An interview with my characters + Giveaways!


I had my own copy of Red Fox signed by the per­son who inspired it –read on to learn more…

~~Over at abib­lios­phere I had the oppor­tu­nity to inter­view my char­ac­ters Perry Palomino and Dex Foray. It was weird. But fun. Come check it out at the post here.

~~I wrote about the chal­lenges that come with writ­ing a series of EIGHT BOOKS. Yeah, it can mess with your head a little…these char­ac­ters don’t dis­ap­pear after you’ve fin­ished writ­ing… read more at In the Name of Books

~~You know what else is chal­leng­ing? Mak­ing a BOOK TRAILER! I wrote about this at Keep­ing up with the Rheinlanders

~~There’s a few give­aways going on this week for BOTH copies of Dark­house and Red Fox. I believe you can win the paper­back copies here at Romanc­ing the Dark­side (and read a post about “Dex — the anti-hero”) and e-format copies at Naughty Between the Stacks (and read a post about sex).

More reviews are com­ing in!

Dark­house

~~ “With great lead char­ac­ters such as Perry and Dex, this was a book that was hard to put down. Halle puts an inter­est­ing and enter­tain­ing view within the para­nor­mal world filled with ghosts” 4.5/5 stars at Livin’ Life Through Books

~~“A super thrill ride of a book. I devoured this book, seri­ously I did not want to put it down. I’m a big fan of ghost sto­ries and ghost hunt­ing in gen­eral so pick­ing this up was a no-brainer for me” 5/5 stars at Get­ting Naughty Between the Stacks

~~“If I were to cre­ate a genre for this book it would be a YA/Spooky Chick­lit. What a com­bi­na­tion! Yet every­thing flowed well and the char­ac­ters were excep­tion­ally fun to read. Kind of like a grown up R. L. Stine” 4/5 stars at A Chick Who Reads

Red Fox

~~“This books takes Perry and Dex to New Mex­ico and smack dab into Navajo mythol­ogy. I’m not really up on my Native Amer­i­can Myths, but this was really inter­est­ing. Your pulled in not just by the case, which is fas­ci­nat­ing, but by the rela­tion­ship grow­ing between Perry and Dex” 5/5 stars at Get­ting Naughty Between the Stacks

~~“Remem­ber how much I loved Dark­house, which I reviewed a few days ago? Well, I think it’s pos­si­ble that I loved Red Fox just a lit­tle bit more. While Dark­house set the stage for bring­ing the char­ac­ters together, Red Fox really fleshed them out and made them more three-dimensional…There were def­i­nitely some creepy moments, but to me the story was more about devel­op­ing the strange rela­tion­ship between Dex and Perry than advanc­ing the super­nat­ural angle. No com­plaints there though, as that was what I was hop­ing for, and the action came often enough to keep me engrossed in the over­all plot” 5/5 stars at Pretty Opinionated.com

Oh yeah, and over the week­end I inter­viewed drum­mer John Stanier (who was in Hel­met, is in Bat­tles and is one of the best drum­mers out there…like, can’t take your eyes off of him, jack­ham­mer machine, totally in awe kind of drummer).

Inter­view went great. At the end of the inter­view, I gave him a copy of Red Fox. Why? Well, because his band Tom­a­hawk wrote/recorded the song Red Fox. Which inspired the book (actu­ally the whole album, Anony­mous, inspired the book). He seemed really impressed that not only did I write a book but that it was based from a song he’s recorded. He asked me to sign his ver­sion. And then I asked him to sign my ver­sion. Then he asked me lots of ques­tions about the books and then he talked more about Anony­mous and…wow, I am still in lit­tle fan­girl awe here. Tom­a­hawk is in my Top 5 favorite bands of all time. This was one of the coolest, most sur­real things to ever hap­pen to me (and I’ve had a lot of really cool things hap­pen over the last few years). This time it was great to just have some­one that impresses YOU seem impressed by some­thing you did. Amazing.

