Author: JennyTrout

Hey everybody! Three of my favorite co-workers (that’s what I call other authors) in the whole world have three new releases right now! They’re all on a blog tour together, so of course I had to get in on that sweet, sweet international promo.

(Tour Organizer: N K Author Services)

ALBION’S CIRCLE: IN MY VEINS 
by Jessica Jarman
Genre: Paranormal/Fantasy Romance

Anna is his. Merlin has failed. The Circle is broken. After being defeated in every lifetime, Mordred believes he’s finally won.

 Even though Anna has little hope of gaining Merlin’s forgiveness for believing Mordred over him and the rest of the Circle, she isn’t giving up and vows to set things right. When an offer of help comes from an unlikely ally, Anna must trust her instincts—the very thing that got her into this mess in the first place.

 Because more than just her survival hangs in the balance. Mordred took her for a reason. Anna is the key. The key to completing the Circle. The key to preventing unthinkable death and destruction at Mordred’s hand. They key to destroying the heart of a wizard whose love has followed her through the ages.

But Mordred has forgotten exactly what’s he’s up against—Arthur and his Knights. The most powerful Magical to ever walk the Earth. And a love a thousand years in the making.

Amazon • Smashwords 

Jessica Jarman is an author, blogger, and rather obsessive fangirl.Having grown up in Upper Michigan and currently living in Minnesota, she is a Midwestern girl through and through. And wouldn’t have it any other way.

When she’s not working to get words on the page, Jessica passes the time with her amazing husband and four children, attempting to be crafty (and failing miserably), squeeing uncontrollably over her favorite shows or curling up with a good book.

Website • Blog • Twitter • Facebook • Tumblr

 

Ricochet
by Kris Norris
Genre: Erotic Romance

 A moment he can’t take back…

 An unlucky rebound has left US Marshal Ashton Kane broken. His partner’s dead and, consumed by guilt, he’s walked out on the only woman he’ll ever love.

 A love she can’t forget…

 Cassidy Ryan has tried to move on. Losing the love of her life cut deep, but she vowed she wouldn’t let it break her. And she’s finally taking back her life—until she stumbles upon a deadly encounter that threatens to destroy everything and everyone around her.

 One last chance at redemption…

 Ash has fooled himself into believing Cassidy’s better off without him—until she puts her life on the line, forcing him to face the demons that still whisper in the dark—or risk losing her. Again. Only this time, it’ll be no one’s fault, but his.

Kris Norris Author, single mother, slave to chaos—she’s a jack-of-all-trades who’s constantly looking for her ever elusive clone.

Kris started writing some years back, and it took her a while to realize she wasn’t destined for the padded room, and that the voices chattering away in her head were really other characters trying to take shape—and since they weren’t telling her to conquer the human race, she went with it. Though she supposes if they had…insert evil laugh.

Kris loves writing erotic novels. She loves heroines who kick butt, heroes who are larger than life and sizzling sex scenes that leave you feeling just a bit breathless.

Amazon • Smashwords

Website • Blog • Twitter • Facebook

 

Mated
by Gwendolyn Cease
Genre: Paranormal Romance

 Laira Marshall had to admit—getting kidnapped wasn’t something she’d expected.
Discovering her kidnappers were aliens who planned on selling her into sexual slavery, definitely tipped the scales into the truly bizarre. But she’s determined to fight her way through this—until their slave ship is attacked, and Laira’s faced with an entirely new problem.

Rakin and Dev were the leaders of the Sandaki—a race genetically engineered to fight. Using their enhanced traits, they’ve freed their people and have devoted their lives to seeking out those who enslaved them. They never considered the concept of love—or that one woman could bring them to their knees.

With unknown enemies working against them, the three lovers must come together not only to save themselves, but the Sandaki race itself.

Smashwords

 Gwendolyn Cease has been writing ever since she was old enough to pick up a pen. From the very beginning, her stories involved handsome heroes, tough heroines, and happily ever after. Even as she slogged through two undergraduate degrees and a master’s in education, writing remained top priority. Though she now works full-time as a history museum educator, she still makes time for her characters and their never-ending adventures.

Currently, Gwendolyn lives in Kentucky with her incredibly spoiled cats. If you’d like to contact her, she’d love to hear from you. She loves to hear from anyone who enjoys a good book, especially the ones she’s written. You can email her at gwendolyncease@insightbb.com.

