Here’s the thing. I’m pretty good about let­ting some things slide — you kinda have to be when you’re a writer. I mean, hello, just look at any bad review. If some­one doesn’t like what you’ve writ­ten, there’s lit­tle you can do you change their mind. So let it go (eas­ier said than done, of course, but I’ve had practice).

But, when peo­ple have the wrong infor­ma­tion or the wrong idea about some­thing, well that’s a dif­fer­ent story. I have to put things right.

Ever since I announced that Grand Cen­tral Pub­lish­ing was push­ing back the release date of Shoot­ing Scars to August 20th, I’ve got­ten a hell of a lot of back­lash. This was to be expected  - in fact I voiced this con­cern to my edi­tor and she under­stood. But this was their deci­sion, not mine and I stand by them because I believe they know what they’re doing (read to the end to find out what that is) and HELL they are MY pub­lish­ers. This is my dream! Of course, they don’t deal with the backlash…I do.

And, frankly, in some cases like on Face­book or Goodreads, it’s been a bit…harsh. Like, you want to hurt me kind of harsh (and I am a fairly del­i­cate flower, so…)

Look, I under­stand being dis­ap­pointed. I’M dis­ap­pointed. I’m used to the “press pub­lish” method of self-publishing just as you’re all used to “one-click” buy­ing. I’m used to fin­ish­ing a book, edit­ing it, pub­lish­ing it. I’m a very fast writer and a very fast pub­lisher and I like to get things out to you as soon as pos­si­ble (hence why I’ve pub­lished thir­teen books in two years). But, this isn’t how the real pub­lish­ers do things. They take their time (and this is a good thing).

So you can be dis­ap­pointed all you want and I’m right there with you. I GET IT! You can cry and scream and be sad about the book being pushed back and I’ll cry and be sad, too. Honestly.

But, and here’s where things get tricky; I’ve noticed some peo­ple get­ting really angry and some false infor­ma­tion about me going around. Most notably, that I’m in charge of Shoot­ing Scars release date, that I some­how have the power over the dates and that it’s my fault the book is pushed back– in short, I’m doing this on purpose.

I am not an ass­hole. I swear.

I like to think of myself as a fairly engag­ing and gen­er­ous author. Aside from try­ing to pub­lish a lot of books for peo­ple to enjoy, I also host a looooooot of give­aways. I try and answer all my emails. I pro­vide teasers. I give away ARCs (essen­tially FREE books) to a boat­load of peo­ple and not all of them blog­gers. Some of them just ordi­nary peo­ple who love to read.

I try and keep peo­ple happy because read­ers are my every­thing. So it breaks my heart when peo­ple get the idea that I’m doing this to piss peo­ple off or to just fuck with peo­ple or I don’t care about my read­ers or I don’t know what.

Does that sound like some­thing I would do? Look, I’ve pushed back release dates on my self-published books before and I’ve admit­ted it. I said “hey you know what, Come Alive is going to be pub­lished in June because I’m bump­ing up Shoot­ing Scars till May.” I got some back­lash on that too, but at least that was fair — I was in charge of the dates. It was in my con­trol. That’s what self-publishing is all about.

But Shoot­ing Scars is NOT a self-published book. The Artists Tril­ogy, start­ing June when GCP For­ever releases it under their name, is no longer self-published. It started out that way but was bought by a big ass big six pub­lisher (see: my dream), some­thing I always wanted for this series. Now my series can go beyond the 30K peo­ple who have bought a copy (thank you!) and now hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple might get hooked on the Ellie/Camden/Javier train through Grand Cen­tral Publishing’s skilled hands. They can reach faaaaar more peo­ple than I ever could on my own.

Because it is not self-published, I do not con­trol the release dates. I am just the writer. AND I LIKE IT. It’s fuck­ing NICE to be able to just write and not worry about any­thing (except piss­ing off peo­ple, appar­ently). I don’t have to man­age the release, I don’t have to plan the pub­lic­ity attack. I don’t have to find an edi­tor and a cover and for­mat the book. They do it all for me. That is the num­ber one draw of going with a pub­lisher (that and see­ing your book in book­stores everywhere).

I’m excited!

