Abigail Barnette's Blog, page 22

I Love This Book

Ahhhh. You know that feeling when you read a book and you’re like, this book was written specifically for me?

Full disclosure: This book actually was written specifically for me. Knowing how much I crush on late-night talk show host Craig Ferguson, Scarlett Parrish set out to write me a dirty story that for weeks was simply titled Fergporn. I waited patiently as she sent me maddening updates, all the while promising that she was nearly done. But the god damn thing kept getting longer. What started out as a novella with a target of 40k words about a comedian banging his ex during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival grew and grew and grew…into an incredibly touching and tragic story about what-ifs and could-have-beens.

Please excuse the really ridiculous gushing you’re about to read here. I am not going to give you an objective review at all. I’m just going to projectile vomit my feelings at you and those feelings are achingly bittersweet and shockingly horny.

Afton Collier is a recently divorced actress who’s returned to her beloved home city, Edinburgh, to nurse her broken heart. Unfortunately, it’s also the city where her heart first got broken in a toxic relationship with Glenn Peterson, who’s moved on to become a talk show host in America. Twenty years after Glenn—”Oosh,” as Afton remembers him not so fondly from their drugs-and-sex fueled past—disappeared from her life without a word, he returns to Edinburgh to perform a one-man show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. For reasons Afton refuses to truthfully acknowledge to herself, she invites him to stay at her in the apartment she views as a palace of her marital failures.

Now, this whole set up could easily have turned into a “and there was only one bed!” situation. It also could have fallen into the trap of “oh my god, just talk to each other!” due to the internal nature of their conflict. Instead, the abrupt, unresolved ending to their romantic relationship and their two decades of keeping tabs on each other from afar makes you fully sympathize with Afton’s inability to disclose the painful aftermath of Glenn’s departure from her life.

So, those paragraphs alone should have sold you, right?

Wait. There’s more.

Afton Collier shares her author’s proud love of Embra and its history, which winds in and out of Afton and Glenn’s personal history like a parallel love story. From memories of Oosh quoting the Burns poem for which Afton was named, to the stark reality of managing recovery in a culture proud of their alcohol consumption. The land that comforts Afton is part of what drove Glenn away; you feel the pull between her love of her homeland and her resentment toward Glenn for leaving without her.

As a first-person POV heroine, Afton wrestles not only with the abrupt end to her marriage but also the unresolved issues that have kept Glenn on her mind for years. One of these (mild spoiler ahead) is the abortion she had at age nineteen, after Glenn, then thirty, fled to America. Afton’s feelings about the pregnancy she ended are complex; though she knows she made the right choice and doesn’t regret it, she does regret that she had to make the choice at all. I’ve never seen a romance novel present abortion in such a nuanced way, where the heroine is allowed to be relieved and fully comfortable with having an abortion while still wishing the circumstances could have given her another choice.

Glenn is everything I love in a romance novel hero. Not just because I have a thing for Scottish late-night hosts, but because I have a thing for damaged men who struggle with their own vulnerability. Glenn knows what he did to Afton is unforgivable; he spends as much time apologizing to her for the past as he does putting his foot in his mouth in the present. His tendency to be “on” instead of genuine is painfully relatable, especially when it fails him.

Now, let’s discuss the sex. This is a book about a heroine who’s nearly forty and a hero who’s almost fifty. They’ve had active sex lives and aren’t shy with each other once they decide to act on their rekindled attraction. Their chemistry and banter outside the bedroom made the easy reconnection of their intimacy completely natural and a heartbreakingly sweet contrast to the emotional intimacy left unresolved for decades.

The longing and the angst and the relatable drama pulled from realistic circumstances despite the fame and notoriety of main characters working in a highly visible industry makes Take Me Home not just the best romance novel of 2020, but possibly the best I’ve read in my life.

Take Me Home by Scarlett Parrish is available in e-book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, and Kobo.

Annual Hiatus Times!

Everybody is like, “Annual?” But this is my official, planned, not due to any sort of terrible circumstance or mental or physical health issue hiatus. I’m taking two weeks off this time around because this is usually a busy and overwhelming time for me trying to get everything around for my trip and spend time with my kids before I leave, etc. This year, even more so because *gestures to 2020 calendar*. So, to make sure I’m not burned out before I head up there and as a result, HOPEFULLY FINISH MY FREAKING BOOK. I’m gonna sit on my couch, take allergy meds, and wait out the crushing anxiety of knowing I have to leave my house in four days.

Stay safe, stay awesome, be excellent to each other, and I’ll be back after the 28th.

What the hell is that about?!

Read the title of this post again, but do it the way Nathan Lane says it in The Producers during “Betrayed.”

If you haven’t seen Nathan Lane in The Producers you definitely should. He’s amazing.

Also, one time I saw him getting into his car and I yelled, “Yay, you’re awesome!” and he for real did not want to be recognized and just before he closed the door he said to his driver, “Let’s go, let’s go,” and I was like, yes. This is a moment I will treasure forever.

And I do to this very day.

Anyway, I had the absolute most fucked up dream I’ve ever had in my life. This is where I put the CW: Suicide but it’s like, more about the weirdness of the dream, I guess? Just heads up.

I know how much everyone wants to listen to other people describing their dreams for no apparent reason, so let’s dive on in.

The dream took place in a lot of different locations in what I consider the “Jenny’s Dreams Cinematic Universe.” There are common places in my dreams that I visit more than once and I’m familiar with all of them. A haunted house. A maze of country dirt roads. A blend of New York and Grand Rapids that has the Mackinac Bridge in it for some reason. My old high school. A mall. There’s even a baseball stadium and an amusement park, a lake, both sets of grandparents’ houses, my childhood house, a cemetery, it’s just this elaborate dream world and my dreams sometimes take place in it. But ever since we’ve been quarantined, I haven’t been able to leave these dream locations. And I’ve been bizarrely half-lucid in almost all of them.

It’s getting pretty fucking boring.

So boring that my dream self has become suicidally depressed.

I spent last night’s dream visiting these various dream locations and telling the people I met there that I wanted to kill myself. Or I’d make a grim little joke about killing myself. And nobody cared. And it didn’t bother me that they didn’t care until I woke up and went, “What the hell is that about?!”

First of all, there’s no need for concern. My dream is not going to come true. I know there are a lot of situations where that phrase applies in the history of my life but trust me, this time it’s not prophecy. Because I woke up like, damn. Dream me has it fucking rough. She is in bad shape.

Meanwhile, real me is killing it. I edited an entire manuscript in a day. I can watch the news without falling entirely apart. I’ve taken breaks to watch TV shows, not just playing them in the background while I try to concentrate on something else. Seriously, what is happening to dream me?

Another aspect of the dream last night concerned my annual writing retreat. I know I explain it every year but over-explaining is something of a talent of mine so just ride it out if you already know what I’m talking about. Every year, a group we refer to as the “Ladies of the Lake” converge in Gay, Michigan, to stay in a cabin with little-to-no cell signal, no wifi, no phone, and most importantly, no people. We spend the time writing and enjoying each other’s company and despite the insistence of Mr. Jen, “lesbian shit” has yet to occur but hope springs eternal. Because our governor eased regulations, we will be making the trip this year after all, with some changes like quarantining ourselves before and after travel, not going to any restaurants or stores in the U.P., bringing masks and hand sanitizer for when we have to stop for gas or potty, all that end-of-the-world, fleeing-civilization jazz. Usually, I can get some pretty serious writing done up there. The past two years? Ehhhhh not so much. But there have been times I’ve written 10k to 20k words per day up there.

Okay, the time I did 20k I got a tension headache and I had to go to the hospital.

Plus, there are only going to be three of us this time, rather than six, so even less distraction, unless it turns out that five other people are needed to supervise me. In which case, we never make this mistake again.

