Month: December 2024

Look, I don’t know where I’m getting this burst of self-confidence from, but I know it. I know 2025 is my year. And a lot of times people will say, “Don’t say that! You’ll jinx it!” but I don’t feel anything but utter certainty about this right now. I’m going to have a great publishing year in 2025. Nothing can interfere with that. I’m not just manifesting right now. It’s a fact.

But the thing is, in my vision of how 2025 is going to go down: I work my ass off. I promote shamelessly. I time releases right. I vibe, strive, and survive, baby!

Accountability is part of that. I’m going to hold myself accountable by posting my entire plan of attack, task by task, update as needed, and when I accomplish one of them, I’ll cross it off. I’m going to set deadlines (one of my biggest fears) and pre-orders and be totally transparent. That way, when I succeed, I’ll have a record of just how fucking hard I worked.

And if you’re interested, you can journey with me. Surprise! I made a Discord for authors keeping track of their publishing who want to encourage each other and cheer each other on. I realized at some point that my original drive to tell stories and pursue publication happened because I was surrounded by people on the same path, who were excited by the same things. If that’s what you’re looking for, join the Bestsellers Together Discord. And it’s totally separate from the Trout Nation Discord so we can pop on and ask a quick question without then spending hours distracted by memes or snarkery.

I’ve also created a new version of The Big Damn Writing Tracker, the word tracking spreadsheet I’ve used and shared in years past. You can find it here. To use the sheet, click “File” in the upper left corner and select “make a copy” to save it to your own Google Drive for your private use. Or, download it. I’m pretty sure it’s compatible with Excel. If it’s not, that’s just corporate greed at work. Just enter your project titles and word counts in the white spaces and let math take care of the rest!

But the most important part of this whole thing is going to be keeping track of my tasks. Here’s my list. I usually put these in a bullet journal that I abandon by February, leading to panic and chaos and disorganization. Making my to-do list public will hold me accountable. More tasks will crop up, because I also want to publish The Mage’s Reluctant Assistant this year. Some items are already crossed off, since I did them while still writing this post.

Her Brother’s Billionaire Best Friend releases February 4

• Heavy, daily promo until release day
• Send out ARC emails
• Search manuscript one last time for “actually,” “clearly,” and “really”. Eliminate as many as I can stand.
• Format for Kindle and Smashwords
  • Table of Contents
  • Front Matter
  • Update Book Links
  • Back Matter
  • Pre-Order link to Her Billionaire Boyfriend
• Upload manuscript to Smashwords by Jan. 15
• Upload manuscript to Kindle by Jan. 31
• Format Paperback
  • Format
  • Cover
  • Order Proof
  • Adjustments as needed, if any

Her Billionaire Boyfriend releases May 6

• Combine into one file from original proofs
• Staggered promo with HBBBF from February 14
• Heavy promo from March 1
• Cover
• Cover reveal February 14
• Blurb
• Establish Pre-Order Link
• Final proof
• Send out ARC emails
• Format for Kindle and Smashwords
  • Table of Contents
  • Front Matter
  • Update Book Links
  • Back Matter
  • Pre-Order link to Her Billionaire
• Upload to Kindle, Smashwords
• Format for Paperback
  • Format
  • Cover
  • Order Proof
  • Adjustments as needed, if any

Her Billionaire releases September 30

• Final Proof
• Cover
• Blurb
• Staggered promo with HBB from June 1
• Heavy promo from July 1
• Establish pre-order link
• Format for Kindle, Smashwords
  • Table of Contents
  • Front Matter
  • Update Book Links
  • Back Matter
• Format for Paperback

Alpha Queen Ascending releases April 15

• One last read through just in case
• Cover
• Blurb
• Establish pre-order
• Format for Kindle and Ingram
  • Table of Contents
  • Front Matter
  • Update Book Links
  • Back Matter
• Format Paperback
  • Format
  • Cover
  • Order Proof
  • Adjustments as needed, if any

The Vampire’s Willing Captive releases July 15

• Fablemere promo campaign May 2
• Birthday campaign July 1
• Heavy promo July 1
• One last read through just in case
• Cover
• Blurb
• Establish pre-order
• Format for Kindle and Ingram
  • Table of Contents
  • Front Matter
  • Update Book Links
  • Back Matter
• Format Paperback
  • Format
  • Cover
  • Order Proof
  • Adjustments as needed, if any

Books I Want To Finish This Year:

• A Kingdom of Wonder and Terror
• The Business Centaur’s Virgin Assistant
• Untitled Sophie book
• The Breakaway
• The Turning
• Filthy, Rich

Word Count For 2025:

Miscellaneous:

• Get Abigail Barnette website up
  • Call web provider
  • Link Shopify
  • Promote Shopify
  • Add ebooks

• Paperbacks of The Boyfriend and Sophie
  • Download manuscripts
  • Format
  • Cover
  • Upload
  • Order proof
  • Adjustments as needed, if any
  • Add to Shopify

• Launch Shopify
  • Blog post
  • Promote across socials
  • Add link to Trout Nation website
  • Add link to Abigail Barnette website

Authors have been doing a cute trend on social media where they present their career highs and lows from 2024 in the same format as a Spotify Wrapped slideshow. The books they released, the signings they attended, the deals they got, the agents they signed with. It’s cute and inspirational, and everyone is having a great time. But I feel like my “Wrapped” moment of 2024 isn’t something that can be adequately conveyed in a social media post.

Most of my 2024 as a writer was spent in despair. I lost my author Facebook pages, which had an undeniable impact on my social media reach when it came to advertising my new releases and current projects. I started looking for a part-time job, because being a full-time writer was, after twenty years, no longer a viable option. I felt like a failure. I’ve written before about how I felt the first time my career tanked: My dream wasn’t meant to come true for me. It was meant to come true for someone else. Now, the universe has made things right, and what I deserve is to be no one, forever.

Those thoughts are so destructive and so insistent when I’m at my lowest, or at any small setback, and they started creeping back. I’d wasted my entire life chasing after something I should have never hoped for. The idea that I could be an author, a successful one, was ridiculous. I’d been chasing a pipe dream for twenty years that I could never get back. Every high was a fluke; every low was deserved.

At the same time, I was suffering from a feeling of, “If I stop, they’ve beaten me.” Who? Everyone who has ever wanted me to fail, who has ever predicted that I would fail, anyone who wanted me to leave the party. The seventh-grade teacher who wouldn’t allow me to pick my own topic for a “future careers” project, forcing me to write about working at McDonald’s because “that’s where you’re going to end up.” The one-time social media mutual who publicly lamented, “I wish everyone would just shun her already,” before I was aware that she’d unfollowed me. The former critique group friend who’d snidely predicted that my self-publishing efforts would fail. For so many years, all that kept me going was the belief that if I quit, if I went and did something else, I would be throwing away my chance to prove those people wrong.

Any time I spoke my mind about a book or told the truth about the industry, I worried in the back of my mind, “what if this hurts me later? What if I really am bitter or jealous?” And… I was bitter and jealous. Not because I envied other people’s success (the idea of kissing asses, going on press tours, or getting up early to be a morning show is a cold-sweat inducing nightmare), but because I envied that they seemed to be happy to write. Success, monetary or otherwise, didn’t figure into my calculations at all. I just hated, loathed, and despised seeing anyone genuinely excited about belonging to a world I was growing increasingly resentful of. I hated that other people weren’t as miserable behind the keyboard as I was.

I went out and got that part-time job. Instead of getting up and moping my way down to my office, sitting behind a keyboard and lamenting that there’s never enough time or brain to get everything done, that I’m too old to keep up with marketing trends, that every book I release is going to sell thirty copies before its Amazon sales rank slips to an eight-figure number, I get up and drive to the city. I park my car in the parking garage and walk down an alley strewn with dead pigeon parts (because peregrines are brutal creatures). I get a taco or a sushi roll on my lunch break, and I don’t have to worry about whether my latest promo post gets over ten views. Nobody gives a shit about my opinions or my ideas. There’s no pressure to say the right thing or find some magical formula for success. For a few hours a day, I don’t have to chase anything. I just package candy and occasionally ring up a customer at the register.

And that makes me happy.

It doesn’t fucking matter if I prove anyone wrong. I don’t have to prove anything to anyone. For two decades, my identity and self-worth were inseparable from being an author. I clung to being an author like I would cease to exist entirely if I didn’t get one more book out, if I didn’t make a big sale, if every dollar I earned didn’t come directly from what I put on the page. And it made me hate writing. After my first book, every single moment of writing was a thankless chore. Occasionally, I found elements of it that I truly loved. But putting words on the page out of spite still felt bad, even when the money was good. I spent most of my day, every day, ruminating about what I failure I am for never making the USA Today list again, for not “beating” the negative perception of me I’m irrationally certain that everyone who’s ever met me or interacted with my work shares.