I just wish my read­ers were excited too. I know push­ing back the release dates have made the excite­ment lev­els drop and I hope to bal­ance them out with more give­aways and post­ing whole chap­ters and more teasers closer to the release date. I know it’s tough to wait for a book. In fact, if I could go back in time I would have stuck to the orig­i­nal release date for Shoot­ing Scars, which was July. Yup. I was first going to pub­lish it in July, but then I saw so many peo­ple upset over the cliffhanger and bumped it up to May. I hate dis­ap­point­ing peo­ple, but what can you do…

I hope that cleared things up, or at least made you real­ize I am not doing this, it is out of my hands. My read­ers mean every­thing to me (as I blogged about before, the rea­son I went with Grand Cen­tral Pub­lish­ing is because the release date for SS was going to be in the sum­mer and the third book would be pub­lished in 2013 as well.…most other pub­lish­ers would spread the series out more and push it back by a year — I was not going to sign any deal that would do that). I would never push­back the release date if I could help it.

Now, I must go back to writ­ing Shoot­ing Scars. Since I signed the deal, the dead­line got extended by two weeks so I’m still plow­ing through it.

**** For those inter­ested in the pub­lish­ing process, here’s why the real rea­son why the release got pushed back *****

Pub­lish­ing houses have a sched­ule of books to be released. This sched­ule is usu­ally made a YEAR in advance, at least. Remem­ber, self-published books going to tra­di­tional is a VERY new thing. Nor­mally, books are cho­sen through agents. The agent sub­mits the author’s work to the edi­tors, they look it over, and if they like it, they make a deal. The book then goes through a VERY long edit­ing process and a very long cover process and a very long mar­ket­ing cam­paign. Mary Sue’s book “Vam­pire boyfriend” would be sub­mit­ted to the pub­lish­ers and a year or two later the book would finally come out. You know how they work…look at any trilo­gies, like Diver­gent. Roth signed the deal for those books at least a year before they were pub­lished. And all the book releases are spaced a year apart.

Pub­lish­ing houses are slooooooow.

So let’s look at GCP. They prob­a­bly have a sched­ule all set for book releases this year. They can’t all release their books on the same days (always a Tues­day) because they won’t be able to donate as much mar­ket­ing time. They want every book to have their moment in the sun. So they space them out — this thriller here, this romance there. It’s been set like that at least a year in advance (remem­ber the major­ity of the books are tra­di­tion­ally pub­lished and are still going through the stages).

Then I come along. They want my books. They want to sell Sins and OES and mar­ket them. Nor­mally, a pub­lish­ing house would say “okay, let’s release Sins in June and then OES over Christ­mas. THEN Shoot­ing Scars the fol­low­ing June and since we are feel­ing gen­er­ous, the third book in Xmas 2014″- they want to donate as MUCH time as pos­si­ble into mar­ket­ing the shit out of Sins before the release the other books. Remem­ber, I’ve sold X amount already — they need to make their pur­chase of the books worth­while. They need to reach peo­ple too.

But GCP, god bless them, said, “Hey we’ll release Sins and OES in June, and then spend June and July mar­ket­ing them, then release Shoot­ing Scars in July and then book#3 in Octo­ber.” And then they are like SHIT…we have SO many books lined up for July, that it wouldn’t be fair for Mary Sue’s “Vam­pire Boyfriend” a book that’s been made ready for a year, to sud­denly get the shaft. We’ve devoted so much time and money to it already.

So then they say, okay, well if we won’t move Vam­pire Boyfriend, then we’ll move Shoot­ing Scars since we just bought it. It’s just a month. Peo­ple will under­stand. And that way, instead of try­ing to mar­ket both those books at the same time, we can give Vam­pire Boyfriend the spot­light and then the next month do the same for Shoot­ing Scars.

And that’s what hap­pened. Shoot­ing Scars got moved to August 20th because it was the bet­ter date for both them and I. Book #3 got moved to Octo­ber 15th for the same reason.

There was no spite here. Noth­ing mali­cious. It’s just the way they work and it’s 100% out of my con­trol. I am a new-ish author with a mod­est (by their stan­dards) amount of suc­cess who has never had a pub­lish­ing deal before. They are a big pub­lish­ing cor­po­ra­tion who have been doing this for decades. I trust them.

And I hope you trust me.

<3

First, let’s get the bad news out of the way.

I know I said Shoot­ing Scars was com­ing out in July, but it just got pushed back to August 20th. Why? Grand Cen­tral Publishing’s team felt they could do me and the book bet­ter jus­tice this way and donate more man­power to pub­lic­ity. It’s a pretty good rea­son that I think will ben­e­fit every­one in the end.