Oh and I rec­om­mend you head on over to iTunes and buy Tom­a­hawk Anony­mous. It’s the per­fect com­pan­ion to Red Fox. Just lis­ten to it on repeat as you read, I am seri­ous. GO NOW!

All up in your grill…

With a blog tour going on in full swing, and the fact that other reviews of the book are com­ing in, I’ve been hav­ing a delight­fully busy cou­ple of days. The reviews have been stel­lar too, which is always a relief (espe­cially on PMS days when I’m wal­low­ing in “what the hell am I doing?” etc.).

Here are a few guests posts I’ve done recently:

- Music and char­ac­ters: What songs do I feel relate best to my char­ac­ters cour­tesy of Deena Reimel’s Place

- My Favorite Scene in Dark­house cour­tesy of Just Another Book Addict

And some reviews for Darkhouse:

- “The story being told from Perry’s eyes was good per­spec­tive. She freaks out over the nor­mal, and seem­ingly stays calm dur­ing things that are weird and out of the ordi­nary.“
“Nor­mally, the men in sto­ries hold lit­tle mys­tery to me, but in Dark­house, Dex was an entirely dif­fer­ent story. From the way Karina describes him smirk­ing to the way he seems so sin­u­ous at times, it had me intrigued. It also left me won­der­ing when, and if, I could ever trust his motives or him in gen­eral.” 4/5 stars.
Read full review here on the delight­fully named blog Me, My Shelf and I

-“Karina Halle’s book, the first in the “Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror” series, is a great intro­duc­tion both to the premise of the series and the char­ac­ters. Perry is very sym­pa­thetic in her uncer­tainty because she expresses many of the con­cerns that we all face at one time or another.“
“Halle is able to make the reader feel, as Perry does, that Dex is not only hard to read, but com­pletely incon­sis­tent. Every time it seems some­thing about him is com­ing into focus, you real­ize that it’s not exactly what you thought it would be.” 4/5 stars.
Read full review here on Fame­less Ramblings

- “Perry is a self-discovering, flawed pro­tag­o­nist you can’t help but love. Sure she might get on your nerves a tad bit, at times, but just about every woman who has been 22 can iden­tify with her in one way or another.“
“I’m all for lov­ing a bad boy but didn’t really fall for Dex in this book, he has poten­tial, but there are times you just want to slap him and give him a piece of your mind (which was for more than half of the book in my case)! As unap­peal­ing as he might seem after my assess­ment, Dex and Perry have some great moments and sex­ual ten­sion that keeps you inter­ested through­out the story.“
“Karina Halle does a fan­tas­tic job of keep­ing her story and char­ac­ters believ­able while extremely enter­tain­ing. Fans of the para­nor­mal and super­nat­ural will find Dark­house a promis­ing start to a series that can only get bet­ter!” 4/5 stars.
Read full review here at the sin­fully fun Romanc­ing the Darkside

And another review for Red Fox, the next book in the series!

- “Red Fox is unique because although it has a sim­i­lar thread when com­pared to Dark­house (the para­nor­mal) it is not the same story, dif­fer­ent set­ting. I liked the vari­a­tion from haunt­ing ghosts to Navajo shapeshifters and the char­ac­ters reac­tions to the expe­ri­ence through their inex­pe­ri­ence.“
“The ten­sion between Dex and her increases to the point you’re scream­ing, “Just kiss each other!” For me, this is a pos­i­tive and rather refresh­ing take on sex­ual ten­sion. It is sweet, vul­ner­a­ble, restrained and lead­ing some­where (I hope). As I men­tioned in my pre­vi­ous review, the flawed char­ac­ters are attrac­tive, relat­able and oddly heroic. Per­fec­tion is not a loom­ing attribute and it is in this depic­tion of life that draws me in and keeps me read­ing.” 4/5 stars.
Check out the full review on Bitsy Bling Books

My first Radio Interview, Why Book Bloggers Are Awesome, etc

I’ve been on tele­vi­sion before (Inside Edi­tion, a long story) so you’d think that a radio inter­view would have been a piece of cake for me.

