or you’re chinning for two. Your body is supposed to do that. It’s where the baby goes.

We judge ourselves so harshly that we shame ourselves for a natural function of our body. Why are we so hard on ourselves, especially at a time when we’re really emotionally vulnerable? It’s bullshit.

I wish I could go back in time and tell first-pregnancy me that I deserve better than to spend nine months hating my body even more than usual. Since I can’t (and since I’m never having another freeloading womb tenant), I’ll just tell it to you all. Some of you are bound to be pregnant. Everyone know this is the place for sexy people on the internet.

But do it, guys. Stop putting yourself down because you’re not one of the few pregnant women who don’t have to buy new clothes in their third trimester. You probably don’t expect that of other pregnant women, so why expect it of yourself?

So, that’s it. That’s the end of my plea. Try not to worry about how “fat” you are, and start worrying instead that you’re soon going to be responsible for the nurturing, caring, and training of a human being wholly separate from yourself.

Hey everybody! This is another of the books that was supposed to be in the boxed set from Excessica. Jessica has released it as a standalone title. But before we go into the details about her fabulous book, I need to clear up some new information that has come to light.

While the boxed set was being published under Excessica’s name, it began as an independent project headed up by one person. All the communication with Excessica went through this person, whose name I am withholding because this is already a big enough clusterfuck with all of the names already involved and I just want to be done.

Anyway, this person was the project manager, but she doesn’t work for Excessica. Think of it as an independent contractor scenario. When Selena Kitt wanted to leave the anthology to avoid the drama surrounding me–which I don’t blame her for, and which I don’t feel was unreasonable given the circumstances–she planned to simply pull her story. However, when the scenario was presented to the other authors in the set, the project manager told them that their options were to cut me or Selena Kitt would walk, and Excessica would withdraw promotional support. I don’t know what the motivation behind that lie was. I assume it was because this person felt they could profit more off a boxed set with a Selena Kitt title than an Abigail Barnette title, but that’s still a shady way to do business, especially when that lie hurt Excessica and hurt Selena Kitt, who simply didn’t want to run afoul of STGRB and their obsessive league of stalkers.

So, Selena Kitt and Excessica are totally blameless in the failure of this anthology. The person who tanked it is someone I really enjoy as a person. To be honest, that’s probably another factor in why I’m not naming names to go with this pointed finger. But either way, everyone in the set was hurt, but not by Selena Kitt or Excessica. Unfortunately, this has put me off anthologies/boxed sets/collaborations for a while.

So, onto more cheerful topics, despite this hiccup, Jessica Jarman’s London Bound has been released!

London Bound is a full-length novel, and the first in a series Jarman is co-authoring with Bronwyn Green.

Hey there everybody! Today was the day that the Bad Boy Next Door boxed set was supposed to come out. Unfortunately, due to a big name author taking up a crusade against me, an author in the set was uncomfortable having her story sold alongside mine. Other authors were given the choice to either release the anthology without me, delay the release of the boxed set indefinitely, or release the set with my story included, in which case the author who objected would withdraw from the project and her publishing company would withdraw promotional support. The majority decided that they would pull their stories from the boxed set rather than kick me out, and that was, sadly, the end of the Bad Boy Next Door boxed set.

It was a really great project, and a lot of people worked really hard on it, so I’m saddened to see this happen to them. But I’m happy to report that the authors in the set plan to publish their stories independently, and when they do, I’ll be featuring their work here.

In the meantime, I have published my novella from the boxed set, Bad Boy Good Man. It’s available now on Amazon and Smashwords.

Newly independent real-life adult Ellie McCormack loves everything about her first apartment…except her neighbor. His bi-weekly sex fests keep her up at night in more ways than one as she wonders about the man who’s making all the noise—and what he’s doing to make his women so damn loud.

 But even her wildest fantasies couldn’t conjure up a man like Antony DeLuca. When she works up the nerve to confront him, she’s expecting a player, but there’s more to Antony than his carefree sexual escapades. One hot night with him helps Ellie see through the man who drives women wild, to the good guy beneath it all. A guy that she just might be able to fall for…

Amazon • Smashwords

Thank you to everyone who sent emails or supported me on social media over the weekend. I appreciate that.