Anyway, I dreamed that we were on the retreat, which is now ten days away. And I’m freaking out because suddenly I realize that it is Thursday of our Saturday-to-Saturday retreat and I haven’t written a single word.

I woke up sweating. Chills racing all over my body.

We have reached the point in 2020 where I’m having suicidal stress dreams about things I look forward to and enjoy doing.

I went to the shower. I doubled over. I shouted at the top of my lungs:

“OH MY GOD NEXT MONTH I’M GONNA BE FORTY!”

What I guess this post is saying is, my birthday panic comes earlier every year. Death stands behind me. Owls are starting to seem suspicious to me. I don’t know how to use my TV. Immortality beckons.

That’s it. There’s not really any wrap up here but a couple people told me I should post whatever I want and I did and now you’re all suffering for it. But I’m seriously considering consulting a therapist in my dreams.

What is there to say?

There are different types of silence at a moment like this. The conspicuous silence of people who care more about being marketable than being “political”. The forced silence of those who want to do the right thing but are frozen with the fear of what could happen to them in their homes and their communities. And then there’s the stunned kind of silence, the silence of the helpless, of people who don’t know what to say or do because the thought of a solution to the problem only just occurred to them.

I’ve spent the last two weeks doing more circulating of Black voices than that of my own. I’m white. I don’t know shit and it’s very difficult to run to Twitter and talk about writing or Chinese television or funny things my kid has said when my country stands on the precipice of a revolution none of us are emotionally prepared for. Weeks of fear and isolation in a near-nationwide quarantine has sapped us of our energy and mental health but the moment is now. We’re watching scenes from major cities that look more like what the United States warns us about in other countries. Insurrections happen over there. Where? It doesn’t matter. Just not here. Certainly, the President of the United States would never have to cower in fear from his own people, in a bunker constructed for a worst-case scenario. And if that happens, what should we do, as proud, free Americans? Vote, of course!

Vote! Vote in a system controlled by the very people who benefit most from it! Vote, because if you’re lucky, yours will be one that counts. Probably not, but you’ll never know until you try! The system has been stacked unfairly against Black voters in an effort to protect white supremacy. Of course, people are fighting back. Why wouldn’t they? No ordinary citizen truly has a say in what happens to them, to their lives, to their property, to their liberty. A whim and a phone call pitted the United States military against the citizens who allegedly control this democracy. A whim and a pen stroke could return the country to slavery and internment. All while the people we were encouraged to vote for sit back, wring their hands, and pretend they never had a hand in crafting the laws and policies that have broadened every gap, political, economic, and racial between Black people and white people.

There’s another kind of silence: the one where you know that your rage and your heartbreak are not central to an issue. Where you’re quiet because you know your voice isn’t necessarily helpful. The one where you fret that you’re not doing enough, out of fear of doing too much and causing harm. The fear of burdening an already suffering people with well-intentioned nonsense. A fear that comes from the desire to do good but also a desire to look good. I don’t want to succumb to that. I don’t think anyone wants to do that.

Rather than try to express my own feelings on the recent slayings and the brazen, homicidal lawlessness of police everywhere now that they’ve been set off their leashes, I’m going to keep RTing Black voices and smarter people than me over on Twitter, where I have more of a reach. And I’m going to give you, the rest of Trout Nation, the choice of how the blog moves forward from here. It feels very much like the days after 9/11; when are we allowed to do normal things again, without diminishing the hell we’re in? How much distraction is okay before it lulls us back into a state of submission? Do you want to see updates here or would you feel wrong about it? Would it serve as a temporary respite from the new or would it hurt or seem as though I’m pushing the importance of this time to the backburner? How do I go forward here without making it seem like I’m trying to nudge everything back to “normal”? I would feel guilty wondering about these questions but they’re near-universal among creatives of all races right now. Aside from white supremacists and privileged white anarchists, nobody wants to steal focus from the war being waged against justice in the streets nightly. Nobody in America knows how to live with the open acknowledgment that we are a broken nation and have been since July 4, 1776. Even for the people who’ve known this, having it in the air all around, the topic of every conversation in a year when an entire country burned, a pandemic swept the globe, and our president was impeached is a surreal experience. And the year isn’t even half over.

I’m stuck in the “please control your white rage, Jenny, this is not about you and your seemingly racially-inherent, socially conditioned inability to see any solution beyond violence” type of silence. I’m angry. My desire to express that anger doesn’t help. It’s just not constructive for white people to be angry because we’re the ones who did this. And I don’t know how to fix it. What I do know is that Black Lives Matter, Black people matter, Blackness matters. The system must be taken apart and reassembled from the ground up. And the work should ultimately be the responsibility of the white people who caused the problem. But again, I’m one of those white people and let me tell you: we don’t know what the fuck we’re doing because we’re still routinely surprised by the police brutality that we willfully ignore.

Denial is a dangerous, dangerous weapon.

This is all exceptionally disjointed and grim. I’m aware. Consider yourselves lucky; I’m not as in love with stream of consciousness writing as I was in high school. But while I have exactly zero answers and nothing to add that hasn’t already been said better by someone with more life experience than mine, I want everyone here to know that Trout Nation isn’t a place for fascists. It isn’t a place for violence. And it’s a place where Black Lives Matter is not a political statement. It’s a statement of fact.

Jealous Haters Book Club: Crave introduction and Chapter 0, “If You’re Not Living on the Edge, You’re Taking Up Too Much Space”/Chapter 1, “Landing Is Just Throwing Yourself at the Ground and Hoping You Don’t Miss”

All right, all right, all right. I just lost 2,000 words of a manuscript and basically that’s four weeks of work on my fiction at this point because I’m so freaking stressed and blocked, so I’m going to get into this right away. If you’re not sure why there’s a new selection for JHBC, you can find the answer here. But why have I chosen this book, out of the blue? What is it about this book that made me skip past all the requests I’ve had so far?

I first learned about Tracy Wolff’s Crave when the story of Universal’s pre-empt of the screen rights rolled across my Twitter timeline. I hadn’t heard any buzz about the book at all until then and suddenly it was everywhere, touted as “your next vampire obsession” and “the next Twilight.” I like vampires. I like Twilight. I’m so gonna check this story out, right?

And that’s when I see who published the book: Entangled. And who was interviewed for the story? Not Wolff, the actual writer. Liz Pelletier, the book’s editor and the publisher at Entangled.

Let me give you some backstory on my relationship with Pelletier and Entangled, so nobody can be like, “BIAS! BIIIIIAAAS! You didn’t disclose that you had a personal beef with the publisher!” Well, I don’t. I have professional beef. I’ll disclose that so you can read my critique of this particular title with that in mind and decide whether or not my bias has affected my analysis of the text. So, here’s the beef:

Entangled bought my book, Such Sweet Sorrow, with a film/TV development deal already in place. It was work-for-hire, meaning my agent connected with an awesome, supportive, much-missed guy out in Hollywood who came up with the idea, brainstormed it with me, and got it representation at a major entertainment agency. Meanwhile, I wrote the book and its sequel and the series proposal and bible for the eventual television show. I sent book two off to Pelletier, my editor, about two weeks before my partner in crime died. I was devastated.

I was even more devastated when months went by with no word from Pelletier on the second book. The book that Nick and I had worked so hard to mold and shape. More months. Then a year. Then two years. Since the television show was off the table–and very likely since she does not like “controversial” authors, which I was quickly becoming in the wake of the Anne Rice dust up–my book was abandoned. A year of my work will never see the light of day. A year of work with someone who, five days before he died, was still sending me notes on the project and was pursuing a graphic novel adaptation. This was a project that both of us cared about and poured a lot of work into. And it was just out there, in a void of unreturned calls and emails.

During the waiting time, I expressed my frustration to another Entangled author at Literary Love Savannah. The author rolled her eyes, laughed, and said,  “She is always chasing the next Twilight. Or the next something. She wants a movie. If you can’t give it to her, she loses interest.”