Er, no. I mean, it went very well. Sheena was a fan­tas­tic host and had all the right ques­tions to ask me. But I was an exhausted pile of nerves by the time it was all over. It was a LIVE interview…45 min­utes long! That’s INSANE. But I got through it, so any­thing else will be golden after this. And I’d love to be on the show again, Sheena and I have way too much in com­mon and I can’t pass up any chance to blab­ber on about my nov­els :)

You can lis­ten to the inter­view in mp3 for­mat by click­ing HERE — just make sure to down­load the Mon­day, July 18th show. I go on at 6:05PM and I talk about a whole range of stuff from Sasquatch (yeah, what?), to why I’m a “Baby Hitch­cock” (best com­pli­ment EVER!), and how I might be going crazy with Perry and Dex liv­ing in my head. Any­way, you may learn some­thing, so listen…if you dare.

All right, some more fun stuff from my Book Lovin’ Bitches Blog Tour (say that three times fast):

- Read some short but sweet reviews at Keep­ing up with the Rhein­lan­ders and Must Read Faster

- Check out my Guest Blog Post at A Chick Who Reads, “Why Book Blog­gers Are Awe­some” (pretty self-explanatory…cuz they are :)

Guest Posts Galore

So I went away this week­end to another gor­geous, arbu­tus tree-strewn island. Did I get any writ­ing done? Uh, a para­graph. After writ­ing 15 guest posts plus all my music assign­ments, I’ve been a lit­tle burnt out. It was nice not to write, but it didn’t mean ideas, con­ver­sa­tions and char­ac­ters weren’t stew­ing up in the ol’ nog­gin. Now I’ve got a week off from blog post writ­ing (this doesn’t count) AND music writ­ing so I can actu­ally con­cen­trate and get the impor­tant stuff done…Book Four.

In the mean­time here are a few of the posts I wrote for the blog tour:

- “Embrac­ing Char­ac­ter Flaws” — For My Neu­rotic Book Affair

- The Young Adult Books that I loved grow­ing up (totally 90’s) - For Reader Girls

- From Con­cept to Book: How Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror changed from first out­line — For It’s All About Books.

And here are two new (and RAVE) reviews from Pretty Opin­ion­ated and The Dog-Eared Page:
“I loved Dark­house. Loved it, loved it, loved it. I can’t say it enough. I’ve never related to a char­ac­ter as much as I did to Perry Palomino.“
“The para­nor­mal mys­tery aspect was well-written too, but it was the char­ac­ters that really drew me in, and the hint of more to come in the next parts of the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror series.“
“I also love that Dex isn’t the typ­i­cal lead male char­ac­ter and poten­tial love inter­est for the hero­ine of the story. Actu­ally, he’s kind of the oppo­site of dash­ing and charm­ing for most of this book. He’s really quite an arro­gant jerk at times, but he has a strangely endear­ing under­side that peeks out here and there through­out his time with Perry. Besides, Perry is just as sar­donic as Dex, so they’re a good fit.” — Nikki, PrettyOpinionated.com
Full Review Here.

