Trout Nation Posts

Hey everybody. This post is brought to you by a debilitating migraine and brain zaps that I am almost 100% positive is the result of receiving a different generic prescription than I’m used to. Hence, no True Blood, since just one of Sookie’s high-pitched screams would split my head in twain. But I do have this:

It took me all freaking weekend to upload, but I had intended to drop it on Friday night. This all worked out for the better.

As for this here blog, posting is going to be sporadic during the month of September, as I’m focusing on finishing The Boyfriend so there’s ample time to edit it before it releases in November. Expect to see more videos, as those are easier to make while also writing your ass off.

I’ll also still be doing Drunk Tarot on Saturday nights. 10 P.M. EST on my Facebook page.

Now, I’ll be taking my painful and broken head to the dentist, where I’m sure having a light shined in my face and machinery stuffed into my mouth won’t exacerbate things at all!

I’ve got the go-ahead to share now, so here it is:

My Young Adult serial novel, Nightmare Born, will debut on the Radish app in October! Yes, this October! The one that is on the way!

So, what is Nightmare Born about?

It’s about Iris Bianchi, an autistic teenager who learns that her father is the King Of Nightmares and that she is a Nightmare Born, a supernatural creature that can only be conceived in human dreams. Called to Miss Perkins’s School For Girls for her magical training, Iris is soon immersed in the supernatural underworld of Savannah, Georgia. Imagine American Horror Story: Coven, The Vampire Diaries, Harry Potter, and The Magicians all got thrown into a blender together to make a delicious and satisfying paranormal YA smoothie, but then I started just pouring various different types of candy into it.

I’m so excited to share every little bit of this journey with you guys. More info will be coming soon!

This is it, everyone. Exactly one year since we started Chapter 0, we’ve reached the end. This is the final installment of our Handbook For Mortals recap. I want to announce that I’ll be doing a Facebook Live event on Saturday night, 10 P.M. EST, on my Jenny Trout Facebook account, to talk about the acknowledgments section and do some drunk Tarot to get a forecast for the future of the book series and upcoming movie. These are pretty fun to do, because I can talk to you while I’m doing them, so drop on in at any time after 10 P.M. to join the live feed.

Shit, I might even brush my hair or put on makeup or something.

Or like.

Shower that day.

Anyway, I just wanted to thank you all for coming on this journey through hell and scandal with me, yet again. Here’s hoping nobody pulls any bullshit and hits my nasty button for a while, so I can take a vacation from shitty, shitty books.

Heads up: I installed The Good Place extension on Chrome and didn’t realize it would actually *post* the censored swears. So, for those unaware of The Good Place and its swears: Shirt = Shit, Fork = Fuck, Dink = Dick, What or where the hell will convert to What the here/where the here, and Bench = Bitch. Honestly, I could go back and change it but it’s so funny I’m leaving it to be a part of Trout Nation history forever.

In every generation, there is a chosen one. She alone will probably die from injuries caused when a dog she’s stepping over decides to stand up suddenly. She will also recap every episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer with an eye to the following themes:

1. Sex is the real villain of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer universe.
2. Giles is totally in love with Buffy.
3. Joyce is a forking terrible parent.
4. Willow’s magic is utterly useless (this one won’t be an issue until season 2, when she gets a chance to become a witch)
5. Xander is a textbook Nice Guy.
6. The show isn’t as feminist as people claim.
7. All the monsters look like wieners.
8. If ambivalence to possible danger were an Olympic sport, Team Sunnydale would take the gold.
9. Angel is a dink.
10. Harmony is the strongest female character on the show.
11. Team sports are portrayed in an extremely negative light.
12. Some of this shirt is racist as fork.
13. Science and technology are not to be trusted.
14. Mental illness is stigmatized.
15. Only Willow can use a computer.
16. Buffy’s strength is flexible at the plot’s convenience.
17. Cheap laughs and desperate grabs at plot plausibility are made through Xenophobia.
18. Oz is the Anti-Xander
19. Spike is capable of love despite his lack of soul
20. Don’t freaking tell me the vampires don’t need to breathe because they’re constantly out of frickin’ breath.
21. The foreshadowing on this show is freaking amazing.
22. Smoking is evil.
23. Despite praise for its positive portrayal of non-straight sexualities, some of this shirt is homophobic as fork.
24. How do these kids know all these outdated references, anyway?
25. Technology is used inconsistently as per its convenience in the script.
26. Sunnydale residents are no longer shocked by supernatural attacks.
27. Casual rape dismissal/victim blaming a-go-go
28. Snyder believes Buffy is a demon or other evil entity.
29. The Scoobies kind of help turn Jonathan into a bad guy.
30. This show caters to the straight/bi female gaze like whoa.
31. Sunnydale General is the worst hospital in the world.
32. Faith is hyper-sexualized needlessly.
33. Slut shame!
34. The Watchers have no forking clue what they’re doing.
35. Vampire bites, even very brief ones, are 99.8% fatal.
36. Economic inequality is humorized and oversimplified.
37. Buffy is an abusive romantic partner.
38. Riley is the worst.
39. Joss Whedon has a problem with fat people.
40. Spike is an abusive romantic partner.
41. Why are all these men so terrible?
42. Wicca doesn’t work like that.
43. Alcohol is evil.
44. Head trauma doesn’t work like that.

Have I missed any that were added in past recaps? Let me know in the comments.  Even though I might forget that you mentioned it.