Back to a few years before. Pelletier had contracted an author to write Pelletier’s idea for a series she once described to me as “Twilight with aliens.” The series was a big success for Pelletier and the author who wrote it. But it wasn’t enough; though the film rights were optioned, the studio let the option expire and revert back. Pelletier didn’t get her movie, no matter how many times she tried to repackage and relaunch the series over and over again. Now, Pelletier has played it safe, going for “Twilight with vampires.”

But not just “Twilight with vampires.” This one…has a twist. From PopBuzz:

There’s one key detail that looks set to set Crave apart from Twilight though. Liz states that it will be told from a “decidedly feminist perspective.” Given that Twilight was panned by many feminist critics for Bella’s storyline, it will be interesting to see how Crave compares.

I agree, PopBuzz. Because the thing is, Twilight was over a decade ago. Its success has waned and its esteem in the eyes of readers–even its most ardent fans at the time–has somewhat lessened, judging by how many people expressed dismay that Midnight Sun will finally be released. Authors wouldn’t dare use Twilight as a comp in their query letters, lest they get roasted behind their backs by slush pile sorters who like to mock rubes living ten years behind the times. But Liz Pelletier seems to be the only publisher who doesn’t realize that. So, I’m absolutely dying to see how this pans out from that perspective.

So, you can see where this might end up with accusations of a personal vendetta against Pelletier or Entangled. I don’t have a vendetta. I have a grudge. Vendettas require a lot of effort and frankly, I don’t have the time to ruin anyone. I’d still be looking into this book even if it didn’t come with my personal baggage; “feminist Twilight” is just as enticing a lure for me had it come from any other publisher.

And here’s where things get really interesting: I’ve never read Tracey Wolff. At all. Ever. And this is shocking to me because she’s written a lot of books, most of them romance or erotic romance. Like, how did I miss her? Especially since she wrote for Harlequin Desire back in the day and that imprint was an auto-buy addiction for me before I started shopping at a grocery store that doesn’t carry them. I should have read at least something of hers before. Since I haven’t, I get to walk into this thing fresh as a daisy. And I’ve never heard anything bad about her that would have put me off reading this book. Everything seems pretty above-board with this one, ethically.

Plus, I actually did love Twilight, despite a brief period of insisting I only liked it “ironically” or I downright hated it because it’s what all the cool kids were doing at the time and I was furious with Breaking Dawn.

Seriously. That is how you wrap this conflict up? Really?

Anyway, I’m going into this with a brand-new-to-me author, in a book that seems to be part of a burgeoning vampire renaissance, masterminded by the woman who thought signing Alexa Riley was a great idea. What could go wrong?

Honestly, though, I’m hoping it goes right. And I haven’t really heard anything from anyone to suggest that it won’t. So let’s dive in.

First of all, the writing in this book? It’s not bad. A lot of times, books we read here will be a trash heap in terms of content, story, the nature of its publication and the terrible writing, but a lot of the books we read here are also overwhelmingly first efforts from brand new authors. There are only two, I believe, that we’ve done that hasn’t been the first book or series for the author. So, it’s refreshing to have someone who actually knows how to get the story moving in the right direction, right away.

I stand at the outer tarmac door staring at the plane I am about to get on and try my hardest not to freak out.

It’s easier said than done.

Not just because I’m about to leave behind everything I know, though up until two minutes ago, that was my main concern.

So, the opening of Feminist Twilight gives us the heroine, Grace, who is moving away from everything she knows. This tracks with the Twilight connection, but honestly, a lot of YA books start out this way. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Her Uncle Finn has sent a dude name Philip to pick her up for the last leg of the journey.

If you had told me a month ago that I would be standing on the outskirts of an airport in Fairbanks, Alaska, I would’ve said that you were misinformed. And if you had told me that the whole reason I was in Fairbanks was to catch the tiniest puddle jumper in existence to what feels like the very edge of the world–or in this case, a town on the edge of Denali, the highest mountain in North America–I would have said that you were high as a freaking kite.

…Denali?

For those not fully immersed in the world of Stephenie Meyer’s vampires, Edward spends time with the Denali clan in Alaska. So, that’s a clever nod.

In fact, the only thing I have been able to count on these past few weeks is that no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse…

Then we move on to chapter one. As you can see above, the chapters have long titles. This one makes more sense than the first one.

Anyway, Grace got on the plane and we rejoin her as her destination comes into view:

“There she is,” Philip says as we clear the peaks of several mountains, taking one hand off the steering column to point to a small collection of buildings in the distance. “Healy, Alaska. Home sweet home.”

“Oh, wow. It looks…” Tiny. It looks really, really tiny. Way smaller than just my neighborhood in San Diego.

Well…that’s a bit like Twilight, isn’t it? I mean, lots of YA books start out with a “new in town” aspect, but California girl moves to Alaska and Arizona girl moves to Washington is a little on the nose.

During an intense, rough landing, we get some exposition about why she’s leaving her home:

I bite my lip, keep my eyes squeeze firmly shut even as my heart threatens to burst out of my chest. If this is the end, I don’t need to see it coming.

The thought distracts me, has me wondering just what my mom and dad might have seen coming, and by the time I shut down that line of thinking, Philip has the plane sliding to a shaky, shuddering halt.

I know exactly how it feels. Right now, even my toes are trembling.

This. This, dear reader, is how you subtly work in the character’s backstory. See the context? She’s not remembering her mother’s grisly murder because she saw her own hair in a mirror, an event that would take place at least once a day for most people. She’s not launching into some elaborately detailed flashback that takes us out of the action. One little moment of connection to the tragedy that explains what that tragedy was. Her parents died in some kind of accident. Bam. That’s all we need at the moment.

By the way, this is the kind of thing that you have to work at relentlessly and Wolff does it very well.

After the harrowing landing, we get a little more of what’s going on here:

After taking a few seconds to make sure I’m not going to crumble—and to pull my brand-new coat more tightly around me because it’s literally about eight degrees out here—I head to the back of the plane to get the three suitcases that are all that is left of my life.

I feel a pang looking at them, but I don’t let myself dwell on everything I had to leave behind, any more than I let myself dwell on the idea of strangers living in the house I grew up in. After all, who cares about a house or art supplies or a drum kit when I’ve lost so much more?

I have a weird feeling that this book is going to give me a few uncomfortable moments with regard to how Twilighty it will be. I think marketing it as the “feminist Twilight” was a bad move when there are so many things that stick out as just a little too close, changed juuuust enough. But at the same time, this is such a common way to start a YA novel. Kid moving somewhere new, thinking about their stuff all packed up, remembering their old life, etc. Marketing it as “feminist Twilight” (much in the way Entangled marketed another series as Roswell-meets-Twilight) puts that title in the mind of the reader, making any similarities seem larger and more suspect (except for in the case of Twilight-with-aliens. That was 100% ripped off).

Basically, what I’m saying is, I’m not accusing Wolff of copying Twilight, I’m saying that using Twilight as a comp has done a disservice to Crave. I mean, let’s take a look:

Heroine moving from big city, warm climate to small town, cold climate
Takes place in a small town near Denali National Park, a mountain area home to a vampire clan in the Twilight franchise
Description of how little heroine has brought, weather inappropriateness of clothing at the same percentage in the ebook as in Twilight

And that percentage I just mentioned? 2%. We’re 2% into the story of Crave and there are three striking similarities. None of these things would have probably pinged my radar if I hadn’t already been told to expect to be reading Twilight by the marketing campaign but once we’ve been told that this is specifically supposed to be like Twilight, it makes it seem shady.

And to be honest the cover:

It does seem a little bit…

Wait, what’s this on the copyright page?

That certainly explains a few things, doesn’t it?

