Trout Nation Posts

And so, it begins. I haven’t even posted a single recap, and already I’ve got people coming out of the woodwork to tell me what a big, giant mean person I am. Last night, I made the mistake of checking my email while I was drunk (which is a state I’ve only been in precisely once in the past three years. I only had a glass and a half of champagne last night). Author Abbi Glines dropped  by my Apolonia read-along post to stick up for Jamie and her book, which was a labor of love and should be protected from the harsh criticism I had yet to dole out.

Then she got on twitter and subtweeted about it, I got bitchy then blocked her, because I had dentist appointment this morning and I didn’t want go in with a bunch of cavities from saccharine-dripping “BE NICE” scoldings.

Since we’re starting off strong with a public spat, it might be a good time to make a FAQ for everybody that’s going to come here in defense of McGuire or the book.

Yes, I actually do have to criticize another author’s work to get people to read my blog. Well, some people, anyway. There are a lot of readers who come here for a lot of reasons. But a great, great many of them found this place when I took apart 50 Shades of Grey. So, yes. Recaps are a huge part of this blog’s popularity. So, it’s not an insult to say, “You have to do this to get people to read your blog.” It’s my job description. If WebMD stopped telling you that you have cholera of the butt crack, you’d stop going there.

But even though people found me through “tearing down” someone else’s work, many of them stay for mine.

How would I feel if someone did snarky recaps of my work? I’d be pissed off if they tried it and they weren’t at least as funny as I am.

Books are not babies, and nobody cares how hard you worked on them. I’ve written lots of books that I’ve worked super hard on, and they don’t sell well or get great reviews, for whatever reason. That doesn’t mean I get to tell everyone to stop talking about the bad parts of them. The only person who cares about how hard I worked on them is me. No one cares about the work that goes into something, they care about the quality. If you took your car to a mechanic and they were like, “Hey, here’s the car back, I worked really hard on it, that’ll be $1200 bucks,” and your drive shaft sheered off and pole-vaulted your car into a ditch a mile down the road, are you going to go tell people, “Yeah, you should totally go to Dan, he’s a great mechanic, he works really hard?”

Authors say all the time, “I worked really hard on this, so I’m excited to share this with you, hope you like it,”or “I worked really hard on this, but its failure disappointed me,” but it’s bullshit to say, “I worked really hard on this, so you can’t criticize it.”

Spite may have driven me to return to book recapping, but I’m still doing it honestly. My recaps are harsh, because I’m harsh when I’m reading a book. And it’s easier to be harsh when you just plain don’t like someone. It would have been easy to go, “Fuck it, everyone wants me to recap Beautiful Disaster? Fine.” And it would have been easy to tear that book to pieces, because so many people have told me, “Oh, it’s got so much abuse in it, it’s worst than 50 Shades of Grey,” etc. But I picked this book because I didn’t know anything about it and didn’t have any pre-formed opinions about the content.

The reason my recaps of 50 Shades of Grey were so harsh was that the books promoted misogyny, abuse, rape culture, and unsafe BDSM practices. It was plagiarized and poorly written. As long as this book doesn’t do any of that, then all this will be is a recounting of my honest thoughts when I’m reading the book–like talking back at the TV when you’re alone.

And who knows? Maybe I’ll really like this book. It seems a tad premature to be making judgements about mean I’m being to this book; as I write this, I haven’t even begun writing the first recap yet.

My recaps made at least a few more sales for E.L. James. Maybe not in any measurable sense that would be missed when compared to the amount of mountain of sales that were pouring in already, but they’re there. I’ve lost count of the number of people who have told me that they bought the entire 50 Shades of Grey series specifically because of my recaps. They’d never intended to read the books until my recaps.

So, slow your roll, Sunshine Sisterhood, put your “BE NICE” pitchforks aside, and shut your hablaholes.

So, let’s get started with chapter one of Apolonia, by Jamie McGuire.

I hope that wasn’t too harsh already.

Last month, I visited the lovely city of Chicago to film The Steve Harvey Show. It was a super awesome time, life changing thing for me, and I’m really excited for everyone to see it! Because it’s syndicated, you’ll have to check your local listings, but the episode airs on October 17th. I’ll also be sharing some fun stuff related to filming the show that I couldn’t share with you before now, and I’ll introduce you to another fantastic body positive blogger!