WARNING: Some people have mentioned they’re watching along with me, and that’s awesome, but I’ve seen the entire series already and I’ll probably mention things that happen in later seasons. So… you know, take that into consideration, if you’re a person who can’t enjoy something if you know future details about it.

In an effort to promote work I love (rather than just tear apart that which I hate), I introduce to you this book that I love: Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident by Donnie Eichar.

 

If you’re unfamiliar with the subject matter, the Dyatlov Pass Incident was a tragedy that claimed the lives of nine experienced hikers on an expedition in the Ural Mountains in 1959. Searchers found the party’s tent slashed and their campsite abandoned. The bodies of Igor Dyatlov, Yuri Doroshenko, Lyudmila Dubinina, Yuri Krivonischenko, Zinaida Kolmogorova, Rustem Slobodin, Alexander Kolevatov, Nikolai Thibeaux-Brignolles, and Seymon Zolotaryov were found over a period of two months and in varying states of injury, mutilation, and radioactivity. The botched and secretive investigation by Soviet authorities led to half a century of cover-up allegations about everything from Big Foot to nuclear testing. The investigation’s final conclusion––that the hikers died due to an “unknown compelling force”––only fueled further ghoulish theories, and we still have no idea what happened to the hikers that night.

I’ve been obsessed with the Dyatlov Pass incident for a long time, owing to my inclination toward the spooky and weird. Despite how much I want to believe in creepy, otherworldly things, I had already accepted the practical and realistic explanations for the “mutilation” of the hikers’ bodies (naturally occurring decay and scavenging), the fact that some of them weren’t properly clothed (paradoxical undressing) and the slash made in the tent (they had knives, duh). But I’d never found a satisfying answer to the biggest remaining question: why would a group of skilled hikers abandon the safety of their camp, taking no supplies or proper clothing? What made going unprotected into the mountains at night seem less dangerous than staying? 

I went into Dead Mountain expecting to be disappointed by the totally rational explanations that would be offered by a serious book. I came away from Dead Mountain more terrified and unsettled than before.

Eichar writes about the hikers as the complex, vibrant people they were in life in a way many accounts of the tragedy ignore. Eichar makes it clear that this isn’t a ghost story or a conspiracy theory playground, but an event in which real people with family, friends, and loved ones were lost in a gruesome and horrifying way. He accomplishes this by mixing details of the investigation with a painstaking recreation of the group’s journey up the mountain that would ultimately claim their lives. When you reach the climax––and see Eichar’s hypothetical account of what could have happened––it makes this loss of life all the more terrifying.

After reading Dead Mountain, I’ve come to accept Eichar’s theory as the most logical and likely. And I really, really wish I didn’t. Whether you’ve never heard of the Dyatlov Pass incident or you’ve spent hours combing message boards and conspiracy videos, this book will stay with you for a long, long time.

In an effort to promote work I love (rather than just tear apart that which I hate), I introduce to you this book that I love. Meet Strangely Beautiful by Leanna Renee Hieber.

Go check it out at Macmillan.com

Now, some background on this book. This is actually an updated volume that contains two books, The Strangely Beautiful Tale Of Miss Percy Parker and The Darkly Luminous Fight For Persephone Parker. Anyone discovering this gaslight fantasy series now is super lucky; they don’t have to wait for the sequel (like I did). They can just get it in one book.

I read The Strangely Beautiful Tale Of Miss Percy Parker in 2009 when I received it as a freebie at a convention. I fell deeply, deeply in love with it. A gaslight fantasy about a mystical task force, The Guard, who protect Victorian London from restless spirits and supernatural dangers, it hit every one of my reader sweet spots. I fell in love with the heroine, Percy, a young woman who’s more like a living ghost, with moon-white skin and hair and supernatural abilities even she doesn’t understand. I swooned over Alexi, the dark, brooding schoolmaster who leads The Guard. And reading scenes with The Guard? I totally felt like I was a part of them like they were all my friends and I was included in their divine purpose. The writing is lush and the world is rich. The original mythology blends seamlessly with the traditional mythology woven throughout (fans of Persephone and Hades, in particular, will fall in love with this book). It absolutely blindsided me and I couldn’t understand why everyone wasn’t talking about it and fangirling over it as much as I was.

So imagine how I, a person who generally overreacts to things I like, finally met the author, Leanna Renee Hieber, in 2010 after the release and my subsequent devouring of the sequel.

I was actually pretty cool. “I really loved your book, I can’t say enough good things about it.”

But when she cosplayed as Percy Parker for a party later that night (and stayed in character the whole time)?

I threw myself, practically sobbing, into her arms and cried, “I love you so, so much!”

Luckily, Leanna is as passionate and awesome about stuff she loves as I am about the stuff she writes, so she totally got it. And this particular copy is signed, “Percy loves you so much!” so there, it’s canon, written in the author’s own hand, no take backs.

How much of a fangirl am I for this series (which includes a prequel, The Perilous Prophecy Of Guard And Goddess, now available as The Perilous Prophecy and the upcoming sequel, Miss Violet And The Great War, which I am totally freaking out about)? I have every version of these books, from the originals to the releases (all signed, of course) as well as the ebooks because I want to be able to carry them with me everywhere so I can read my favorite parts when the mood strikes me. Which, for me, is saying something, because my stunning array of learning disabilities makes reading super duper hard for me.

I love, love, love these books. I hope that if you read them, you’ll love them as much as I do. But even if you only love them a fifth as much as I do, they’ll still be in your top ten.