They know that you, the read­ers, will be dis­ap­pointed by this news and they want to appease you (and me!). I will be work­ing with GCP’s pub­lic­ity depart­ment to come up with some treats for you — maybe along the lines of post­ing the first chap­ter to soften that Sins cliffhanger blow? Maybe giv­ing away THREE Cam­den bracelets in this blog post? Well, that’s not a maybe…I’m going to per­son­ally do it, so keep read­ing to enter.

So there you go. August 20th is the offi­cial release date of Shoot­ing Scars (will be on Nook as well as Ama­zon and all the major e-retailers at the same time).

Book #3 Bold Tricks (work­ing title) is being released on Octo­ber 15th. Hey, just a two-month wait!

Sins & Nee­dles and On Every Street will both be taken over by the pub­lish­ers next month in early June. This ALSO means that On Every Street will finally be avail­able on Nook at that time.

Once again, I’m sorry to dis­ap­point you with this push­back but there’s obvi­ously very lit­tle that I can do about it. The pub­lish­ers said they’d try to get it pub­lished in July but some­times things don’t work out and they are try­ing to get things to work in my favor.

So, please, keep that in mind. It actu­ally hurts my soul to see read­ers being upset with me over this or upset in gen­eral. Your sup­port for me and my new pub­lish­ers is MUCH appreciated.

Mean­while, here’s the NEW cover for Sins & Needles.

Yup! It’s pretty much the same, except white font and my name is ridicu­lously big. So happy they kept the cover, I love it!

Have you missed all the teasers I’ve posted about Shoot­ing Scars so far? Take a look:

Back to the first “I want to make you happy” give­away. Three Cam­den bracelets here. I just got them today and am really happy with them!

The win­ners will receive one of these as well as a signed sur­prise goody! To enter, just leave a com­ment below and on May 14th (the date I hand in Shoot­ing Scars to my edi­tor!) and I’ll pick three win­ners. Open internationally!

I’m going to try and keep this short and sweet, like the Oscar accep­tance speeches are expected to be – but like them, don’t be sur­prised if I drone on and on and am cut off by the music.

I have accepted an offer by a major “Big Six” pub­lisher for The Artists Tril­ogy, which includes On Every Street, Sins & Nee­dles, Shoot­ing Scars and Bold Tricks (the ten­ta­tively titled last book). All books will be pub­lished this year in e-book for­mat and late 2014 in mass mar­ket paperback.

*con­fetti gun goes off*

This is THE dream of all dreams for me. I wrote my first novel in 2009 (Dark­house, EIT #1) and self-published it on May 13, 2011 (after a few more books were writ­ten). Since then, I have writ­ten and pro­moted 13 books and I NEVER ever thought this day would come. I always felt like my writ­ing was unno­ticed and under­ap­pre­ci­ated. I felt like the geeky kid who can’t sit at the cool kids table (and I still feel like this). I felt like the val­i­da­tion I needed, wanted, craved was always out of my hands, a dream belong­ing to some­one else.

I felt like this for two years. But I per­se­vered. I kept writ­ing, kept try­ing to do my best. I sac­ri­ficed sleep, friends, a social life, fit­ting into my clothes, spend­ing qual­ity time with fam­ily, exer­cise, trav­el­ing, EVERYTHING. I invested money in it that, for the longest time, I NEVER saw come back. I felt like a lone sol­dier, just work­ing her ass off, some­times while hold­ing down a day job and some­times while work­ing 10 hour days of just writ­ing until my brain started to bleed. It’s been hard. It’s been tough. No one ever said being an indie author was easy but I never thought it would be SO hard. I never thought I would lose so much in pur­suit of my dream.

But, slowly, even­tu­ally, after about a year and a half of sell­ing 0–20 copies of my books a month, some­thing changed. Thanks to blog­gers like Maryse, The Book­ish Babes and For­ever Young Adult, and the hard­core fans who have been there since the start, peo­ple started to notice Dex and Perry and Exper­i­ment in Terror.

And after they noticed that, they noticed Sage and Dawn from The Devil’s Metal.

And then they noticed Ellie and Cam­den (and Javier) and Sins & Needles.

And pub­lish­ers noticed it too.