I made being a writer my entire life. Now, I’m in the process of building a life where writing is something I do, like watching TV or brushing my teeth. I’m not a writer. I’m Jenny Trout, and I write. But I also direct and act in live theater. I also work for a chocolatier. I also really enjoy sleeping. And now, sometimes I enjoy writing. But it’s not who I am. I don’t have to keep doing it to prove to the world or detractors that I somehow deserve to be considered a person. I can walk away from writing at any time, never publish another book or blog post, never weigh in on another publishing scandal if I don’t feel like it. I can close all my social media accounts and disappear, and never feel a moment of regret, if that’s the way I want to go. If I need money, guess what? There are other part-time jobs I can add to the one I already have. I can work at a gas station and still be a worthy person. I can work at McDonald’s and not prove that shitty teacher right. Because ultimately, I should be doing what makes me happy. And if that’s me walking away, it’s nobody’s business but my own.

That knowledge is freeing, but it doesn’t exactly fit in a Canva graphic. It’s changed the way I feel about writing, though. I enjoy it again. I’m excited about the possibilities. Instead of facing an endless uphill climb and brutal backslides, I see a path forward to a refreshed career. Will I still say the things I want to say, even if they make me unpopular? Sure. But will I spend as much time ruminating on the overall lack of ethics and the injustices authors are expected to swallow behind a smile? No. Because I don’t need anything. I have nothing to prove. I’m doing it for the love that got me into it. And that makes me want to do it.

And it makes me want to make 2025 my best publishing year ever.

About five years ago, I was occasionally writing for one of the SyFy channel’s now defunct blogs. My niche was weird stuff from the 1980s, which would get posted as “x number of thoughts we had while watching [thing].” One of my pitches involved the 1986 made-for-tv movie Babes in Toyland, starring Drew Barrymore, Keanu Reeves, Eileen Brennan, and Pat Morita. My editor said, great, write it up and send it my way, and put a lot of emphasis on Keanu, since we’re doing a whole month about him.

Reader, I sent twenty-two pages.

Obviously, SyFy did not post my entire work. They would have looked dangerously unhinged. Since I have no qualms about that, I asked if I could post the entire uncut thing to my blog. I got a probably not, because NBC Universal now owned the content and they probably wouldn’t be down with it, so I didn’t pursue it further. But then the blog closed, time went by…

And I’m like, fuck it. Like, I got paid a hundred bucks to write that (I don’t think I even invoiced them anyway), and the blog has been closed for five years now (it’s possible that the content of that article might have had something to do with it). If they want to come for my blood, I’m more than willing to return the one hundred dollars that I frankly don’t even think I asked them to pay me, anyway, because I’m notoriously bad at invoicing.

So, in the spirit of Robin Hood and all that bullshit, I’m robbing my work back from a major media company and presenting it in its entirety. All twenty-two pages dedicated solely to 1986’s Babes In Toyland, or, more specifically, twenty-two pages dedicated solely to 1986’s Babes In Toyland with references to the blog’s Keanu-specific theming removed.

Merry Christmas. I got you a present and it is horrible.

Remember a few years ago when I wrote three books for an app called Yonder? Well, the rights embargo has expired on one of them! HER BROTHER’S BILLIONAIRE BEST FRIEND is coming to ebook and paperback in February, and it’s gonna look like this:

He’s perfect for her. She’ll perfectly destroy him.

Charlotte Holmes doesn’t fall in love; she falls into bed. And car. And cruise ship stateroom. Matthew Ashe falls in love way too easily; he’s a sucker for a pretty face. And falling too fast. And getting impulsively engaged. The only thing the two of them have in common is their mutual love of kinky, casual sex….and the fact that Charlotte’s brother is Matt’s best friend.

All Charlotte knows about Matt is that he’s the billionaire heir to a hospitality empire. All Matt knows about Charlotte is that she’s bound to break his heart. When a destination wedding fling turns into months of long-distance flirtation, Matt invites Charlotte to Ascend Red, his private resort where guests live out their wildest fantasies. Even limitless indulgence and abandoned inhibitions can’t satisfy his craving for something deeper with Charlotte. And Charlotte is beginning to think Matthew Ashe could be the one man she doesn’t want to walk away from…

Also important to note: It’s queer, it’s filthy, and there’s a fun little cameo from some of my other characters in it. Pre-order links will be coming soon, and if you’re on the ARC team, keep an eye on your inbox!