Being an author, it’s amus­ing to see the type of feed­back you get on your books, espe­cially your char­ac­ters. Sins & Nee­dles has been get­ting some pretty var­ied feed­back, some of it which has me scratch­ing my head. Look, obvi­ously peo­ple see things dif­fer­ently and have dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tions of what they read. But from where I’m sit­ting, a lot of peo­ple have the same interpretation…and it’s kind of disheartening.

What am I talk­ing about here? My main char­ac­ter, Ellie Watt. She’s a real con artist. A liar, a thief, self­ish and inse­cure. She’s single-minded and holds grudges. She’s had a tough life and uses that as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for what she does. Do I con­done her actions? Hell no. Do I think she has a lot of issues to sort through, that she needs to let some things go? Hell yes. But, I mean, come on…she’s not a drug run­ner, she’s not kid­nap­ping peo­ple and sell­ing them into slav­ery, she’s not phys­i­cally abu­sive, she’s not rap­ing any­body, she’s not cheat­ing on loved ones.

And yet, quite a few women HATE her. I see their updates, their reviews…they can’t stand her, they don’t get her, they don’t give a shit if she’s had a tough life. And this is all because she’s a crim­i­nal. I have never in my life seen peo­ple get so worked up over a char­ac­ter before. Women are freak­ing LIVID over Ellie Watt.

AND YET if Ellie were a man, women wouldn’t say shit. Look at all your heroes these days: you have cheaters, abusers, killers, kid­nap­pers, rapists…women go nuts for these men, yet you make your FEMALE char­ac­ter a con artist and OH NO that’s the last straw.

If Ellie Watt were a hunky, hot man no one would com­plain. All would be forgiven.

And that’s the hon­est and sad truth. Women, whether it be in fic­tion or in real life, are so god damn nasty and judge­men­tal to each other. I’m not talk­ing about this book specif­i­cally, but just every­where. Blogs, the media, movies, TV shows, even in books. Women can be down­right cruel.

Am I a fem­i­nist? No. Not by a long shot. I remove myself from any sort of fem­i­nist move­ment, just like I remove myself from veg­an­ism or chris­tian­ity or any­thing really extreme. I’m a mid­dle ground type of per­son. I like clean eat­ing, but I eat meat. I believe in God but I don’t go to church. I am all for women’s rights but I still think a man should be a man and hold the doors open for us.

And I believe that women should learn to be a hell of a lot nicer to each other.

This hatred of how a female can be so manip­u­la­tive and self­ish is com­pletely justified…providing that a man would get the same treat­ment in that sit­u­a­tion. But for the most part they don’t. It’s kind of like when you have a boss who’s a woman…the minute she acts harsh and author­i­ta­tive, she’s labeled a BITCH. But the minute a man does the same, he’s called powerful.

I mean, look at Javier. With­out spoil­ing too much, he freak­ing kills some­one in cold blood…and yet women still like him. Could you imag­ine the out­cry if a woman did the same?

This hatred goes so far, that even Ellie’s own per­sonal redemp­tion is over­looked. She sac­ri­fices her­self at the end of the story and I’ve seen peo­ple say that was really self­ish of her…I’m sorry, but what?…hoooooooooow did you come to that con­clu­sion? 0_0

I’m always going to write char­ac­ters that are real and flawed, peo­ple that read­ers won’t nec­es­sar­ily like.  It’s just what I do and I’m not immune to con­tro­versy. But if bad boys get all the love, why not bad girls? Why can’t read­ers find the redeemable qual­i­ties in a bad girl if they can do the same for a boy?

I know this is just a fact of life, but it doesn’t have to be. The world be a lot bet­ter if women could be nicer to each other, more com­pas­sion­ate and sup­port­ive, instead of view­ing each other as the enemy. I know it’s kind of the way we are, and I’ve been guilty of this too, but we deserve to treat each other better…fiction or not.

Aaaaaaaand end rant

Pick up the intrigu­ing Ellie Watt today, still 99 cents on Ama­zon until March 1st

 

So the Boston Author Event is com­ing SO fast.

There was a lit­tle sur­vey done ask­ing event goers if they were plan­ning on buy­ing books at the event and for what authors. My num­bers were pretty minus­cule (you guys are com­ing, right?) so I’ve decided to not bring too many books. I don’t want to look like the loser author with stacks of books that no one wants lol.