So, finally, I feel like all my hard work is finally being rec­og­nized, finally pay­ing off. I’ve made my friends proud of me (they can point to the books when they come out in book­stores and say, “I know that dork!”), I’ve made my par­ents proud of me (they can tell their friends that their daugh­ter is “actu­ally” pub­lished, since the older gen­er­a­tion doesn’t really get the whole self-pubbing thing and our fam­ily over­seas will be able to pick up MY BOOKS at the air­ports), I’ve made my fiancé proud of me (who has seen me strug­gle for far too long) and I’ve made ME proud of me. Because I made it – I finally did it. I got a tra­di­tional pub­lish­ing deal. My books will be in book­stores every­where in 2014. I will have the back­ing of a huge cor­po­ra­tion and edi­tors who believe in me. I am PROUD of myself and all the blood that went into it.

But…and here was the ques­tion that always nagged at me since the begin­ning of nego­ti­a­tions – would my READERS be proud of me?

You see, dear read­ers, I was ter­ri­fied of telling you this. Because every­one knows now that books get pushed back when a pub­lisher takes them on. And from some of the angry com­ments I had already received from  peo­ple who hated the way Sins & Nee­dles ended, I knew I was going to make a lot of peo­ple mad at me. They weren’t going to be happy for me. They wouldn’t be proud. They would be upset that Shoot­ing Scars got pushed back from May and noth­ing else would matter.

So, I kept that thought at the fore­front of nego­ti­a­tions. If the book was going to be delayed more than I thought nec­es­sary, I wouldn’t sign the deal.

I’ll repeat: I would rather give up my dream than majorly dis­ap­point and anger my readers.

Thank­fully, it didn’t have to be that way. The pub­lisher under­stood how impor­tant it was to get Shoot­ing Scars out there. They didn’t want to delay it for the sake of delay­ing it (even though it does ben­e­fit them to do so). They under­stood. They are awe­some like that.

And so I said yes.

So here it is:

Shoot­ing Scars is get­ting delayed until July 2013 (iron­i­cally, that was the orig­i­nal release date I picked for the book before I moved it up to May). It’s just two months. It could have been a lot worse. It was the best I can do and believe me, that was the lat­est I would allow it to be pushed back.

On the plus side: the book will stay around the same price of Sins & Nee­dles (def­i­nitely indie-priced) AND the final book in the series will be pub­lished sooner than I had orig­i­nally planned. I was think­ing Novem­ber for Bold Tricks but it appears to be bumped up to Sep­tem­ber. So yes, more wait­ing in the short-term but less wait­ing in the long-term.

Now I know some of you are angry and I’ve been wait­ing for the retal­i­a­tion. And I under­stand the dis­ap­point­ment. I really do! I wish it could come out in May, too (though this does give me more time to work on it and make it amaz­ing). But as another author said to me, the true fans will wait. They will under­stand. And they will be proud of what you’ve accomplished.

I hope you’re all just as proud as I am

PS — Come Alive, the 7th Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror book is still com­ing out in June (mid-month it seems). I WILL have lots of awe­somely awe­some TAT (The Artists Tril­ogy) give­aways and swag plus lots of teasers to keep you game.

PPS I am doing a LOT of book sign­ings this year — there’s RT in May, Maryse’s Book Bash in Orlando in June. There’s an east coast sign­ing or two (or three) later on. Even one in the desert. Since I will soon have to pull my paper­backs of Sins & Nee­dles and On Every Street very soon — and the paper­backs from the pub­lisher won’t be out till next year — I advise you to buy them from Ama­zon now, while you can.

Link to Sins & Nee­dles paperback

Link to On Every Street paperback

PPS I will let you know the name of the pub­lisher once the ink on the con­tract has dried

<3

Paper­back copies of On Every Street are now avail­able from Cre­ate­Space, and later this week, Amazon.

These paper­backs won’t be avail­able for very long, same goes for Sins & Nee­dles, so if you haven’t bought a paper­back copy yet, I would strongly advise you to do so or for­ever hold your peace

Link to On Every Street Paper­backs — Createspace

Link to Sins & Nee­dles Paper­back — Createspace

Link to Sins & Nee­dles Paper­back — Amazon

I know June is a long ways off (at least it might feel that way to some peo­ple — not me!) but since I *sorta* leaked the cover to this at the Boston Author Event, I fig­ured I should make it official.