Hey there, internet land. There are rumors going around, so I’m gonna address some of them. Let me establish some things that need to be established:

• My words are my words. Nobody else is responsible for them.
• I work with a few different companies. They do not endorse my statements.
• I work with a few different industry professionals. They do not endorse my statements.
• Anything I say is just me saying it. I am not a representative of anyone else.
• I am not going to start trouble or be controversial at anyone’s event. I am a pleasant, easy to get-along with person. When I come to an event, I am there to meet people who want to meet me and hang out with them. I am not there for drama or to ruin anyone’s convention.

I also want to further my apparently controversial position on books/movies/tv pirating. I don’t care. I legitimately do not care if anyone does it. The only time I have ever reported someone for pirating a book of mine is when it’s a book published by a publisher, within two years of publication. Why? Because that publisher invested in me and it would be pretty shitty of me to see something like that and not give them a heads up.

There are some of you out there saying, “How would you feel if someone encouraged piracy of one of your books?” or “I hope your books get pirated.” There are readers who could verify that they’ve posted on their twitter or their tumblr that they’re looking for illegal downloads of my self-published books and I’ve provided them with those links. I pirate my own books. You can’t wish this ill upon me. I’m already doing it myself.

Also, please don’t approach me on Facebook about any of this. I barely ever use Facebook. If you have a concern about my statements or statements others have made about me, contact me via email, my twitter, or the comments section here. Otherwise, I probably won’t see them.

CONTENT WARNING: MORE DISCUSSION OF THOMAS JEFFERSON/SALLY HEMINGS

Yesterday evening, I started receiving messages on Facebook and Twitter telling me, “Um, here’s a link to Jaid Black’s facebook, and you might want to check it out.” I’m not really the person who handles all the Ellora’s Cave nonsense, though I support authors who have had issues there and believe that Black’s repeated public meltdowns are harming her company, but I thought, whatever, I’ll take a look.

GOD ALMIGHTY.

As you can see, Kevin is angry that I encouraged consumer action with regards to a Sally Hemings/Thomas Jefferson BDSM novel. How could I? How could I possibly get offended–without even reading it!–over something that depicts the repeated rapes of a real-life woman as a consensual relationship with the man who owned her as property, in order to sell shitty novelty BDSM? What kind of monster am I?

Well, not the kind of monster who describes a slave as her owner’s “mistress” and insists that Jefferson and Hemings were in a consensual relationship. As for Sally Hemings’s diary, I’m a little confused. Because, you know, Thomas Jefferson wrote tons of letters in his lifetime to all of his friends and family, and if he was in such a consensual, loving relationship with Hemings, he surely would have written them to her, as well, right? Oh, my mistake. See, it’s generally understood that, as a slave, Sally Hemings would have been illiterate. Therefore, she could not have kept this magical diary that only Kevin knows about it. A quick google search for “Sally Hemings diary” turns up a lot about an opera with those words in the title, while a good search for “Was Sally Hemings illiterate” turns up, you know. People talking about how she was illiterate. How did Kevin miss that in his research?

One of the things I love about Kevin’s screed is the adjectives he uses. “Vengeful.” “DESPICABLE.”

“Big shot.”

Kevin seems to think my objection is to BDSM books in general. You’d think the guy whose research uncovered the existence of a never-before discovered Sally Hemings diary would have at least done a little digging–I mean, he was right here on my blog, for Christ’s sake–to figure out what I write.

Other highlights from this screencap:

• Attorney Kevin Weinberg offers his expert legal advice.
• I have ergot poisoning (it’s what motivated the Salem witch trials, which Jaid feels is the same force motivating me).
• You’re all brainwashed and acting according to my orders.

Look, guys. If I’ve effectively brainwashed you, please let me know. I have a lot of shit that needs getting done, and I could really use a mindless army of babbling sycophants to do it for me.