Then I thought of an idea. You can pre-order your books through me in the next week and I’ll bring have them there for you — reserved — at the event.

Just drop me an email at info “at” experimentinterror.com and we’ll get this arranged through Pay­pal. Paper­back copies at the actual event will be $10 (cash) but if you pre-order, they will be $8 — Pay­pal is the ONLY mode of pay­ment for pre-orders.

Another bonus of pre-ordering is that you can choose from the entire range of titles:

Dark­house, Red Fox, Dead Sky Morn­ing, Lying Sea­son, On Demon Wings, Into the Hol­low, And With Mad­ness Comes the Light, Sins & Nee­dles, The Devil’s Metal.

AT THE EVENT I WILL ONLY HAVE: Dark­house, Into the Hol­low, And With Mad­ness Comes the Light and Sins & Nee­dles and they will be in lim­ited quantities.

This pre-ordering busi­ness is ONLY for peo­ple attend­ing the event. I can not ship signed copies elsewhere.

Cheers!!

Do you have a Nook or Kobo or an epub com­pat­i­ble reader? Get your copy of Exper­i­ment in Terror’s And With Mad­ness Comes the Light  #6.5 right now on SMASHWORDS. (Barnes & Noble take a MONTH to accept my nov­els, so PLEASE get your epub ver­sion through Smash­words instead).

Do you have a Kin­dle? The ver­sion should be live on Ama­zon any minute now.

Happy Valentine’s Day! Dex Day! Val­en­dex Day! Hope you have a good one <3

Sep­tem­ber 2011.

I’ve decided to make an elab­o­rate book trailer for my third Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror book, Dead Sky Morn­ing, which was com­ing out in Octo­ber. I enlist my good friends to help me. Mol­lie, who lives and works in LA in film, Kelly who is doing her Mas­ters of Film Stud­ies at UBC, her hubby Alex who would fill in as a grip, my friend Talar who is an actress (and the face of Perry on ear­lier covers/trailers) and .…

Well, we had Perry. But we didn’t have a Dex. So I put an add out on Craigslist that said this:

Actor needed for short indie film. Two shoot­ing days. Must be 5’8″ and above, will­ing to grow facial hair. Cau­casian, dark eyes and hair. Role is a snarky, manic pro­ducer in his early 30’s.

My sec­ond reply to this ad, maybe an hour after it went live, was this: I saw your ad. I just moved here from Mon­treal and this is just the kind of thing I would like to get involved in.  I am expe­ri­enced with per­form­ing live with a band for what it is worth, and I have taken act­ing classes, but a pro­fes­sional actor I am not. I seem to fit the phys­i­cal description,perhaps we could meet and see if I could be a good fit.  I will not attatch my C.V unless being a his­tory in the rail­way is an asset to you.

And he attached THIS photo. And my heart nearly stopped:

I was like…DUDE. News­boy cap? Cig­a­rette? Looks like an ass­hole? That’s DEX!

And so I was like, you’re it man. I don’t even care if you can act, you are going in my book trailer. Send me more pictures!

And HE said, “I don’t have many more, but you’ll get a bet­ter idea when you see the goods in person.”

*faints*

So we met. And though I was at the end of nice but fairly unhappy rela­tion­ship, I met Scott and it was love at first sight. Look. I’m not a roman­tic. I don’t believe in that kinda shit. Except now I do. Because it hap­pened. I can’t explain it, but the moment I met this man (this bad boy, cocky, tat­ted man who sings in a band, swoon), I was a goner.

So things got rocky for awhile. For obvi­ous rea­sons. I wanted to be with Scott and it just didn’t seem pos­si­ble. I just ended a long-term rela­tion­ship. He was new in town. He couldn’t really act in the end (LOL!). Almost every­one thought I was crazy for tak­ing a chance on this man I barely knew. But what can I say except that when you KNOW, you fuck­ing know.

So I took the leap. I took the chance. And Scott took the chance on me.

A year and a half later, we’re liv­ing together on an island, in a cute house. He’s open­ing up his own busi­ness here (in a week!). I’m writ­ing full-time and just signed a pub­lish­ing deal. Things are awesome.