Grace and the pilot, Phillip, take Grace’s bags to the parking lot and there’s some description of how the airport is really just a runway and some parking spots. Again, great detail, it tells us exactly how small and isolated this town is.

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do from here, how I’m supposed to get to the boarding school my uncle is headmaster of, so I turn to ask Philip if Uber is even a thing up here. But before I can get a word out, someone steps from behind one of the pickup trucks in the lot and rushes straight toward me.

I think it’s my cousin, Macy, but it’s hard to tell, considering she’s covered from head to toe in protective weather gear.

“You’re here!” the moving pile of scarves and jackets says, and I was right–it’s definitely Macy.

Macy is described as being sixteen-years-old and eight inches taller than Grace, who we learn is seventeen. Right away, this book has something Twilight did not. It has two female characters in a scene and one of them isn’t thinking about how much better she is than everyone else. Bella came off that way a lot of the time, and Grace does here, just for a second:

“I’m here,” I agree dryly, wondering if it’s too late to reconsider foster care. Or emancipation. Any living situation in San Diego has got to be better than living in a town whose airport consists of one runway and a tiny parking lot.

So, there are two things that could have been fixed here, right? One of these things is that her thoughts about foster care or emancipation seem at first to be in reference to the presence of her cousin. It hits as a very, ugh, this girl is talking to me, moment until she follows it up with her complaint about the town. It took my brain a second to catch up that she wasn’t being bitchy about the fact that her cousin was happy to see her, she was thinking about how awful the place is. And you know what? That’s another place I feel Wolff has been set up by the publicity push with this book; because I’m expecting Twilight, I’m expecting the heroine to loathe all the other female characters.

The other thing I might have changed is that at this point, I’ve heard way too much about how small the airport is. It just doesn’t seem like something a teenager would fixate on the most. It feels more like someone buying a vacation rental and worrying about accessibility.

But that’s just a nitpick.

Macy tells Philip that her dad owes him a case of beer, and we learn that though Grace doesn’t really know Macy or Uncle Finn, they’re her only family left. Philip says that it wasn’t a big deal to pick up Grace, since he had to run errands, anyway.

He says it so casually, like hopping in a plane for a couple-hundred-mile round-trip journey is no big deal. Then again, out here where there’s nothing but mountains and snow in all directions, maybe it’s not. After all, according to Wikipedia, Healy has only one major road in and out of it, and in the winter sometimes even that gets closed down.

So, remember that movie 30 Days of Night? It’s about a group of vampires who take over a small, isolated town in Alaska during a month with no sunlight. At one point, the main vampire says something like, “Why didn’t we think of this before,” and I laughed so hard at it. Because it’s just so obvious. Of course, vampires would want to go to Alaska. Why isn’t every vampire story set in Alaska? It’s like, the perfect place for half the year. So, I’m quite tickled by the setting here, and the ominous foreshadowing on one road in, one road out, sometimes blocked.

Macy tells Grace that Uncle Finn couldn’t be at the airport due to an emergency at the school, but Grace doesn’t mind.

Besides, if I’ve learned anything in the month since my parents died, it’s just how little most things matter.

Who cares who picks me up as long as I get to the school?

Who cares where I live if it’s not going to be with my mom and dad?

Here’s another place where you can see the difference between a seasoned writer and a first time writer. One of the most common complaints about Twilight is that Bella comes off as a haughty brat. The reason she comes off that way is that she has a pretty shallow reason for going to Forks: her mother is moving in with her boyfriend, wants Bella to come along, but Bella decides to go live with her father, in a town she doesn’t want to be in, where she mopes about not wanting to be there for two books straight. Bella made her own choice to leave and made it the reader’s problem.

Here, Grace doesn’t have a choice. She has no parents. She has no other place to go. She’s suddenly alone in the world and she has nothing. Now, I’m not saying that Twilight needed to have Renee die to make the plot work. In fact, I think it would have made less sense (my take on Bella’s motivation to become a vampire is that it has less to do with undying love for Edward and more to do with the idea of being part of a functioning family but I won’t write that dissertation here, as I’ve already written it for SyFy Fangrrls). But what if it was Renee’s idea for Bella to go? Or, what if the theme of Bella being her mother’s stand-in mom was explored a little more thoroughly? The seeds were there, but when we read Crave, Grace has actually sprouted.

Macy warns Grace that if she needs to pee, she should do it before they leave on the ninety-minute drive to the school.

Ninety minutes? That doesn’t seem possible when the whole town looks like we could drive it in fifteen, maybe twenty minutes at the most. Then again, when we were flying over, I didn’t see any building remotely big enough to be a boarding school for close to four hundred teenagers, so maybe the school isn’t actually in Healy.

Again, because I’ve got Twilight on the brain, the high school in Forks had just a shade under four hundred students.

The reason it’s going to take so long to get to the school is that they’re not taking one of those pickups in the parking lot. They’re riding on a snowmobile.

Now, I’ll admit, this part bored the shit out of me. There are some little details that are nice, like Macy bringing Grace hot pink snow pants and a scarf because it was Grace’s favorite color when they were kids (this tells us that they haven’t seen each other in a long while), and Macy reassuring Grace that it’s okay if she doesn’t know everything about how to live in Alaska, yet, but mostly it’s a description of Grace not knowing how to work a scarf, then an explanation of what snowmobile helmets do. I’m not going to lay a blanket, “This is bad writing!” on it, because I’m not sure that I, a Michigander, can accurately judge the level of detail needed in a snowmobile ride preparation scene when compared to, say, what someone from San Antonio might need explained to them.

Macy wraps an arm around my shoulders and squeezes tight. “Alaska is a lot. Everyone who comes here has a learning curve. You’ll figure it all out soon enough.”

I’m not holding my breath on that one–I can’t imagine that this cold, foreign place will ever feel familiar to me–but I don’t say anything. not when Macy has already done so much to try and make me feel welcome.

“I’m really sorry you had to come here, Grace,” she continues after a second. “I mean, I’m really excited that you’re here. I just wish it wasn’t because…” Her voice drifts off before she finishes the sentence. But I’m used to that by now. After weeks of having my friends and teachers tiptoe around me, I’ve learned that no one wants to say the words.

Here again, the mark of an author who knows what she’s doing. So often, we’re reading protagonists in Jealous Haters Book Club who are so consumed by their own lives and drama that they don’t care how they’re treating other people. Here, we have the heroine going, you know, my life sucks right now, I hate where I am, everything is awkward and terrible, but I recognize that it’s not easy for other people to face my grief, either, and none of this situation is Macy’s fault, so I’m not going to lash out at her.

There aren’t many Jealous Haters Book Club characters we can apply that to. So, maybe these recaps are going to be a hell of a lot easier than books of days past.

The chapter ends with them racing off on the snowmobile and Jenny wiping the sweat of relief from her brow because she’s actually recapping a book that might not increase her risk of stroke.

October 2019 Patron Appreciation Video

Welcome, to this extremely late Patreon reward video! Thanks as always to all my readers and supporters and people who pass links along or say, “You should check out Jenny’s blog!” 1,000x thank you. Thank you 5,000.

 

EDIT: I guess I should tell you what the video is about. It is about me, wearing Lewis Capaldi’s face like some kind of demented celebrity stalker/serial killer. No Capaldis were harmed in the making of this video.

Jamie McGuire, You Cupid Stunt

Note: This is an incredibly image-heavy post. Rather than filling out the alt-text for screen readers, I started putting, “This is a Facebook post, text to follow” or whatever in the alt-text and then I was like, “Jenny, just put a note at the top of the page explaining that every image is a screencap of Jamie McGuire’s Facebook post and comment threads.” So, ta-da! Every image is of a Jamie McGuire Facebook post or comment thread and all of the comments are presented as-is in the body of this blog post.