While the super­nat­ural part of the book – the haunted light­house – is essen­tially what the tale is about, I found myself more drawn in by the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and voices. I loved Perry. She’s so lost in her life, no idea what she wants to do, just fum­bling around try­ing to keep going. She’s funny and smart – but she’s not TOO funny, she’s not a one-liner for every lit­tle (or big) thing going on around her. And while gen­uinely ter­ri­fied of cer­tain things hap­pen­ing to her (believe me, the Creepy Clown Lady would have me run­ning and scream­ing down the street, far far away), she has a core of courage and brav­ery and keeps going on.“
“Perry’s back­ground expe­ri­ences are prob­a­bly the most intrigu­ing to me. As a child she had “imag­i­nary” play­mates, and she saw things. We don’t get a huge lot of detail, but it seems to be some­thing that sent her off the rails as a teenager. There seemed to be a brief period of drug tak­ing and most of the things that hap­pened to her she has chalked down to that, or she just doesn’t remem­ber them. I really hope that aspect of her life gets explored fur­ther in the next books.“
“Dex is a strange, strange char­ac­ter. Dude, this guy is weird! I hon­estly couldn’t work him out – one minute I was expect­ing him to do some­thing totally evil or even mean to Perry, the next I was wait­ing for him to jump her bones.” — Jaki, The DogEared Page
Full Review Here.

OH YEAH I totally for­got I’m going to be on the radio tonight. So that’s what the but­ter­flies and feel­ing of nau­sea are all about. YIKES.

You can tune in at 6PM tonight, Mon­day July 18th, on LA TALK RADIO’s The Sheena Metal Expe­ri­ence http://www.latalkradio.com/Sheena.php

Media Blitz

(sung to the tune of Ball­room Blitz)

I’m embark­ing on a bit of a media blitz over the next cou­ple of weeks. In fact, I’m GOING ON TOUR! I’ve waited so long to finally be able to say that. The clos­est I’ve come to going on tour before is fol­low­ing Faith No More around and that really doesn’t count.

But before you get all excited, I should clar­ify that it’s a book tour. A book blog tour. It’s vir­tual. So while I may show up in San Fran­cisco, Seat­tle, Port­land or LA to do some book events over the next year, this upcom­ing tour is strictly…in your liv­ing room.

Start­ing this Sun­day, July 18th, I’ll be hit­ting up two book review blogs with some crafty guest posts. Then over the next two weeks I’ll be pop­ping up here and there with more guest posts, some Dark­house reviews (not by me, obvi­ously), and the occa­sional giveaway.

Here’s my agenda. I hope you join me!

7/17  guest post @ Reader Girls
7/17  guest post @ My Neu­rotic Book Affair
7/18  guest post @ It’s All About Books
7/19  review @ Just Another Book Addict
7/19  review @ Keep­ing Up With the Rhein­lan­ders
7/19  guest post @ Deena Remiel’s Place
7/20  guest post @ Just Another Book Addict
7/20  review @ Must Read Faster
7/20  review @ A Chick Who Reads
7/21  review @ Fame­less Ram­blings
7/23  guest post & give­away @ Get­ting Naughty Between the Stacks
7/23  guest post @ A Chick Who Reads
7/23  guest post & give­away @ Romanc­ing the Dark­side
7/25  guest post @ Aobib­lios­phere
7/26  guest post @ In The Name of Books
ANY   review @ The Phan­tom Para­grapher
7/28  give­away @ EARpho­ria
7/29  review @ In The Name of Books

Oh but that’s not all. On Mon­day, July 19th I’m going to be… ON THE RADIO!

How frig­gin’ excit­ing is this? OK, so I’m going to be on LA Talk Radio on Sheena Metal’s show THE SHEENA METAL EXPERIENCE. This chick is my soul­mate, musi­cally and super­nat­u­rally. I couldn’t think of a bet­ter match. Plus she used to host her own show on HOWARD STERN STATION. How awe­some. She’s had RUE MCLANAHAN ON HER SHOW (RIP Golden Girl).

Wanna here me talk/blabber about Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror and pos­si­bly my adven­tures with rock bands?