Website • Blog • Twitter • Facebook • Tumblr

HALLO there, all ye faithful and awesome citizens of Trout Nation! Hail and good morrow to thee. Or whatever.

Are you a United States citizen who is over 18 and legally registered to vote? Then you should go do that.

Why I haven’t blogged about a few things. I’ve received questions from people asking me if I was going to write about or what I thought about the recent stories about Jian Ghomeshi and Lena Dunham. For reasons relating to traumatic triggers and my mental health, I’m avoiding these topics.

Not about that bass? Did you love the catchy tune of Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass,” but felt alienated by the lyrics? You’re in luck! YouTuber Natty Valencia has rewritten the words to “All About That Bass” and turned it into an incredibly positive message:

Also, I think this is one of those, “Listen now so you can say you were before it was cool,” because this chick is going to be a superstar.

Important info on THE EX: I’m busy at work putting the finishing touches on The Ex, which releases on November 22nd. I would be remiss if I didn’t include a heads up about the content of the book. There will be a trigger warning in the back cover copy, as the plot centers heavily on frank discussions of rape, rape recovery, and substance abuse. To those readers who will be unable to enjoy the book because of this, I’m sorry to disappoint you. To those who want to read the book, but aren’t in a mentally healthy place to do so  at release time, I completely understand. And if you know someone who reads the series, please mention the trigger warning to them as well, if you deem it appropriate to do so.

What am I working on right now? Glad you asked! In addition to another project with The Story Foundation, I’m working hard on the sequel to Such Sweet Sorrow, as well as the next Buffy recap. Thank you all for being so patient about those recaps, by the way. For some reason, I find them more difficult than my other recaps. Not in an unpleasant way, just in a labor-intensive way. I can throw off an Apolonia recap in an hour or two, but I care about Buffy.

Last of all Thanks for all the nice things you’ve said about the Amanda Palmer post, and in general, for every very personal post I put up here.

 

TRIGGER WARNING: RAPE

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.

While Jamie McGuire was busy favoriting tweets that threatened bloggers this weekend, I was reading chapter three of her book. I shall struggle to remain objective.

What. The fuck. Is happening?

If you didn’t get a chance to read the last installment of DON’T DO THIS EVER, then you should hop on over there , because otherwise you will be muy confuso.

In the wake of Kathleen Hale’s stalking of blogger Blythe Harris, book bloggers developed a plan to stick up for their rights. They rallied support for a “blogger blackout.” The concept is simple: for a week, these bloggers don’t review. Some bloggers have taken it further, making it their new policy to not review any recent releases for the foreseeable future. This is to make a point not only to badly behaving authors like Kathleen Hale, but to publishers, who rely on book bloggers as a source of free publicity. The message they’re sending, loud and clear, is that without them, it’s pretty damn hard to grow a readership these days.

But one author, Deborah Smith, sees the blackout differently. She thinks it’s… sing it with me now, because you know this tune…

It appears to have started on October 20th, with this tweet:

So, now that we’re aware that we’re dealing with an author who thinks irony is “people doing something I don’t understand in a way that I feel personally affects me,” the rest of these tweets will make more sense in context.

Ole Debbie here does not care. In fact, she doesn’t care so much on October 22, that she continues to tweet about it:

for literally days:

Apparently, bloggers taking a single week off from reviewing and declaring that they won’t buy books or receive ARCs from authors who support Kathleen Hale in the wake of her admission of stalking, is an attempt to punish authors. Smith’s reasoning seems to be that because bloggers receive ARCs from publishers, authors should be allowed to stalk them.

Wait a minute. Hang on. Kathleen Hale didn’t “respond to reviews.” She spent months stalking a blogger online, plotting to get her address, and methodically planning a confrontation at the blogger’s home. This wasn’t some spur of the moment bad decision making. Hale rented a car months in advance, and drove to Harris’s house to call her out in person. That’s why bloggers are scared and protesting.

Furthermore, there’s no law that says an author can’t respond to a review. Respond all you want. But people are free to react to that response, and if everyone thinks you’re a dipshit, well. You don’t really have a say in that. Here, Smith has turned the car around. We’re not going to ProtectHalesville today. We’re heading right on back to bad reviews are bullying country.

So, here we are on that lonely, delusional road so many authors drive us down. Smith appears to truly believe that she and other authors are entitled to the free publicity that those ARCs, giveaways, and interviews provide for them, without having to maintain a standard of behavior up to and including “don’t stalk people.” For a blogger to deny an author a platform to market themselves is nothing short of, well… terrorism?