Oh, and speaking of “as-is,” please keep in mind that these are emotionally charged Facebook comments flying back and forth and putting [sic] everywhere someone mistyped or made an error would have been akin to one of the labors of Hercules, so I didn’t do that.

Now, these screenshots don’t show everything. These were taken by people and either they gave me permission to use them or they sent them to me. I don’t creep Jamie McGuire’s Facebook page because I value my fleeting time on this plane of existence. So, if it seems choppy or something is missing or doesn’t make sense, it’s because I’m just working with what I’ve got.

Believe me, it’s enough.

CW: Racism, discussion of Ahmaudd Arbery’s death.

On May 7, Jamie McGuire posted this to her author page:

“I know I normally keep this page opinion free, and for book stuff only, but I feel like this is important. If you haven’t seen this viral story yet PLEASE look up #runwithmaud and sign the petition. This story is absolutely heartbreaking.”

On her personal page, she shared…this:

“Definitely conversation and discussion worthy. What are your thoughts? **if you don’t watch the video until the END, don’t comment.**

Yup. That’s every MAGA’s Black Friend, Candace Owens, in her infamous video explaining why Ahmaud Arbery’s lynching was justified. And Jamie just wants to “discuss.”

Let’s take a peek at that discussion:

Marisela Elias: “This girl is crazy! Ahmaud was lynched. There is no way around it. He was sought out by these two white supremacists and gunned down in broad daylight! The only reason they are behind bars is because the media and enraged citizens refused to stay quiet and this was only after two months of his murder.”

John Eighner: “Marisela Elias where is your proof they were white supremacists? You are brainwashed. [link to YouTube video, “Video Emerges Showing Ahmaud Arbery Entering Home At NIGHT…]

Jamie McGuire: “Marisela Elias yeah, WHY are we just hearing about this/seeing action when it went down Feb 23?? Fishy.”

Marisela Elias: “Jamie McGuire, it’s surprising to me how people could actually find a way of justifying his murder. I agree it is fishy as to why the officials decided to keep quiet about this horrendous, hateful, and racist act. Shame on you for sharing this person’s view and ignoring the fact that he was killed based on the color of his skin and not because he committed a certain crime.”

The thing about McGuire is that she often pretends to be representing both sides, playing devil’s advocate, merely discussing things that she finds interesting:

 

Kira Berger: “This is so messed up. Saying this isn’t about race it false on so many levels. If Ahmaud was a white man this wouldn’t have happened in the first place. PERIOD. No question about it. They might have not gone out hunting for someone to shoot at random, but let’s be clear here, he was shot because he was BLACK. If I would have done the same thing, I’d be find today, because I’m white. I might have had to explain to the police, but that was it. I wouldn’t have been shot. It’s despicable anyone is defending murderers with this BS.”

Jamie McGuire: “Kira Berger whoa whoa whoa. I was getting ready to like your comment before your last sentence.”

Hennessy Chism: “Jamie isn’t defending anyone she’s just sharing a post. I disagree with the speaker and I wouldn’t have shared it but Jamie is just trying to say that she thinks the logic is interesting. Logic can be interesting without outright agreement.”

Jamie McGuire: [row of upward pointing finger emojis]

Notice anything odd there? Berger never accused McGuire of trying to justify the lynching but both McGuire and Chism jump in to defend McGuire. Berger could easily have been talking about Candace Owen.

Kira Berger: “Hennessy Chism Maybe so, but if I share something I usually agree with it, and it not, I say so. Unfortunately, her past comments don’t lend themselves to give the benefit of the doubt. But you’re right. I shouldn’t have assumed. [smile emoji].”

Jamie McGuire: “if you follow me at all, you’d know I enjoy sharing alternate/interesting/dissenting views and discussing. I NEVER said I agreed. The facts of the case are interesting, and they’re still rolling out so how could I possibly know enough about anything to have an opinion?”

Jamie McGuire: “Kira, thanks for letting me know you follow to hate (“her past comments”–which is BS btw). That helps me use the block button effectively.”

But you had enough facts to form an opinion to talk about what a tragedy it was and demand justice for Arbery on your professional page. And here’s another tell: McGuire instantly blocks Berger from her page because Berger hasn’t agreed with every single one of McGuire’s political stances in the past and has spotted a pattern that has been apparent to most people since Trump’s campaign started and she hit a Tweet-liking spree.

Interestingly enough, one person McGuire doesn’t seem combative toward is Eighner, who agrees with Owens’s video and doesn’t feel this is a racial incident, though he posts a graphic about interracial violent crime incidents in the same thread:

 

Hennessy Chism: “I totally disagree with this girl. I think she’s really failing to consider the impact of systemic oppression and institutionalized racism on AfAm populations.”

John Eighner: “Hennessy Chism [interracial violent crime incident infographic]”

John Eighner: “Hennessy Chism [same YouTube video Eighner posted before]”

Jamie McGuire: “Hennessey Chism there is some history  (according to this video) that he’d been stealing fron the neighborhood homes prior, but I have not looked into this myself. NOT saying his death was justified in any way, just answering your question.”

Hennessey Chism: “John Eighner Who said I was a lib? No, I want to know what he stole, tell me. Show me proof that he stole something and that the murderers knew that. And tell me why they didn’t call the police instead of shooting? Because he was black.”

John Eighner: “Hennessey Chism wow you did not watch the videos did you because if you had Candice says they called the police”

John Eighner: “Hennessey Chism you have zero evidence that he was killed for being black. White intruders get killed all the time by white people. [link to a story headlined: “No charges against Oklahoma man who killed 3 intruders”]

Jamie McGuire: “John Eighner they did call the police. Several did, that’s true.”

So far, it appears that the only person McGuire is “discussing” things with is the guy running his own personal Breitbart in the comments. When she engages with anyone else, however…

Faith Anne Hudson: “I liked her point of view. I don’t think anyone is saying that his death is justified, just that it wasn’t a hate crime.”

Jurgita La Lionne: “Faith Anne Hudson unjustified death, yet no big deal? So what was it then? He got killed for fun? Out of boredom? Sit this one out, Karen.”

Jamie McGuire: “Jurgita La Lionne why so angry? That’s not what Faith said. Please read and discuss or bow out. Rudeness gets deleted.”

Jurgita La Lionne: “Jamie McGuire ignorance is what makes me angry. You, apparently, are only interested in discussing with those who blow into the same flute you do. Bowing out!”

Faith Anne Hudson: “Jurgita La Lionne no one said it wasn’t a big deal. I don’t think that’s what the video conveys at all. I think she’s just pointing out that something that looks like an unmediated death is being twitsted by the media to look like a hate crime during an election year.”

Jamie McGuire:  “How did you know I played the flute?”

She has plenty of time to tone police and make “clever” retorts on a post about Ahmaud Arbery’s lynching death, not so much time to “discuss” with anyone who disagrees with her. With Candace Owens, I mean. Not McGuire. Because McGuire still hasn’t declared what side she’s taking. She’s just here to start an important conversation about racism where no one is allowed to express anger about racism. Emilia Reyes notices this immediately:

 

Tiffany Snow: “She’s right. It happens every time. The media go crazy. I do wish there was more concern and conversation about black on black crime. The number of murders in places like Chicago is horrendous.”

Emilia Reyes: “Here we go with the black on black crime. The difference is when it is black on black crime, someone is arrested and convincted! [multiple exclamation points I’ll skip for screen readers] So sit down”

Jamie McGuire: “Emilia Reyes all those exclamation points definitely validate your statement.”

Emilia Reyes: “I don’t need you, an anti vaxxer, racist, telling me shit. When you live what we POC live, then maybe I’ll hear what you have to say. There is no other argument to this. He was murdered for being black.”

Emilia Reyes: “And it’s funny how you comment to me but not to the man on here calling someone a dumb cunt.”