I go on at 6PM (don’t be late)

Stream it here: http://www.latalkradio.com/Sheena.php

New Musical Finds

I’m lucky that in my day “job” I am inun­dated with (free) new music. A lot of the time this means I can review albums that I know I’ll love (or at least would have picked up on my own), or some­times this means I’m exposed to a band I haven’t heard before. The last cou­ple of months or so have been extremely fruit­ful in musi­cal awe­some­ness and some of these albums have become influ­en­tial writ­ing part­ners for Book #4. Here are my reviews and picks:

What Didn’t Disappoint

Bohren & Der Club of Gore — Beileid
I heart this band. Ever since my friend Tami turned me onto Sun­set Mis­sion, one cold win­ter night in Seat­tle, I’ve been hooked on their smooth blend of hor­ror jazz. It’s instru­men­tal, dark, seduc­tive, creepy…it’s the music that would be play­ing dur­ing a revamped ver­sion of Twin Peaks (heaven for­bid). It’s min­i­mal, con­tem­pla­tive and some of the best music to write to. Beileid may only have three (long) songs but they make the album worth it (espe­cially “Catch my Heart” which actu­ally makes me really moody, sad and reflec­tive for some rea­son).
Full Review

Elysian Fields - Last Night on Earth
I wasn’t expect­ing too much from Elysian Fields. I love Jen­nifer Charles when she’s on Lovage, and from the songs I had heard from Elysian Fields, I knew I was going to prob­a­bly like this too. But I was blown away by how much I like the album. It’s funny because I am not a big fan of female singers. I like rock music and most chicks don’t cut it in that genre (except for Ali­son Mosshart — she rules all). But Elysian Fields isn’t really a rock band, per se, and Charles’s breathy vocals just work here. I said, “Last Night on Earth is rich and var­ied, yet leaves a peace­ful, spir­ited feel­ing behind when it’s over. Tak­ing a cue from the cover, it’s a gor­geous land­scape of music best suited for drink­ing under the stars, a sound­track for your mind to wan­der to.“
Full Review

The Melvin’s — Sugar Daddy Live
What can you say about the iconic sludge/grunge/stoner/shoegazer/punk/swamp/metal group, the Melvins? Well, you haven’t really heard them until you’ve seen them live and that’s what Sugar Daddy brings to your stereo. “What’s most strik­ing about the album is how well it cap­tures the spirit and frenzy of a Melvins show, yet show­cases in a very crisp and clean way (well, clean for the Melvins). The sound and the mix­ing of the album is per­fectly done, mak­ing sure the lis­tener hears every note as it was made to be heard: heavy, hard and fun.“
Full Review.

ISISISIS Live I-V
After “insert adjec­tive here” metal band ISIS broke up last year, fans were delighted to see that Ipecac released five live posthu­mous albums from them. Like the Melvins, ISIS is another one of those bands that flour­ish in a live set­ting and that comes through on each one of the albums, which “not only belong in every ISIS fan’s col­lec­tions but each one makes a good start­ing point for those just get­ting into the band. It may not fill the void that ISIS cre­ated when they dis­banded, but it’s a pretty good con­so­la­tion prize.“
Full Review

The Book of Knots — Gar­den of the Faint­ing Stars
OK, so this eagerly-anticipated exper­i­men­tal album did dis­ap­point me. But I’d still rec­om­mend it for peo­ple who love the weird and the strange (like me). Decide for your­self. I’m includ­ing it here though for two rea­sons: A) the song “Planemo” — yes, yes it fea­tures Mike Pat­ton and I really am try­ing not to be biased here cuz lord knows I don’t like every­thing he’s in. But unlike his guest vocals on, say, the new Praxis album, in Stars it’s not wasted. At all. You can’t deny it, “Planemo” is the best track on the album. It’s just the way it is. And I love it. Le sigh. Oh, and B) this album, with all it’s cos­mic idio­syn­crasies, makes excel­lent writ­ing music. It’s not in your face, it fes­ters in the back­ground and pro­vides a cru­cial sound­track for those creepy scenes I write.
Full Review.