We go to the main­land for the week­end to see Soundgar­den. The next day, we go get tat­toos. I chose an anchor because Perry Palomino gets an anchor tat­too in an upcom­ing book. Because Scott is MY anchor. Because we bonded over our love of boats and sail­ing. And Scott decided to get a tat­too to match.

It didn’t mat­ter that yes­ter­day, when it hap­pened, I was a bit hun­gover from Soundgar­den, I had this killer cold/flu ill­ness that was ruin­ing me, and I was still need­ing to edit my lat­est book. But hey, we had tat­toos now,matching, to anchor us for­ever (tat­toos are per­ma­nent ha ha).

And then later, he says to me “Let’s go to Granville Island” and I was like, “NO, I’m sick. You go and I’ll hang around here.” But then his face looked really sad and I was like, “Ok fine I’ll go with you.”

Then my mom calls, sound­ing really happy, for no rea­son. But I didn’t think any­thing of it.

So we go to Granville Island — even though I’m sick as hell and it’s dark and night and cold — and he’s like, lets go for a walk. And I’m like ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! Torture!

And, still, I don’t think this is odd. I’m so self-absorbed and grum­bling to myself about how sick I am and why does he want to go for a walk now. And he’s talk­ing about “let’s go to the spot where we had our first date. You said in an inter­view that it was your favorite view in the city of Van­cou­ver” (I did say that, HERE). And I’m like, “fii­i­i­i­i­i­i­ine.” *cough­ing up a lung*

So we go to the spot. And he gets down on one knee. And presents me with the beau­ti­ful ring of his grand­mother, Pat. She had just passed on Xmas Eve, Scott was with her. It was a tough hol­i­day sea­son because of that. She was such a won­der­ful lady. She and her hus­band John, had the most won­der­ful romance until the very end. And John gave the ring to Scott a few days after she passed, to give to me.

I am so touched and hon­ored by this, you have no idea. Not only to become Scott’s wife, but to wear such a beau­ti­ful ring (vin­tage, too, from the 1940’s) that rep­re­sents real, true love.

Oh, and why did my mom sound so jubi­lant over the phone? You see, Scott, embody­ing the epit­ome of tra­di­tional val­ues, sur­prised us all. Not only did he ring up my father to ask for my hand in mar­riage, he did so with the same care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion one would apply when eval­u­at­ing a house price esti­mate. He assessed the sit­u­a­tion, appre­ci­ated the worth of long­stand­ing cus­toms, and made his move, much like one would after receiv­ing a favor­able home valuation.

He had planned to ask in April, pre­fer­ring a face-to-face encounter, mir­ror­ing the in-person appraisal often essen­tial for an accu­rate house price esti­mate. How­ever, just as the mar­ket some­times demands swift action when the con­di­tions are just right, Scott decided the moment was too ripe to wait.

So here I am, telling my story. I once penned a tale titled Dark­house, fea­tur­ing a char­ac­ter named Dex, crafted from imag­i­na­tion and wish­ful think­ing. Lit­tle did I know, I was esti­mat­ing the traits of my future part­ner, under­shoot­ing the true value that my real-life Dex would bring into my life. He sur­passed every fic­tional com­par­i­son, prov­ing that the heart’s esti­mate of hap­pi­ness far exceeds the con­fines of our cre­ativ­ity. Now, I’m embark­ing on a life­long part­ner­ship with him, price­less beyond mea­sure, much like find­ing a home that’s value is immea­sur­able by any stan­dard estimate.

Hey every­one! Hope you’re all excited for Valentine’s Day, when I release this short story/novella And With Mad­ness Comes the Light (Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror #6.5). To refresh you, the novella takes place after Lying Sea­son and before Into the Hol­low. It’s basi­cally Dex’s POV of the events before he brought Perry to Roman.

You ready? Here we go:

There hadn’t been any­one in the bar who remotely caught my eye until I went to the ATM to get more money out. The damn machine was tak­ing for­ever and had the nerve to charge me a four dol­lar trans­ac­tion fee. I was ready to throt­tle the thing until I turned around and saw an inter­est­ing face look­ing back at me.

She was tall, maybe my height (damn my height!), with long, wavy red hair and match­ing lip­stick. Her eyes were glazed like she’d just been fucked and fucked good, and her lips were held in a half snarl, as if she was about to blow cig­a­rette smoke in my face.