Jamie McGuire: “Emilia Reyes She called me a cunt first. Keep up.”

Jamie McGuire: “Emilia Reyes A POC is saying otherwise in the video. Not me. Good Lord…”

Emilia Reyes: “You agree with it, let’s be real. You didn’t post it to have a conversation. You know exactly what you were doing. You just don’t have any room to talk about it. We don’t want Trump lovers talking about what is racially motivated and what is not.”

Emilia Reyes: “And when you are a racist, you ddeserve to be called a cunt.”

Michelle Sharpe: “Yes, Emilia Reyes exclamations points do validate her points perfectly and her response was perfect! [many exclamation points]”

You may be wondering, hey, wait…who called Jamie a cunt?

Celia Aaron: “Candace Owens is a known right-wing raconteur fame-seeker akin to Diamond and Silk, and you posting this fucked up opinion makes you a huge racist cunt (no, her being black DOES NOT  save you from being a huge racist cunt), just FYI.”

Robert Christopher: “Somebody has a case of the Monday’s…

Whitney Reynolds: “Wow”

But wait…who was the man calling a woman a cunt? I bet you’ll never guess.

John Eighner: “Celia Aaron well you are just a dumb cunt then”

Surely McGuire blocked such rudeness. She wants discussion and conversation, no meanness allowed!

Jamie McGuire: “Celia Aaron I envision you high-fiving yourself after that and looking around at an empty room w a proud smile bc you thought it was super cool.”

Celia Aaron: “Jamie McGuire good comeback. Hey, tell me how that whole ‘I’ll run for Congress!’ thing worked out for ya?”

For those unaware, McGuire recently announced her candidacy for Oklahoma State House of Representatives then just as quickly announced the suspension of her campaign due to “an obscure rule” that is literally on the top of the page you sign to register as a candidate. I won’t link to those forms because they have her home address on them, but they are public, as is the video of the hearing where she argued that the rules should be bent for her.

Jessica Landers: “^And then go post in the drama groups high-fiving the rest of the “I hate JM” club while cheering because “you told her”. [crying laughing emoji]

John Eighner: “Celia Aaron were you able to type all of that without losing your breath?”

Jamie McGuire: “Jessica Landers Every time. [crying laughing emoji]”

John Eighner “Celia Aaron careful you will give yourself a heart attack.”

Jamie McGuire:  “It was great, actually! Can’t wait to do it again.”

I’m sure she can’t wait to do it again, considering she’d already accepted donations for her campaign then magnanimously offered to return those donations “if” people wanted their money back.

So, as we see, “rudeness gets blocked” goes out the window when people who agree with Owens’s viewpoint (not McGuire’s, of course, she’s made that very clear by stating several times that this is just discussion) are the ones hurling fatphobic insults and the word “cunt.” But this is Jamie McGuire, who used the term “cum-burping gutter-slut” to describe a woman in one of her books. It’s okay to be rude to women, as long as you’re being rude to women who aren’t the protagonist in the story of this universe, who is clearly Jamie McGuire.

 

Shannon Smith: “Wow I wasn’t going to comment but I cannot believe a woman that is accusing someone of being racist can call another woman a “cunt” in the same sentence. I thought non racists also were feminists? [crying laughing emoji] Jamie McGuire I think you can forget this woman “fixing the crown on another woman’s head and not putting her down” kind of situation. I kinda feel like this post was about seeing that not every damn situation in life is about being black or white or whatever. I have white and Latino. I’d wager to say we all have more than one race in us if we go back far enough. This life is an individual, case by case scenario. Or should be…”

I think we’re all smart enough to see the numerous problems in Smith’s colorblind appeal to our African ancestry while also referring to “non racists” as if that’s a group she’s not a part of, so I’m going to just leave it. Like, sometimes the racists just do enough on their own.

Jamie McGuire: “Shannon Smith: [four clapping hand emojis] tbh these posts always bring out the hypocrites. And I also enjoy blocking lurking trolls so they have to start using their husbands’ accounts to participate in the hate groups. It’s the little things.”

I have a husband. He has a Facebook account. I’m blocked by Jamie McGuire. Do you know what I do? Nothing because I’d never been following her or going to her page in the first place and I’m not about to start now. And all those hate groups and trolls McGuire is so proud of baiting? They’re the ones who send me updates on her. People hate Jamie McGuire so much that they let me know when she has a cold before she even gets a chance to sneeze.

That’s bad. That’s really, really bad.

Right now, in the United States, we’ve seen such a polarizing of the political spectrum that Jamie McGuire could come out tomorrow posing poolside in a Confederate Flag bikini, wearing a MAGA hat, brandishing an AK-47 in an N-word-laden Instagram post praising Hitler and it would be wildly appealing to many of her fervent fans. They would argue in threads one hundred comments long that she is not a racist, everyone else is racist for bringing up race, it’s about her Southern heritage in her state that didn’t exist until after the Civil War and how dare anyone shame her. You’re probably all fat. And gay.

Those people don’t let their anger go. But not in the petty, fun, take-a-walk-and-sit-under-the-shade-tree-with-me way. In the Hitler-had-the-right-idea way. And those people vote. And McGuire apparently plans to run for state congress again.

Of course, not all the people who agree with her can also vote in Oklahoma. But the world is so much smaller now, and her following is large and spread out over multiple continents. All it takes is one Tweet or Facebook post crossing the right pair of eyes and it could get attention from Republicans in higher places. Maybe even the President, himself. And if not, certainly it could make The Washington Post. Fox News would probably see an opportunity to flaunt her as their answer to Stacey Abrams. After all, they’re both romance writers. They’re both women. They’ve both run for office. Why not put Jamie McGuire on as a serious pundit. She could answer all the important questions about race and whether or not it affects anything. And they can trot her out every time a Black person is murdered in a hate crime in this country so she can weigh in on it.

Am I saying that we should never call out racists because it causes racism? Absolutely not. But we have ample evidence that anyone can make money appealing to white supremacists as long as they’re sincere enough. McGuire took the real-life lynching of a living, breathing, loved human being, and turned it into a chance to stir up some attention for herself. To build the “I say it like it is” down-home, good ole’ boy’s girl image. She’s sincere in her racism. She knew exactly what the response would be when she posted the video and began responding to comments the way she did. If she truly did not want to be perceived as a racist, she wouldn’t have posted the video. She could have opted not to say anything at all. But she was trying to energize her base. She’s gearing up for her next run at an office.

We no longer live in an age of, “never gonna be president now.” The racism, the hatred of anyone who isn’t white, Christian, straight, cis, gun-owning, liberty-loving, thin, and rich is a feature. It’s what her fans are shopping for. It’s what they buying from her. Every time we let her get us up in arms with one of her bullshit discussions it just leads to more people defending her, more people encouraging her to tell it like it is, more people offering her their support. There’s no need to prove that Jamie McGuire is an evil person anymore because she gives us that proof time and again. She’ll do that work on her own and parlay the callouts into unwavering support. She’s like a giant, Juvéderm-stuffed Katamari rolling up everything that is wrong with America and dressing it up in Ann Taylor separates. Jamie McGuire is Great Value Trump in a cheap red wig.

I’m done with Jamie McGuire. I’m not going to be sitting here twenty years down the line watching her wax head melt on live TV during the presidential debates. I’m not going to have arguments with Conservative family members about why I can be a feminist and still not support her plan to put mothers who vaccinate their children into labor camps. This is not a road I’m going to help pave any longer. I am not going to participate in this woman’s desperate upward claw to become the next Ann Coulter or Katie Hopkins or Tomi Lahren. As far as I’m concerned, Jamie McGuire no longer exists and no longer gets fed any attention by me. Because a Jamie McGuire that cannot feed is a Jamie McGuire who cannot succeed. Jealous Haters Book Club is switching over to Crave by Tracy Wolff, which has been touted as the “feminist Twilight.” We’ll see how that shakes out. I liked Twilight, I’ve never read this author, we’ll see where this goes.