And with­out fur­ther ado, here is the cover for Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror #7 — Come Alive:

Blurb:

It’s one thing to bring the woman you love back into your life. It’s another to try and keep her there. For Dex Foray, con­vinc­ing Perry Palomino to open her­self to their bur­geon­ing rela­tion­ship has been more chal­leng­ing than hunt­ing ghosts, bat­tling demons and stalk­ing Sasquatch com­bined. Add in the fact that the only way they can keep their Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror show run­ning is to take on a third part­ner in the form of the mys­te­ri­ous Max­imus Jacobs — all while inves­ti­gat­ing a sin­is­ter voodoo sect in New Orleans — and you’ve got the per­fect South­ern storm and a recipe for dis­as­ter. Luck­ily, Dex has never been one to back down, even when his life –and heart — are on the line.

Come Alive is told from Dex’s POV.

Release date: Some­time in June (I’ll let you know when next month).

Inspi­ra­tion: Like I do with most books, this is named after a song. These lyrics from the Foo Fight­ers “Come Live” really res­onate for me:

Noth­ing more to give

I can finally come alive
Your life into me
I can finally breathe
Come alive

I lay there in the dark
Open my eyes
You saved me the day that you came alive

Despite the jet-lag (fly­ing from Seat­tle to Boston ain’t no quick hop), the sleep-deprivation (per­haps I shouldn’t have had all that wine at the hotel bar the night before the book sign­ing) and being totally out my league (watch­ing the big authors like Colleen Hoover and SC Stephens, I was kind of freak­ing out), the Boston Author Event was a com­plete success.

Yes, I was loopy and exhausted. Yes, over a thou­sand peo­ple had to wait in the frick­ing freez­ing cold for hours just to meet the authors. Yes, I ran out of books pretty much right away (I hon­estly didn’t think any­one would want to buy Sins & Nee­dles!). But man, was it fun.

Nat­u­rally it was great to meet fel­low authors I like and admire, such as Made­line Shee­han, E.L. Montes, Amber Lynn Natusch, Kendall Grey. It was just as good to meet the blog­gers I love such as Autumn from the Autumn Review, Aes­tas, Chris­tine from Cocaine and Cup­cakes, Megan from the Book Asy­lum (who helped put on the fab event), Kait from YA Vix­ens, Taryn from My Secret Romance, Sherre from Beck­oned by Books and more. But the BEST part was meet­ing fans, many who trav­eled just to see me, many whom I’d talked to before but never got a chance to meet, peo­ple like the EIT street team (Robin, Megan, Brenna and now Stephanie), Paula, San­dra, Jamie, Tressa, Nicole and count­less oth­ers. I also got to meet new fans, which was really cool. REALLY REALLY COOL.

The event was well-organized (albeit slightly chaotic) thanks to the vol­un­teers like Becky and Sarah, Mari­bel, Katie, Heather and more who were firm and tire­less with the bur­geon­ing crowd. Hell, they did a bet­ter job than some of the secu­rity team!

And I had the best table part­ner in the world, my fiance Scott, who fed me, gave me water, snuck me in Jack Daniels, han­dled the cash and man­aged to take a pic­tures of many of the peo­ple who came to see me. He even signed a book or two haha (for the Dex lovers).

So, with­out fur­ther ado, here are the photos…you’ll grow tired of see­ing my face after the third pic­ture lol (and watch for the awe­some Red Rum neck­lace Robin gave me!)

How AWESOME is this beau­ti­ful Sins & Nee­dles card she made me??

On Every Street is now live on Ama­zon and Smash­words - just 99 cents for release week

Two things to make this Fri­day more awesome:

The win­ner of the Dex Prize pack (which included a whole bunch of awe­some Dex merch…hopefully the win­ner can give us a pic­ture of her and all the merch when she gets it)…is.…

Holly, who left this com­ment on why Dex should be her book BF:

Dex is hands down my book boyfriend of the year. Because I haven’t felt this drawn to a char­ac­ter in…well a damn long time, if ever. He is a snarky son of a bitch, acts like he’s a badass, but most of the time he is far more vul­ner­a­ble than he wants any­one to know he is. I love the fact that he now embraces his feel­ings for Perry and strives to be a good enough man to deserve her. And hell…I love how truly per­verted and twisted he is. Just when I think I have him all fig­ured out, he throws another curve ball in the mix. And I love that.

So.…to sum up. Dex is my ulti­mate book boyfriend. He might be a saras­tic ass­hat at times, but I love him just the same.

CONGRATS HOLLY! I’ll be email­ing you!

OH and you wanted a lengthy ON EVERY STREET TEASER? Check out Maryse’s book blog NOW.

So the peo­ple have spoken…you want this first chap­ter. And I must deliver.