So, set your DVRs and stuff!

Lately, I have learned a horrible truth about myself.

I, Jenny Trout… am a hater.

After my post about Jamie McGuire and Dear Author, so many ardent McGuire defenders contacted me to inform me of my hater status. I’m apparently a common breed of hater, odium zelosus vulgaris, or, “the common jealous hater.” I guess it’s a kind of bird.

It isn’t. Sorry, I was just trying to impress you. I’m not a bird.

The truth is, I’ve never even read McGuire’s work. Maybe I’m missing out on something I would really like. Maybe it’s time for a read-along.

To those of you who have been begging me to recap Beautiful Disaster for the past year, I’m sorry, but today is not the day you get great news. See, I already know enough about Beautiful Disaster to know that I’m not going to be able to overcome my bias toward it. You’ve all told me about the horrific perpetuation of abuse and rape culture in that book, and since I’m already not impressed with the author’s behavior, it would be even harder to remain objective from page one. Also, I’ve already done my time on Abusive Crapfest Island, thank you very much.

So, what to do? Well, you’re in luck, because before yesterday, I’d heard literally nothing about McGuire’s latest release, Apolonia, aside from the title. I got really excited and bought it because I assumed it would be the POV switch retelling of Purple Rain that we all need and deserve. It’s not. It’s a Sci-Fi New Adult book with nary a mention of Morris Day in it. But this gives us an opportunity, dear reader, to experience this book together. It will be a magical journey, and who knows? At the end, maybe I’ll be a new fan.

If you’re planning to read with me, get yourself a copy of Apolonia. We’ll make this like a book club. Or, we’ll all get pecked to death by my gnashing beak and giant claws.

I may or may not have lied about being a bird.

Ever since I saw Amanda Palmer’s life-changing TED Talk about the power of asking, I’ve had a massive soft spot in my heart for indie projects. If I’d never opened my heart and embraced a new, independent path, The Boss would have never been written, let alone spawned an entire series. I’d still be waiting for an opportunity to come along for me, instead of making opportunities for myself. So, when Larry Wilson, producer and co-writer of Beetlejuice and writer of The Addams Family contacted me and told me about his independent web series project, Cindy, I was like, “Of course I’ll tell everybody in the entire universe about this, because you made Beetlejuice and gave my inner Lydia Deetz permission to weird out all over the place.”

Well, not exactly that. I didn’t want to sound like a weirdo. But whatever the actual wording was, it was juuuust about that creepy and fangirly.

So, let me give you the scoop on Cindy. Billed as a “happily never after” dark comedy, Cindy is a contemporary retelling of Cinderella set in a bleak world where reality television and magic collide.

Cindy is a foster child (read: servant/personal assistant/au pair) in a dysfunctional reality TV family. Her foster mother, Rayveen, is the star of a hit reality show. Her “handsome prince” is a marbles-obsessed middle-aged guy. She has horrible and annoying “step-shits.” And a production assistant wants to make Cindy the next breakout reality television star… by filming her interactions with her magic dust addicted fairy godmother.

I’m really excited about this show, guys. But I have to admit, after watching the promo videos on YouTube, the character I’m dying to see more of is Tuesday, one of the twin step-shits:

I honestly think this girl is going to steal the entire show.

So, here’s the thing: Cindy is independent. They’re running a Kickstarter to help with the costs of producing the first season. They’ve got twenty-four days left, and they’re a little under halfway to their goal. They’ve got some really neat incentives for lower level donations, and if you’re a film buff, you can get some awesome autographed posters. Or, if you’re a high-roller and are intrigued by the concept, you can donate at the upper levels and receive an associate-producer or producer credit on the series, or private lessons in film writing from Wilson himself. Just in case any of you out there really are high rollers.

I know that not everyone can donate to this type of thing, so if that applies to you, but the project intrigues you, do the cast and crew a giant favor and share the Kickstarter or promotional videos on social media.

So, yeah. This is me, selfishly saying, “Help this happen so I can watch it.” In an effort to downplay this shameless self-interest, I’m doing another “Big Damn Self-Promotion Post.” Go there and leave info about your projects, your kickstarters, your blog, whatever you want to promote. 