Okay, I finally understand why Jaid Black wrote that I “attacked” her. She claims that I accused her of lying about Ellora’s Cave not paying some of their authors, cover artists, etc. The thing is, in order to not accuse Black of lying, I would have to accuse, oh, dozens of authors, some of whom I know personally, of lying. And since I’m not new to the book biz, I know that if a lot of authors and editors and other professionals are saying, “I’m not being paid what I’m owed,” that’s smoke indicating a huge fire. Dorchester, anyone? So no, I’m not going to pledge my undying loyalty to a company or its owner when there are clear indications that something isn’t quite right behind the scenes.

Other highlights:

• Not liking milk is exactly the same thing as not liking blatant racism.
• Writing a book about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings in a consensual relationship isn’t racist.
• “the more…militant of communities” read: people whose daily lives are affected by the lingering stain of black slavery in America, aka, black people, for some reason don’t want to accept that Jefferson and Hemings were deeply in love.

“It’s all still on her blog. She has no shame” Well, no, Kevin. I have no shame. Because I’m not ashamed to say, “Hey, this shit is fucked up and gigantic retailers who sometimes don’t know what’s being given the green light through their independent publishing platform have a right to know what they’re selling.” I’m not ashamed to dispute the expertise of “historians” who romanticize literally everything Thomas Jefferson ever did.

Because I took so many screencaps Kevin and Jaid’s fuckwittery last night, I have this one here that’s out of context with the rest of the thread, but that’s okay, because the points addressed are standalone:

I want to make it clear that I do not believe I am a “protector” of women of color. I think white people have a social responsibility to call out racism, because we’re the ones who created it. We’re the ones who kidnapped and sold other human beings. We’re the ones who continued to hold those human beings down out of resentment that we couldn’t continue to abuse, rape, and enslave them. That’s our mess, and it’s absolutely our job to clean it up. And a part of that? Really is protecting women of color from this type of casual violence that my racial group has caused and continues to cause. Does that mean I think I’m Batman? Absolutely not. Does it mean that I think people of color can’t protect or stand up for themselves? Not at all.

Kevin believes that I don’t know the difference between slavery in BDSM and slavery in history. Which is laughable, considering how much time Kevin has spent brutally confusing the two in his defense of the book. Kevin also believes that I don’t realize that women of color read erotica. This is another interesting thing I didn’t know about myself, since I assumed that the women of color who write and enjoy reading BDSM erotica, some of whom have voiced the same objections over this book, were a part of that demographic he just described.

One thing Kevin is right about is that women are smart enough to not buy something they find offensive. They’re even smart enough to take action and complain to an online merchant when they feel that thing is so offensive, it shouldn’t be sold. And that’s what happened, Kevin. Women are smart. They’re just not smart in a way you agree with. That’s your own problem.

Jaid Black wants it to be known that “black women aren’t children, ffs. They need allies, not protectors.” This conversation on Facebook was going on while Black spouted transphobic bullshit on Twitter. Later, she became hostile while engaging with women of color on the subject of Sally Hemings/Thomas Jefferson. I’m not sure Jaid Black knows the definition of “ally,” but in a lot of social justice circles, it’s not unusual for self-professed allies to behave exactly the way Black did yesterday. Her Twitter account has since been deleted, which is probably a good move on her part.

Other features of interest in this screenshot:

• Kevin has decided that the term “people of color” is eye-roll worthy because he’s never heard it used.
• I’m a white matron (“matronize” is the rarely used feminine form of “patronize,” so guess who got herself a word-of-the-day calendar!)
• Kevin has thoughts about feminism that weren’t worth expanding his comment to read.
• Kevin grew up in Brooklyn.

I’m not a big fan of limp-dick wannabes running around trying to get attention by crying “bully” all the time, and that’s what Kevin here seems to be. Several people contacted me last night to inform me that Kevin here has been all up in Anne Rice’s now-deleted Amazon forum thread, kissing her ass and begging for attention. Apparently, screaming and crying about bullies is also his pastime, as well. He’s so fucking obnoxious, even Stop The GoodReads Bullies fucking hate him.

Julie, citizen of Trout Nation, and her boyfriend decided to do something special for his seven year old son. It is…algebraic!

That’s not the best part! Wait for it…

Oh my glob, forget a race car bed! This lucky kid gets to sleep on Jake every night!

I’m so glad Julie shared these pictures with me, and then let me share them with all of you. This totally made my day, and also I am feverish with envy.