Keep in mind that this takes place six years before Sins & Nee­dles. As such, it doesn’t con­tain any spoil­ers for those who haven’t read Sins & Needles…I’ve engi­neered On Every Street so that it could act like a standalone.

Enjoy!

On Every Street — An Artists Tril­ogy Pre­quel Novella #0.5 — com­ing March 12

(unpub­lished ver­sion, sub­ject to change)

CHAPTER ONE

I’d been watch­ing the man for almost a month now, the exotic man with the peridot-colored eyes. From a dis­tance they’d always sparkled like the gem­stones, but now that I was in the same room with him, I could see they had an amber tinge to them, ren­der­ing them almost reptilian.

That should have been my first warn­ing, that this was all a hor­ri­ble idea. It was too risky and I was too emo­tion­ally involved. But I felt I didn’t have a choice. The man with the yellow-green eyes was just feet away from me, rep­re­sent­ing the first step toward free­dom. Vengeance was a ter­ri­ble prison.

“Can I help you, miss sun­shine?” the bald­ing clerk at the counter asked, cut­ting into my thoughts. I tore my eyes away from the man, who was now sit­ting with a cup of tea in the cor­ner, and looked at the clerk with an awk­ward smile. I felt a flush heat my cheeks, know­ing I’d been caught star­ing. What had Gus taught me again? Never let your thoughts drift. Guess at the time I hadn’t known I’d be stalk­ing a Latino heartthrob.

“Yes, sorry,” I replied dumbly. “Can I get a medium latte? Please?”

He nod­ded, flash­ing me a warm smile as I handed over the exact change. I stuffed a dol­lar into the tip jar, mak­ing sure he saw it before he started on my cof­fee. Peo­ple in Mis­sis­sippi were as friendly as they ever were, way friend­lier than back in Cal­i­for­nia. It felt like I was vis­it­ing the state for the first time, despite hav­ing lived here for a few years when I was a child. But I sup­pose life col­ors how you see the world, and the Mis­sis­sippi I knew back then was com­pletely black and white. Now there was a hue, that dan­ger­ous cit­ron I could feel on my back.

I took in a deep breath and resisted the urge to turn around. Instead, I pulled up my long blonde hair that was stick­ing to my sweaty neck and glanced out the door of the cof­fee shop. My rusted Chevy truck was sit­ting just out of view. I won­dered if I was get­ting too ahead of myself. I’d been fol­low­ing the man from his house to his, well, work, nearly every day, and there was a huge chance that he’d rec­og­nize me or my truck. I had been care­ful, remem­ber­ing every­thing that Gus had drilled into my head, even remem­ber­ing what my par­ents had once taught me, that there was no room for error in a con. But this was unlike any con I’d done in the last few months. This was the big one. This was the one that meant some­thing. This meant hav­ing my life back.

I could still feel his eyes though, burn­ing into me, like my back was as flam­ma­ble as parch­ment paper. I had to remind myself it didn’t mean he knew. I was wear­ing my most ass-supporting jeans and a tissue-thin tank top that showed off my tan. My hair was nat­u­rally blonde, but I’d got­ten a few lay­ers cut in and cham­pagne high­lights added just the other day. My makeup was as nat­ural as I could muster with­out being bor­ing. I’d pre­pared for today because I wanted the man to stare at me. I wanted his atten­tion because he sure as hell had mine.

The clerk handed over my cof­fee, and I took a quick sip before gath­er­ing my courage. This would go down a hell of a lot bet­ter with whisky in it. I slowly turned around and let my gaze do a sweep of the room, as if I was look­ing for some­where to sit. The man was no longer star­ing at me—perhaps he never was—and was relax­ing in the wicker chair, flip­ping through a mag­a­zine. He held his cup of tea in such a way that it exposed his large watch. Even from where I was stand­ing, I knew the thing had prob­a­bly cost a for­tune. When I was younger my par­ents taught me how to spot the real ones from the fake ones. They’d also taught me how to steal them.

The man was the epit­ome of the word debonair. The watch, com­bined with his smooth linen shirt and clean, dark jeans, sug­gested under­stated ele­gance, a man from money. But his pose, the way he held him­self, reminded me of a lion on his down time, rel­ish­ing his relax­ation, know­ing he still ruled the land. I’d had such thoughts about him before, but now, up close, I could just feel the power vibrat­ing off of him, fill­ing the room.