Okay, everybody! If you count time the way I do, we just did one of these “the other day” (keep in mind, I recently said that the Challenger disaster was “the other day”). But in real people time, it’s been a while. Use the comments section to promote your indie projects. Your bands, your blogs, your movies, your books, your Kickstarters, your Etsy shops, anything that you produce independently and want to share with Trout Nation, post it in the comments. Give us a few sentences or paragraphs so we know what we’re looking at it (no links just left out there in the raw, please) and promote all your projects in one comment.

Don’t have an indie project to share? Browse through the comments. You’ll find some amazing stuff, because Trout Nation is full of interesting and creative people.

Since I promote my own projects all the time, this time I’m going to promote an indie band, Overly Polite Tornadoes:

Mark Morris and Holly Klutts-Morris are already in another awesome indie band, Glowfriends (You may have heard their music on MTV’s Teen Wolf ), and they also happen to be my cousin and her husband, so I think they’re pretty darn neat.  You can download their album for $5 at the link above, and it’ll be worth every penny if you’re into introspective, chill music.

All right, everybody, GO!

 

After receiving violent threats and a stream of near constant abuse for weeks after my interview on NPR, I had promised myself that I would never, ever, ever blog about “All About That Bass” again. My interactions with fans of the song have been so overwhelmingly negative, to the point of having to contact law enforcement, that I can’t even stand to hear a few notes of it as I scroll on past on the car radio.

However, when someone has a dissenting opinion, and it’s presented reasonably and without threatening myself, my family, or my pets (Yes, even my pets deserved to die painfully because I didn’t care for a song), then I’ve got no problem hearing it. So, when a blogger wrote her own post about why she disagreed with me, I read it.

Warning: Before you go any further, I feel obliged to warn you that if you’re a woman size six to size fourteen, there’s a high likelihood that you will feel that I am unfairly excluding women of your size from the body positivity or fat acceptance movements, or singling you out, personally. If this post makes you feel that way, before you get too angry, I’d like you imagine what it feels like to have that happen in every conversation about body positivity that you’ve ever been involved with. And if that doesn’t work, just think of the last time someone asked you for a favor, despite never doing one for you. That will help you understand my point of view and the frustration I feel a little bit better.

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.

Hey everybody! I’m aware of the super awful bug with the newsletter (and thank you to the people who noticed and alerted me), but I would really appreciate if you wouldn’t post exactly what is going on with it in the comments on the blog. It should be fixed by now, but I’ve deleted some comments so as not to call attention to the problem and encourage mischief from badly behaved parties, just in case. Don’t take it personally if your comment got trashed, I just did it so, you know. People weren’t like, “Well, in that case, allow me to sign up and harass the shit out of Jenny in yet another venue!”

Anyway, it’s fixed now, thanks to all of you who let me know what was going on, hope you understand if your comment got trashed, and here’s a picture of a duck:

Hey everybody! Just a quick update to share some stuff.

I’m on Ello! If you’re already signed up for the new social network Ello, you can make friends with me or put me under noise there. @JennyTrout

Deirdre Saoirse Moen has created  an “Ellora’s Cave Author Exodus Support Thread” If you’re an EC author or editor, you can get some more info here, and share what’s going on with you.

Three 2015 dates have been added to the Meet Me page! There will be more to come, but these are the key three for 2015.

There’s a newsletter now! People have been asking for a newsletter for a long time, and now it’s here. It will be a monthly/bimonthly update with release dates for both Jenny Trout and Abigail Barnette, news, etc. It won’t clutter up your inbox and it won’t be too long. Sign up under the Newsletter tab in the linky bar up top.

Welcome Tez Miller to the blog! She’s coming on board to help moderate comments. Tez’s services as a virtual assistant are available through her website.

I’m going to see Tony Bennett in concert! This doesn’t affect you at all. I’m just really excited about it. Also, I bought the tickets at the casino box office last night, then immediately turned around and won the price back on the first slot machine I played.

Depression is happening. I woke up this morning with the blahs. If I’m scarce, that’s why. Thanks for your continued patience as I fight through my crazy. Right now, it’s not inhibiting my work too much. I’m just kind of… blah. No emotions. For example, I know I’m excited about the Tony Bennett concert, but I don’t feel excited. Ah, brain chemistry. You magnificent bastard.

I shipped UPS from my house like a god damn gladiator. Again, doesn’t affect you, but I’ve never done it before.