And please, please don’t forget about Ahmaud Arbery in this chaotic time, when there are new horrors springing up in the news every day. He and his family deserve justice, as do all victims and families of victims of hate crimes. Please consider donating or sharing the link to the official fund for Ahmaud Arbery’s family.

 

Look at my dog

I’m on edibles, y’all.

Look at this dog:

Cat included for size comparison. That pit bull you’re looking at? The one beside the normal-sized house cat? She’s full grown. We call her a teacup pit bull as a joke. She can fit under the overhang of our lower kitchen cupboards to snuggle up against the heating vent. She can also fit in your lap, which is handy for a breed that does sit in your lap regardless of their size. Her feetsers are itty-bitty. She’s just the smallest damn pit bull I’ve ever seen. Until about two months ago, I could put her in a shoebox.

Let me tell you about this dog. My Baba decided that she loved our pit bulls so much, she was going to get one of her own. She went down to the shelter where they had an adult pit bull but the shelter workers were concerned that he was probably too large and strong for an eighty-year-old to walk and they encouraged her to look at others so she wouldn’t die from being dragged six miles by a galloping pit bull.

Since we’re basically a broken record about our belief that there are no bad dogs, just bad training, Baba got a better idea. She would buy a pit bull puppy from the step-son of one of my father’s friends and train it herself.

You see that on step one, we’re already off track here, right?

The person who bred the puppies insisted that they needed to be rehomed right away. They had already been weened and were eight weeks old.

Now, that? Is not an eight-week-old puppy. Even as the runt of the litter, that’s not an eight-week-old pit bull puppy. Her eyes were barely opened and very, very blue. That unicorn toy that’s roughly the same size as she is? That’s a Beanie Baby. When I saw this dog, my first thought was, “Oh my god, she’s adorable!” and then, “Oh, shit. Those scars tell me she’s not a learner.” This puppy had no bite inhibition at all. At her first vet appointment, the doctor was horrified that she’d already been weened and separated. She backed up my first assertion: “This is not an eight-week-old puppy.”

Worst of all, Baba named the dog Sophie.

Come on, family. Get it together.

You know what’s not a great combination? Pit bull puppies with no bite inhibition and paper-thin, eighty-year-old skin. It became quickly apparent that Baba could not keep the dog and all of her blood. She had to choose between the two. Because our daughter had already fallen in love with her and because we have pit bulls (the best thing you can do for your pit bull pup is to let it spend time with other well-behaved pit bulls), we took the dog. I quickly changed her name to Puppers because what kind of jerk off would have a dog named after the main character of their books?

Anyway, you know how I said that there are no bad dogs, just bad training? I stand by that and just assume that Puppers is the exception that proves the rule. I don’t know what the means, actually, because I’m not good at math. I’m not saying she’s a bad dog, per se, but she’s definitely a dog who does not give a fuck. About anything. She does what she wants and if that lines up with what I want, great! If not, too bad. She has absolutely no drive to please anyone.

We have managed to teach her some things. Not to bite, for example. First of all, we had to change any command we used with her because she’d been told “no” so often already that she didn’t even hear it anymore. “Gentle,” I would say in a soothing tone as I separated the jaws of serrated puppy teeth sawing through the flesh on my forearms, “I only like gentle dogs.” Eventually, that worked well enough to remind her to stop jumping up on people, too. I mean, at least forty percent of the time. And she doesn’t bite anymore, but she does start to bite. To correct this, I say sternly, “No pit bull face!” Pits can have a real scary looking face if they bare their teeth and they’re a breed of dog that just can’t get away with that nonsense.

One of the ways Puppers has devised on her own to curb her biting is to grab a toy, press it up against the person or other animal she wants to bite, then bite the toy. Which is pretty smart, I guess, and a great alternative to having to get the cat’s head out of her mouth. However, the cat does not appreciate having a toy jammed forcefully into her side or face, so this doesn’t always work out. Despite their perceived peacefulness in the photo above, their relationship is tumultuous at best. As a result, we often have to break up the fights resulting from Puppers’s enthusiastic, often humping-based, attempts at friendship. “Gentle!” and “She doesn’t like that!” tend to work more than the cat’s shrieking, hissing, and needle-sharp claws. Pain seems to be no behavioral deterrent at all, judging by the number of times she’s had run-ins with stinging insects, only to go back for more.

I really didn’t want another dog. At the time we adopted her, Puppers was our fourth dog, when we had just started preparing ourselves to be down to two. My seventeen-year-old beagle passed a few months after Puppers came to live with us and brought us back to three. Deep in mourning for the dog that was rarely found more than two feet from me at any time and fed up from trying to train a beast that still drew blood from me on a daily basis, I thought I was never going to love Puppers. But then, she got big enough to be allowed upstairs. Every morning, Mr. Jen would let her into the bedroom as I slept and she would attack me with love, burrowing under my head, frantically licking my face, then tunneling under the covers to snuggle, her tail thumping wildly. No matter where I go or what I do, when I get back, she’s thrilled to see me. She’s big enough now that she no longer sleeps in her crate and consistent learning/grudging acceptance of our silly rules has earned her the right to sleep in bed with me, snuggled up against my butt, so now I wake up to much calmer puppy snuggles. Then I remember how much I so didn’t want to take on another dog and how I was sure I would resent this one for being an ill-behaved little monster.

As I write this, Puppers had to be scolded for eating a tube of paint. She was remorseless.

This dog is naughty and terrible and I love her to bits. I hope hearing a little bit about her brightened your day because IDK about anyone else but my brain is flippin’ fried so this is about as high concept as I can be right now.

The Creepy Waco Story

Welcome to the weirdest story that I finally have permission to share. The family lore almost as freaky, at least, to me, as our old haunted house. The story I promised on Twitter in the middle of the night when I was watching that Waco miniseries. That’s right. Seventeen-year-old has given his blessing. I am allowed to tell you…

The Creepy Waco Story.

When my now seventeen-year-old turned about three, we were on an errand to the post office. He couldn’t read. He pointed to the sign warning that firearms can’t be carried in the building and said, “That means you can’t have a gun in the post office.” Since there’s a picture of a gun with a slashed red circle over it, I didn’t think it was that weird that he got the gist of it. Then he said, “It’s that way in Texas, too.”

I decided to play along. “Is it?” After all, he knew Texas existed; he had aunts and uncles who lived there.

He went on, “It was that way when I lived there a long time ago.”

“When was that?” I asked because it was keeping him from being wild in the post office.

“Oh, a long time ago,” he informed me sagely. “Like six weeks ago.”

We did our post office business and got into the car, where he continued on the subject. “If you have guns in Texas the bad guys will shoot you. I got in a shootout.”

Obviously, he’d seen a cowboy movie or something. “Well, it’s a good thing you’re okay,” I told him.

Very quietly, he said, “No, I wasn’t.”

Weird response.

After that day at the post office, all my kid could talk about was Texas. He wanted to go to Texas, where he used to live. He wanted to go to Texas, where the shootout happened. Where do you want to live when you grow up? Texas. If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be? Texas. And not because he wanted to see the family members there. He was adamant that he wanted to go to Texas because he used to live there.

This went on for a long time. A really, really long time. Longer than six weeks. All the way into Kindergarten where at six-years-old he made a book about himself. The teacher printed out the pages. It was up to my kid to fill out the answers, with my help, and bring it back to be made into a real, bound book with laminated covers.

From the first page, things didn’t go great:

“Wow,” I said when he showed me the picture. “What’s happening here?”

“That’s my house in Texas,” he said, pointing out the different floors. “That’s where only the girls live. That’s where only the boys live.”

“And…what’s the helicopter?” I asked, getting serious creepy-crawlies.