New Love

Explo­sions in the Sky — Take Care, Take Care, Take Care
I hadn’t heard much about this band, aside from see­ing their name splashed on every fes­ti­val line-up, so I was tick­led pink when I dis­cov­ered they were a won­der­fully emo­tive band that is refresh­ingly vocal-free — the per­fect com­bi­na­tion for writ­ing. Here is what I said about their newest album “Texas instru­men­tal rock band Explo­sions in the Sky is back in soar­ing cin­e­matic ter­ri­tory with their sixth stu­dio album Take Care, Take Care, Take Care. Like their pre­vi­ous offer­ings, the band explores the loud and soft dynam­ics of min­gling gui­tars and melodic push and pulls but with more empha­sis on drum work and a harder edge. The best way to describe Take Care is that it really does come off as the sound­track to a dra­matic film, explor­ing all emo­tive qual­i­ties from heart­break to redemp­tion to love to loss. There’s even a bit of ter­ror thrown in there.“
Full Review

 

Distractions, distractions, distractions…

I enjoy music writ­ing. I really do. But I am an epic pro­cras­ti­na­tor, which means I’ll put writ­ing my music work (reviews, arti­cles, etc) off until the last minute. Then I tackle them all at once (or over two days) and get it done. The prob­lem with this is the days lead­ing up to the writ­ing, the “I should really be doing this” is at the back of my head and dis­tract­ing me. Then comes the time to actu­ally write and I am left exhausted. Exhausted in the writ­ing sense. Because I have MORE writ­ing to do later…ie, my book. And I just can’t sum­mon up the men­tal energy to do it.

I’m really rather grate­ful that I don’t have a full-time writ­ing day job because I don’t think I could han­dle that. I’d be too burnt-out to write my own stuff by the time I got home. I know a lot of writ­ers who can deal with that sit­u­a­tion quite well and I say, hats off to them. Really. Take my hat.

The other prob­lem is that the inter­net is just too freak­ing dis­tract­ing. If I’m not approach­ing book review­ers or check­ing up on GoodReads or watch­ing sales on Ama­zon, I’m tweet­ing about an episode of Com­mu­nity (fort town ftw) or I’m blath­er­ing on Face­book or I’m beg­ging peo­ple to invite me to Google + (yeah, like I need ANOTHER dis­trac­tion) and what have you. In short, I wish I wrote on a type­writer, that dis­trac­tions were not just a click away.

So, I’m hav­ing an inter­net free week­end. At 5PM PST, I’m banned from going on a browser. Any browser. In fact, I’m dis­abling my wire­less so I won’t be tempted. So, no emails will be checked, no more posts will be made (and they all rejoiced mer­rily), no inane tweets will be tweeted. At least until Mon­day morning.

My hope is sim­ply this: TO GET SHIT DONE. I’m still about 30% in Book #4, Lying Sea­son, because I had to go back and change some things. I am still chang­ing these things. Perry was bug­ging me in lit­tle spots and I pin­pointed it to the fact that she needed to be more assertive and emo­tion­ally tougher. There were some scenes that, though they felt nat­ural, it just wasn’t right…and some aspects were mov­ing way too fast. No need to lay all the cards out up front…I’ve got 70% of the book for that.

I’ve also got, oh let’s say, 12 guest blog posts to write. Yup. Like I said, need to get shit done.

See you all on Mon­day, have a great weekend!

Red Fox Trailer

Hey folks! Hope you’re all enjoy­ing your free copies of Dark­house. When you’re done read­ing it, please leave a review on GoodReads, Ama­zon, Smash­words or just tell your friends about it (if you liked it, of course. If you didn’t like it you can bury the book in your back­yard or chuck it out of a mov­ing vehi­cle — watch out for old peo­ple). I cracked #18 on the list which was really cool, right behind nov­els by Amy Plum, Cas­san­dra Clare, etc, so thanks again for your sup­port. I know it’s not like an influ­en­tial list or any­thing but hey, I will take what I can get!

The trailer for Red Fox is here. It’s totally abstract and weird but makes sense if you’ve read the book. Which you should. Because it’s awe­some. It was shot in one whirl­wind April evening in Palm Springs. After the shoot, we cel­e­brated with beer. Good times.