I wasn’t the only one to notice this either. Men in the café shot him curi­ous glances, as if they should know who he was, while the women timidly tucked their hair behind their ears, eyes dart­ing to him and back again. I couldn’t blame them. The man wasn’t stereo­typ­i­cally hand­some and yet you couldn’t stop star­ing at him. At least I couldn’t. And that was going to be a problem.

I spied a cou­ple get­ting up from the couch near­est to him and took the oppor­tu­nity. I walked slowly over, and gen­tly, ever so casu­ally, took my seat on the couch. I placed my cof­fee on the table that sat between us, tak­ing a moment to let my eyes feast on him. He was so close now, just a cou­ple of feet between us. I felt like I was at the zoo, the glass between me and the beast sud­denly removed.

He was even more strik­ing from this dis­tance. His eyes moved back and forth as they scanned the page, spark­ing with intel­li­gence, the color of bud­ding leaves. His mouth was wide, twisted in a smirk, and his nose looked slightly too wide for his face and had obvi­ously been bro­ken a few times. His skin was golden and so smooth that I had to recal­cu­late how old he was. Per­haps he was closer to my age than I had orig­i­nally thought. Still, he didn’t look like any twenty-year-old. He didn’t look like any­one I’d ever seen before.

He brushed his shaggy dark hair behind his ears, his palm graz­ing his cheek­bones, and I had the chance to look away. To not get caught gawk­ing at him. To save myself. But I couldn’t help it. I was naïve and young and caught in the spark that would cre­ate the flames.

He looked up from his mag­a­zine and our eyes met. I’ve never believed in love at first sight. I barely believed in lust at first sight. I didn’t believe in any­thing except right­ing all the wrongs in my life. But at that moment, this man saw me. The real me under­neath the bomb­shell mask. I felt like he must have seen everything.

And that’s who his smile was for. It reached through me and did some­thing to my heart, to my lungs, to my nerves. It pulled at me, tugged some­where deep inside, like a win­dow shade being drawn open. It was dan­ger­ous to love that feel­ing, but I did.

“Hello,” he said, his Mex­i­can accent light and melodic. His teeth were white, his smile cap­ti­vat­ing, and it took every brain cell to remem­ber why I was there and what I was doing. And that my name was no longer Ellie Watt. It was Eden White. And I had a job to do.

I gave him a pretty smile and knew that damn flush was com­ing back on my cheeks. I had inex­pe­ri­ence writ­ten all over my face.

“Hi,” I replied, lean­ing for­ward to pick up my cof­fee, hop­ing that he’d get a good look at my chest. I didn’t have the biggest breasts, but they looked down­right perky in this top, and I was cer­tain that I could poke his eyes out with my nip­ples. Thank god for air conditioning.

But his eyes never strayed from mine. Either this man had man­ners or he wasn’t into women. I’d never con­sid­ered that sce­nario in the last cou­ple of weeks. Per­haps my attempt to get to know him would back­fire. What use was hav­ing wom­anly charms if he pre­ferred them the cock variety?

“I’m Javier,” he said, extend­ing his hand with the watch on it, the rich brown leather gleam­ing under the lights.

Javier. He now had a name. And from the way his eyes were still cut­ting into mine, how his grin lit up his face like he’d just won the lot­tery, I knew Javier wasn’t immune to women after all.

I ignored the but­ter­flies in my core and placed my hand in his. His shake was strong and warm with confidence.

“I’m Eden,” I said, try­ing to feed off his self-assurance. I was Eden now. It had taken me a while to get used to my fake name, but now it was slip­ping on like fine silk. Maybe pre­tend­ing to be some­one else would be eas­ier than I thought.

His thumb rubbed against my knuckle, softly and sweetly, before he let go of my hand. I fought the urge to bite my lip. The young school­girl shit prob­a­bly wouldn’t jibe with him, even though that’s really all I was. I wasn’t in school, but around men I was as green as a young filly. And this man’s touch was ignit­ing some­thing in me that I’d never felt before.

“Nice to meet you, Eden,” he said smoothly. I watched his mouth as he talked, feel­ing a blan­ket of warmth coat me as he pro­nounced my new name. Shit. I was sup­posed to be seduc­ing him, wasn’t I? Not the other way around.

“So what brings you here?” he asked, lean­ing for­ward on his knees, his hands clasped together.

I swal­lowed hard and raised my cup at him. “Cof­fee?” My heart began to beat louder, whoosh­ing in my ears.

