GoodReads Giveaway

GoodReads.com and Dark­house have teamed up for a give­away. Been think­ing about get­ting in on the adven­tures of ghost hunters Perry Palomino and Dex Foray, but haven’t taken the plunge yet? Now might be a great time to enter this give­away for one of five paper­back copies avail­able. See below for details and to enter! Con­test closes May 31st, 2011.

Goodreads Book Give­away

Darkhouse by Karina Halle

Dark­house

by Karina Halle

Give­away ends May 31, 2011.

See the give­away details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

A slice of time

Writ­ing a book is sim­ple. It really is. If you have a story, some tal­ent, and a whole lot of pas­sion, writ­ing should come eas­ily to you. I mean, sure, there are times you’ll want to bang your head against the com­puter (or just chuck it out the win­dow, or drown your sor­rows in a bot­tle of Jack Daniels), but when you look back on it — wow, writ­ing was a trip.

Then there is sell­ing. In today’s world, where pub­lish­ing houses are bat­ter­ing down the hatches and a few writ­ers are mak­ing money on lucky breaks (tal­ent + good tim­ing = luck), actu­ally sell­ing books has become a fight to the death. This isn’t any­thing new, of course. Go into any book­store and you’ll see shelves of books you have never heard of. What makes peo­ple pick a book off the shelf and say “this one”? Even with rec­om­men­da­tions, a nice cover, fancy place­ment, or media blitzes, there are still no guar­an­tees that your book will sell.

Sell­ing books has never been as easy as sell­ing music, or ideas, or movies. A song you can down­load and lis­ten to in three min­utes. A movie takes two hours of your day. An idea can be had in seconds.

But a book…a book is time. When you sell a book, you are, essen­tially, sell­ing a slice of time. The time it takes to read that book. And time, in this day and age, is a lux­ury. You are ask­ing peo­ple to essen­tially indulge. To take a moment out of their busy lives to not only buy the book, but to actu­ally read the book. You are ask­ing for a com­mit­ment in a divorce-a-minute society.

No won­der sell­ing books is so hard.

I guess the secret here is to find out a way to say “Hey, my book is worth a slice of your busy day. It’s worth the time spent on your com­mute to work, it’s worth your evening rit­ual with tea and a cookie. It’s worth being a com­pan­ion on your vaca­tion to Mexico.”

And it’s a gam­ble. No one likes to waste time.

But the risk might be worth it. And if it is, those are some moments in time that will enrich you. Or at least give you a pleas­ant diver­sion while wait­ing at the bus stop. Even if my books are just the lat­ter, I’m grate­ful that peo­ple have taken a slice of time out of their lives and given it to me.

Darkhouse — One week in…

Well, it’s been one week since Dark­house went on sale. This may have been the longest week ever. There’s some­thing so… anti-climatic about finally pub­lish­ing your work. All the months (years, actu­ally) of antic­i­pa­tion, sweat, blood, tears and then… now what? Luck­ily, I imme­di­ately left for a week of music and friends in San Fran­cisco, so I wasn’t left alone at home and ana­lyz­ing my book sales (which by the way, ain’t too shabby, considering).

Any­way, I’ll be back to being a pro­mot­ing machine as soon as I return home. But for now, I’m just kick­ing back and enjoy­ing the “down time.” And cool moments, such as the photo above, where Shan­non, the swell bar­tender at Polk Street bar Blur, asked to buy a copy of the book — so as long as I signed it. And sign it I did (hope you like it, Shan­non!). Actu­ally, I’ve been sell­ing a lot of in per­son copies. Sign­ing them for cer­tain peo­ple has been quite sur­real. And silly :)

Publication Day — The Aftermath

If you ever write a book (or get said book pub­lished), you really ought to do some­thing to cel­e­brate the occa­sion. Me? I got a tattoo.

I’m not much of a tat­too per­son, but last year, while in Fin­land, I got a tat­too of my favourite band on the back of my neck. It’s brought me noth­ing but amaz­ing luck, espe­cially with regards to my music jour­nal­ist career. I thought it was the only tat­too I’d ever get.

Until I men­tioned the Dark­house pub­li­ca­tion date to my friend Helen. She pointed out that many peo­ple get Fri­day the 13th tat­toos. Sud­denly, that’s all I wanted. A tat­too to com­mem­o­rate the pub­li­ca­tion of my first novel and the start of some­thing amazing.

So, yes­ter­day, I got the lit­tle 13 behind the ear. For some rea­son, it barely hurt, took less than 10 min­utes, and is really dis­crete. I love it, though. I think it’s going to bring me, and my books, noth­ing but good luck.

Also, now when my hair is up, I look pretty hard­core ;)

 

 

Author Karina Halle

Wel­come to Karina Halle’s Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror page. While this web­site focuses more on Perry Palomino and Dex Foray and their Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Series, you’ll find infor­ma­tion about the author and her other books. For Karina Halle’s author site, please click HERE.

WHAT ISDARKHOUSE” and the EXPERIMENT IN TERROR SERIES?

A para­nor­mal, super­nat­ural jour­ney with two unlikely ghost-hunters who must bat­tle not only spir­its but their attrac­tion to each other. Scooby Doo, this ain’t.

“Dark­house turned out unlike any­thing I’d expected. It drew me in from page one, with its easy-to-relate to, flawed but love­able char­ac­ters, its fast pace, the unpre­dictable plot twists and its eerie, sur­real atmos­phere. If you’re search­ing for the scari­est book of this sea­son, then search no more. Dark­house is exactly what you’re look­ing for.”I Heart Reading

I don’t think, short of being com­pletely ridicu­lous, I can encour­age you more strongly to read this series. It has quickly moved to the top of my favorites list” - The Book­ish Babes

Pur­chase on Kin­dle HERE and on Smash­words HERE and on NOOK here. Paper­backs avail­able HERE.