Here, Smith is referring to the doxxing of Kathleen Hale by twitter user @WhatTheEff. When bloggers on the #HaleNo tag saw this going down, they rejoiced and patted each other on the back for being hypocrites and bullies.

Oh. No, that’s not what happened at all:

In fact, a lot of people reported @WhatTheEff. I know I reported them. But Smith, seeking to cement her place as the Ann Coulter of the romance world, won’t let the Taliban thing go:

And if her hysterics over bloggers taking a week off from reviewing–remember, that’s what she’s pissed about, that bloggers won’t review books for one week and some are choosing to boycott authors who support an author who stalked someone over a GoodReads status update–weren’t offensive enough yet, well, hold on to your hat. Good ole fashioned white supremacy is just the pick-me-up you need to keep your overdramatic twitter rant fresh and exciting:

She’s also got some words for bloggers who aren’t sympathetic enough to ever-flowing white tears:

Smith apparently has made something of a name for herself on Twitter based on her Islamaphobic tweets and harassment of women of color. I’m sure you’re all shocked.

Apparently, bloggers are overreacting to a “minor incident” of stalking:

Saying, “I don’t want an angry author nursing an ego boo-boo to roll up to my door intending to do god-knows-what to me in retaliation” is no more bullying than giving a book a bad review in the first place.

There are many, many more tweets that I’ve screencapped from this nonsense, but they all say basically the same thing: Deborah Smith believes that she, as an author (and publisher; she is co-founder of BelleBooks), is entitled to free publicity, great reviews, and unending adulation from the blogging community. And if she doesn’t get all of that, she’s being victimized by terrorists.

I’m just saying, if I were Deborah Smith, I wouldn’t be demanding reviews from bloggers right this minute.

Look, if you want an example of “burning bridges,” this is the one, right here. Authors, when are you going to wise up? Book bloggers are out there, sharing their hobby in a way that benefits you. These are people who are so passionate about reading that they want to share their experiences with other readers and get them excited over your books. It’s done without pay (regardless of what Smith seems to believe, ARCs don’t pay the bills), it’s a ton of work, and it all encourages readers to buy books. Book bloggers are in it for love, not to destroy authors. In fact, most cases of damage done to careers has come from the authors themselves, when they point out a negative review and respond to it by childishly stamping their feet in public. That’s not the blogger’s fault. That’s the author’s fault. And even then, there don’t seem to be any consequences for the authors who actually do this crap. All we have to do is look at the response to Hale’s admission of stalking to see that no matter how badly an author behaves, there isn’t ever going to be a consequence.

Oh, hey, speaking of badly behaving authors who are still beloved despite the fact that they’re generally terrible:

 

Wow! Someone actually favorited that tweet? The tweet that sounds like a threat, coming from a woman who vocally supports Kathleen Hale, a reviewer stalker? Who the hell would favorite that?

 

Let’s compare and contrast that user photo, shall we?

Oh, okay, that explains it.

If you’re looking for more information on the blogger blackout (from someone who won’t compare bloggers to the Taliban and make Islamaphobic slurs), here are some posts you can visit:

• The Blogger Blackout: What it is and what it isn’t and Warring On Authors by Tez Miller
• Another post on the Blogger Blackout, at Howdy YAL
• A comprehensive post about #HaleNo and #BloggerBlackout by KT Grant (tons and tons of links here)

There’s also a Change.org petition asking Goodreads to increase privacy measures to protect the safety of its users.

Finally, as Deborah Smith is cofounder of BelleBooks, I would strongly urge any writers to avoid submitting their manuscripts there. I personally am writing them off my to-buy lists. It’s not fair to the authors who write for them, but I refuse to put money in the hands of a spoiled, entitled, racist brat like Deborah Smith. I strongly encourage you to consider doing the same.

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.

A blogger contacted me about the possibility that Apolonia could be a Roswell fanfic (the blogger who contacted me is not affiliated with the link). Having never watched Roswell myself, I wouldn’t know. I’m also not familiar enough with McGuire’s background to know whether or not she has published fanfic in the past, though I have heard that allegation leveled at her before. I haven’t seen any kind of obvious trail, like with E.L. James and Fifty Shades of Grey. If you’re familiar with Roswell and notice anything, feel free to discuss it in the comments.