He smirked. “I can see that. It’s just that I’ve never seen you here before. I come here every day and I think I’d remem­ber some­one as beau­ti­ful as you.”

Oh, this Javier—he was good. It didn’t sur­prise me, con­sid­er­ing the way I’d seen him act­ing at his “job.” Or, to put it bet­ter, the way his col­leagues acted around him. I should have known he’d be a smooth oper­a­tor with the ladies.

I quickly recalled my story. “I just moved to Ocean Springs and thought I’d check this place out. Seems to be one of the more pop­u­lar cof­fee shops.”

The cor­ner of his mouth twitched and his eyes nar­rowed devi­ously as he appraised what I said. I swear, my heart could have replaced the drum­mer for Slayer at that moment.

“Inter­est­ing,” he commented.

Inter­est­ing, I think I’ve seen you in your truck, sit­ting out­side my boss’s house all day? Inter­est­ing, I think you’ve used a fake name? Inter­est­ing, I think you’re lying through your teeth? I was pre­pared for him to elab­o­rate by say­ing any of those.

But he tilted his head, a small gold chain neck­lace nes­tled in his shirt col­lar catch­ing my eye, and said with a low­ered voice, “Do you believe in fate, Eden?”

Well that caught me off guard. Maybe that was his inten­tion. I frowned and straight­ened up, unsure how to pla­cate this strange animal.

“Some­times I do,” I man­aged to say, try­ing to keep the breezi­ness in my voice.

“I think it was fate that brought you to me today,” he said. The hairs at the back of my neck stood straight up and I knew I couldn’t blame the air con­di­tion­ing on that.

“You do?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

He nod­ded, cool and con­fi­dent. He sat back in his chair and drummed his fin­gers on his leg, watch­ing me so closely, too closely.

“I think you’ll look back at this in a few years and you’ll know what I know.”

“And what’s that?” I asked, for­get­ting every­thing I’d been plan­ning to do, just so com­pletely and utterly enthralled.

“You’ll have to find out for your­self. Bet­ter yet, I can get you started. This Friday.”

My face must have looked blank because he went on with a wry smile, “I’m going to take you out on a date.”

Shit. That was fast.  That was easy. And extremely cocky of him.

“How do you know I don’t have a boyfriend?” I asked him, won­der­ing if my sin­gle­dom and vir­gin­hood was stamped all over me.

“Because I don’t believe in acci­dents,” he said, lick­ing his lips. “But I do believe you’ll say yes.”

I had half a nerve to make my lie worse, to tell him I had a boyfriend and that I didn’t want to go out with him, a total stranger. But that would defeat the whole pur­pose of the long con, the rea­son I had sought him out. Besides, those lips and those eyes, that swag­ger in his lilt­ing voice, was ignit­ing a fire in me where I’d never been burn­ing before.

I was doomed.

“Okay,” I said shyly. He gave me that prize-winning grin again and pulled out a busi­ness card from his full wal­let, hand­ing it to me.

I turned it over in my hands, feel­ing the grooved paper.

“Javier Bernal,” I read out loud. “Consultant.”

And that was it. Just his phone number.

“Who do you con­sult?” I asked, look­ing up at him.

I could have sworn his face went rigid for a sec­ond, but maybe because I was look­ing for it. Maybe because I knew he wasn’t a con­sul­tant. Maybe because I knew who he really was, part of a drug car­tel, work­ing as a hench­man for one of the most pow­er­ful drug lords on the Gulf Coast. Maybe because I knew he had more secrets to hide than I did.

But he just shrugged and said, “Peo­ple who need it.”

He got out of his chair with all the ease of a pan­ther and tapped the card with a well-manicured fin­ger. “Call me. Soon.”

Then he left the store, toss­ing his tea in the waste­bas­ket with­out looking.

It took a good few min­utes for me to calm down and get my heart­beat back to an accept­able level. Ever since I left Cal­i­for­nia and came here, I knew what I had set out to do. I had pre­pared for it as much as I could. I was going to find Travis, the man who scarred me as a child when my parent’s scam went wrong. I was going to get to him by seduc­ing some­one close to him, some­one who could get me in close. Then I was going to have my revenge, the only thing that had kept me going over the years.

It’s just when I choose Javier as my mark, I never thought my mark would choose me. Because that’s what Javier had just done. I wanted to win over his heart so I could get what I wanted. But I had a feel­ing he was about to get to my heart first.