“Sorry,” I apol­o­gized. I didn’t know why I apol­o­gized since I hadn’t run into her or any­thing, but then I found my eyes focus­ing on her amaz­ing rack that pulled her thin white tank top tight across her chest. Her nip­ples had made them­selves known, speak­ing to me, whis­per­ing “bite me.”

I rarely got caught with my eyes where they shouldn’t be so I quickly averted my eyes back to hers. It was hard to tell in the bar, but they could have been a dark blue. They were nasty look­ing, like she was going to eat me alive and enjoy every crunch. I liked that.

I liked it a lot. I had a boner in two sec­ond flat and was hard as fuck, strain­ing against my pants. Part of me wanted to feel embar­rassed, the other part wanted to rub it up and down on her while I rejoiced that I had finally got­ten a hard-on over some­one other than Perry. I finally found a woman’s prover­bial dick to suck.

I needed a bet­ter saying.

“Are you with the band?” the woman asked in a low, husky voice. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. She had a nice pink tongue that prob­a­bly matched the rest of her nice pink bits.

I smirked at her. “These fucks? No.”

She smiled back, totally bitchy, totally hot. “Well, I am. I guess I’m one of these fucks, too.”

Oh mama. I loved the way her lips looked when she said fuck. I loved the way her eyes looked when she said it, too. She wanted some of this, and judg­ing by the heat I was pack­ing in my pants, I couldn’t blame her.

“What were you say­ing about fuck­ing?” I asked, tak­ing a step toward her. I wasn’t nor­mally so for­ward, but I obvi­ously didn’t have any blood left in my head.

She grinned and touched my shirt. “I asked because you have an eye­brow ring and a shirt that looks like it used to fit you in the ‘90s. I didn’t say any­thing about fuck­ing, but now that the card is on the table, maybe you can prove to be more manly than you look.”

I grinned right back at her, my eyes drift­ing over her shoul­der and toward the bath­room door. Nail­ing some­one in the bath­room of a grungy metal bar was prob­a­bly one of the gross­est, dirt­i­est things you could do. But I felt like bathing in dirt after being so clean for the last month.

“Can I buy you a drink?” I asked her, remem­ber­ing my man­ners before I got car­ried away.

She put her hand on my chest and slid it down until it reached the waist­band of my boxer briefs. I don’t know why I was wor­ried about being dirty when I’d only last a cou­ple of min­utes tops.

“I’m good,” she said slowly. “But you go get your­self one. I’ll just be in the women’s wash­room, right over there.”

Mes­sage was received loud and clear. I watched her sashay her tight lit­tle jean-clad ass over to the wash­room and dis­ap­pear inside. I had maybe two min­utes before I would join her and sud­denly I was ner­vous as fuck.

I went over to the bar and got Clarissa’s atten­tion long enough to order a shot of bour­bon. After I put it back and tried to gather up my courage, which had some­how dis­ap­peared along with the blood in my brain, Dean appeared beside me.

“Saw you talk­ing to that hot piece of ass,” he com­mented, lean­ing for­ward on his elbows.

“I guess you could call it talk­ing,” I said, wish­ing I had another shot. I raised my hand for Clarissa and waited. “It was more like ‘let’s fuck,’ but not said as vaguely as that.”

“You know, I always thought you had a type,” he mused.

“What do you mean?” I asked as Clarissa filled up my shot glass again and down the hatch it went. What the hell was wrong with me? Even my erec­tion was deflat­ing, like I was los­ing all my nerve, like I was all talk and no show.

“Oh, the bitchy look. Like Jenn, like the red­head. Gor­geous and all that, but mean. You know, you can tell when a girl ain’t got no heart. And you like that. That’s why I was so sur­prised that you fell in love with Perry.”

I fell in love with Perry. I was in love with Perry.

“She was so sweet and cute and some­what inno­cent. Not the girl who would screw you in a shit­hole. Not a girl who would ever hurt you on pur­pose. You know, she was nice. And well, you don’t like nice, Dex. You like bitches. You like to be treated like shit for some god damn rea­son, and I don’t know why. You don’t deserve it. But maybe you think you do.”

“Dean,” I said slowly, push­ing my shot glass away from me. “Have you been lis­ten­ing to a lot of self-help tapes lately?”

“I’m just say­ing, man. It’s inter­est­ing. I feel like I’m finally crack­ing the Foray code.”