Limited time offer — FREE BOOKS!

Well, I promised you all that if Dark­house cracked the Top 30 slot of the Best Break out Authors on GoodReads that I’d be giv­ing away e-copies of Dark­house away for free. And I always stay true to my word. Dark­house did reach #24 today and I thought, heck that’s good enough for me.

Visit the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror fan page (www.facebook.com/experimentinterror), become a fan, and check out the exclu­sive coupon code and link posted there. You’ll be able to get your free down­load of Dark­house (in any e-format). Do note that this offer is run­ning for 48 hours, so get it while you can :D

You’re doing everything right…”

Said the pres­i­dent of a pub­lish­ing house to a young, self-published author. AKA Me. And who doesn’t like to hear that?

<——(I was sur­prised too)

But…let’s back up. So, today I had a meet­ing with the pres­i­dent of a pub­lish­ing house. How? Let’s just say when your future in-laws and your par­ents belong to a golf club, lots of con­nec­tions can be made that way. And pub­lish­ers like to golf.

Set­ting the scene: A gor­geous evening in British Colum­bia. Bright blue sky, blind­ing sun, ocean breeze, excel­lent wine…mosquitoes. The pub­lisher asks me what my books are about, how they have been sell­ing, the whole deal. Then she asks, “What are your long-term goals? Do you have any aspi­ra­tion to be pub­lished by a pub­lish­ing house?”

And I said…“No.”

And that was the truth. Our con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ued and I did state that had I just one book to sell, then yes. Of course. And if a pub­lisher was like, “here’s a lot of money” I’d be like, yeah…But I have a series and I think I’m doing quite well on my own. I explained my mar­ket­ing strate­gies, where they were being sold, how many I’ve sold, my plans for the series in the future, the fan base, etc.

And to my sur­prise… she said I was doing the right thing. In her words, I was doing every­thing right. I am doing every­thing that a pub­lish­ing house would be doing, reach­ing the same peo­ple in the same ways. The only dif­fer­ence is that yes, it would be eas­ier for a writer to not worry about pub­lish­ing (just worry about writ­ing) and I would have clout. You know, the whole “I’m ACTUALLY pub­lished” clout that comes with the territory.

But then the pub­lisher cor­rected me and says, you know what.. you HAVE clout. And you are pub­lished. So it’s self-published, so what? It’s out there. Your books look fine, it’s POD, you’re not los­ing any money on them. Your work obvi­ously speaks for itself. You’re mak­ing money that you don’t have to split with an agent and a pub­lisher. You’re reach­ing fans. I mean, it’s a slow going busi­ness that relies heav­ily on word of mouth and you’re get­ting there. Being pub­lished wouldn’t nec­es­sar­ily get you there any faster.

Besides, the moment you are pub­lished you pass up your con­trol. You give up your rights to your book, the rights to your series…your char­ac­ters (and this is com­ing from the publisher’s mouth). And I’m 3.5 books in…I can’t do that. I wouldn’t. And that’s why — at least with the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Series — I really don’t need nor want a pub­lisher. I’m not say­ing this to be stub­born or any­thing, it’s just the truth. If you had asked me that ques­tion six months ago and I would have said the oppo­site. But now, now that I’m liv­ing this career choice each day, I know what the deal is…being pub­lished WOULD BE EASIER (and awe­some, of course!) but I’d be giv­ing up a lot in exchange.

So that really was the extent of the meet­ing. Lit­tle ol’ me explain­ing all of my strate­gies and the pub­lisher telling me I don’t need a pub­lisher. I just need to be myself and keep going. The suc­cess will come, I’m a con­fi­dent woman (her words) who knows an awful lot about what she’s doing (still her words) and that all I need to have is patience. And a bit of luck.

That said, she did take copies of my book that she’s send­ing to her lit­er­ary agent friend in New York. Cuz…well, you never know ;)