“That’s when the shoot out happened.”

The shoot out, he explained, happened when helicopters came and people shot guns into the house. There are two doors on the front of the building. This was somehow significant to him but at six-years-old he couldn’t quite articulate it so I still have no idea what he meant. There are two hash marks, one indicating a window and another a random spot on the building. Those were important, too, but again he didn’t have any input as to why. But the bottom line was, there were bad guys and helicopters and they shot and exploded his house.

“You are not going to believe what I’m about to send you!” I told Bronwyn Green over the phone. I took a photo of the drawing with my digital camera, put the SD card into my laptop, transferred the file, and emailed it to Bronwyn, all while we were still on the phone with me just saying, “Trust me, I’ll tell you after you see the picture.” Seriously, that’s how much our lives have changed in a decade. THAT was what I had to do to send someone a photo in 2008.

Bronwyn opened the file and said, “Oh…my…god.”

“What would you say that is?” I asked.

“I would say your kid drew a picture of Waco.”

I told her all the stuff he’d said about the bad guys and the fire and the shootout; she’d heard the history of his Texas obsession before. “Is it possible he heard of Waco somewhere and he’s pretending?”

But we couldn’t figure out where a Kindergartener would have just randomly stumbled over shit about Waco, especially without me noticing. It was 2008, it wasn’t really a hot topic, even though I was pretty conservative back then. And even if he had, he’d been talking about the shootout in Texas for years. Complicating the issue, he insisted that it was his house, but that he was a policeman or a sheriff. I don’t know enough about the Branch Davidians to know if there were any former law enforcement who lived there. But it started to feel real past-lifey.

I weighed the pros and cons of showing my kid any Waco pictures because what if that started a conversation that I was in no way freaking prepared to have with a six-year-old when I was just twenty-eight. I settled on showing him a picture of the complex that didn’t have evidence of the raid in any way. I said, “Hey, look at this.”

“That’s my house!” He was totally psyched. “That’s my house in Texas.”

A few months later, my husband’s cousin in San Antonio got married. Because I’d just had my second child a few months earlier, I stayed home and Mr.Jen took Child the Elder so I wouldn’t have to juggle them both. Of course, the kid was over the moon. Finally, he was going back to Texas, where he used to live before I was his mommy (another weird phrase both of my kids have flung around, weirdly)!

Now, they were nowhere near Waco. They were in San Antonio the whole time. But when they returned, my kid’s obsession with Texas was cured. He wasn’t disappointed in Texas or anything. He’d just been there. Dream realized. Bucket list complete.

When he got older, I mentioned it to him and showed him the picture he’d drawn.

He didn’t remember anything about it.

State of the Trout: How quarantine will affect my release schedule going forward.

This is such a weird time, isn’t it? Every writer I know has been talking about how they can’t focus on their work and they’re finding themselves revisiting old projects or scattering their thoughts over four or more at a time. It’s totally uncharted territory for many of us. We’re all sort of used to having this issue during times of stress, mental and physical health challenges, life stuff, etc. We’re also used to knowing deeply in our hearts that we’re the only one who has ever experienced this because every single other author in the world has never, ever had to take weeks off from work and just stare at the walls and those of us who do that are lazy frauds because we can’t expend the rigorous mental energy it takes to focus on a pretend world inside our heads. And now we’re all feeling exactly that same way and asking each other, “Is it just me?”

Nope. It’s just everybody.

I’m sure this applies to more than just writers but as this post is all about me, the center of the universe, I’m just giving the writer perspective. This chaotic inability to corral thoughts and feelings and make them into interesting words in an order that makes sense has actually been kind of good for me because it’s forcing me to confront some truths I was avoiding and, in the process, making myself miserable. I’ve been open about the fact that I’m struggling to finish The Daughter. I’ve been working on it for almost a year now. Yes, I had a serious mental health crisis that postponed the release. Yes, I have struggled with writing a billionaire romance in a world where billionaires are killing the planet and everyone we love. Yes, I’ve made it clear that internal politics within the genre have changed my feelings toward romance. But a couple of weeks ago, I admitted something to myself that I had been avoiding thinking about for a long, long time.

The Daughter will be the last Sophie Scaife book.

It broke my heart to type that sentence, by the way. I’ll probably cry like a baby when I hit publish on this post. But it’s time to face facts. I’ve been writing this series for something like eight years now, haven’t I? Isn’t that weird, that I can’t even remember? And that’s what’s taking me so long to write the book. I don’t want to let them go. I love these characters. They’re full-time residents of my mind. And I’m grieving because I know I can’t keep the story going. Their happily ever after is going to happen in this book, and I’m going to have to move on.

That scares the absolute shit out of me.

Years ago, I wrote a series of vampire novels that consumed my entire being. Like, all I thought about from the moment I woke up until the moment I went to sleep were these characters and the world I’d created for them. I had so much enthusiasm, especially writing that first book. I knew that because it was something special to me, it would be special to other people. When it got published, I tattooed the heroine’s initials on my wrist. But how could I ever forget Carrie and Nathan and Max and Bella and Cyrus and Ziggy and all the characters that I hardly ever think about now? I was never going to forget them. But I did. And that’s going to happen with Sophie and Neil and El-Mudad and Holli and Deja and Rudy and Valerie.

And I’m not ready. I’m not ready for them to fade away. I’m certainly not ready to grieve the end of a series while I’m in a constant state of grief over [insert frantic gesticulations to indicate every fucking thing around the world]. Since I’m not ready, I can’t make any progress. And the more time that passes, the worse the imposter syndrome becomes, and the harder it is to fight around the block, the harder it is to push.

So, as much as it pains me to disappoint people who have been waiting for it, I have to put The Daughter on hold. Again.

I promise you: it will come. It’s completely outlined, researched, and about 3/4 finished. It won’t be five years. I’m not George R.R. Martin-ing this shit. But for right now, I need to focus on other stuff. Escapist stuff, not just from the current state of the world, but from the reality that this is the last time I’ll be with these characters. I fell in love with them. I didn’t want to let them go and that was holding me back. Now, I need to grapple with that before I can finish the book.

In the meantime, I’m going to start shifting my focus away from billionaires. Jenny Trout is going to continue writing about centaurs and will be releasing the YA serial Nightmare Born in ebook and paperback (before, you could only read it on Radish). Abigail Barnette will have a series of stand-alone, small-town romance novellas set in the fictional Upper Peninsula town of Blackhawk Bay. And some of Abigail Barnette’s out-of-print backlist will be published under a new pen name, beginning with my 2011 vampire novel, In The Blood.

Yup. I absolutely chose that pen name because I’m a Lucifer fan girl.

Why a new pen name? Because I want to keep Abigail Barnette a name where you know you’re getting romance with overall healthy messages. Jennifer Morningstar will be writing more dark erotica/erotic horror/paranormal erotica and Jenny Trout doesn’t like it when books with extreme content or dodgy topics are miscategorized as erotic romance because Jenny Trout does not like it when she buys a book and it romanticizes stuff that is super harmful to romanticize. Also, it’s for Jenny Trout’s personal comfort level with how she marketed her own work in the past; “Can a human consent to a vampire who is capable of mind control?” was a thought that came up when considering what to do with In The Blood and Ravenous once the rights reverted back to Abigail Barnette. There will always be content warnings for readers who don’t want certain topics sprung on them, but readers who aren’t interested in straight out erotica or erotic horror will know, oh, hey. Jennifer Morningstar. Fuck those books, I’m sticking with the warm fuzzies.

So, that’s what’s been going on in my world while the world outside is in shambles. I truly apologize to anyone disappointed by the postponement of The Daughter but please understand, it’s coming from a place of love. I love those characters as much as you do and I’m going to grieve the end with you. Unfortunately, I just have to do it before I can finish the damn book.