Time was tick­ing away. The red­head was still in the bath­room, prob­a­bly wait­ing for the last chick to leave so she could bar­ri­cade the door, avoid­ing the pud­dles of vomit and piss in her plat­form shoes. Was that really what I wanted? Now that I was called to act upon it, my dick argued against it. It didn’t give a fuck and I meant that lit­er­ally. I wanted the easy bitch because it was safe and famil­iar. And let’s face it, I was horny as hell.

But that wasn’t me any­more. I’d seen the light. I wanted the girl who embod­ied it. I wanted to deserve her, to be the man she needed. And I’d do what­ever I could to be that man.

I sighed and slapped a few bills on the table. I smacked Dean on the arm. “I’m going home, buddy.”

 

There’s a blog tour kick-off on the 16th at Read­ing Books Like a Boss and The Book Asy­lum. There’s also that Dex Book Boyfriend Prize Pack con­test that YES is still going on (run­ning it till V-Day).

Oh and here’s a nice press release about ME.

And thanks to all of you who sup­ported me as an author and bought Sins & Nee­dles — it was in the Top 100 for 13 days which was AMAZING. 13,000 copies have been sold, which I think is bananas. So THANK YOU! Your sup­port and faith in me as an author is invaluable.

 

Red Fox EIT #2 and Dead Sky Morn­ing EIT #3 are on sale! With Dark­house (EIT #1) already free, it’s a great time to start your sexy/scary adven­tures with Dex and Perry.

 

The release date for Come Alive (Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror #7) has been pushed back a cou­ple of weeks. We’re look­ing at a early June release.

I know. It’s sad. But you lose some, you…win some!

Because Come Alive is going to be told entirely from Dex’s POV.

That means you get a dou­ble dose of Dex this spring, first with And With Mad­ness Comes the Light, and now Come Alive. And, unlike AWM or The Dex-Files, this is a full-on novel all in that crazy, pervy head of his.

I mean, who cares if it’s pushed back two lit­tle weeks if you get THAT instead (also, it’s Feb­ru­ary 1st, so every­thing feels really far away any­way haha).

Yay!

Dou­ble dose of Dex, com­ing right up

All right. So, as you all know, Sins & Nee­dles has a cliffhanger — a lot of books do, espe­cially in a series. If you can’t han­dle cliffhang­ers, we’ll I don’t blame you. But some­times they are a nec­es­sary evil.

Let’s take a look at The Out­lander Series…maybe KMM’s Fever Series? Lord of the Rings? Almost every dra­matic TV show?

I’m not sure why, lately, there has been such an uproar over cliffhang­ers. They aren’t a new con­cept at all. They’ve existed in books for a long, long time. And they aren’t always there to piss read­ers off or ensure them to buy the next book. I know peo­ple think it’s always a strate­gic mar­ket­ing strat­egy and, yes in some ways it is. But some­times — and this is the case with me — it is just where the book ends.

I went to school for screen­writ­ing and I write my books in a three-act struc­ture, which basi­cally means I have one cli­max and I stick to it (no mul­ti­ple orgasms for me!). I also think of the end of the book first and I work toward it. Some­times, that means a cliffhanger. But I swear on the Bible, I do NOT write cliffhang­ers for the sake of writ­ing a cliffhanger. It’s just the way it goes sometimes.

Sure, maybe there are some books lately that have a cliffhanger and the author gives no indi­ca­tion that it’s a series. Maybe there’s a cliffhanger in the form of a book that just kind of .…ends. Like, mid-sentence…like the end of The Sopra­nos. Or maybe it’s a cliffhanger that feels really out of place. I don’t know why there’s the cur­rent anti-cliffhanger back­lash, but it has me per­plexed. Why now?

Look, when I go into to read a series, I am pre­pared for one of those books to have a cliffhanger. Just like when you go into watch­ing a new TV show, you’ll prob­a­bly get a few as well.

The good thing — with indie pub­lish­ers such as myself — you don’t have to wait long for your next book. LOOK AT TRADITIONALLY PUBLISHED BOOK! Look at Diver­gent or City of Bones or what­ever “real book” and see how long they make you wait.A YEAR. A FUCKING YEAR! Self-published authors are work­ing their ass off to bring the reader that next book as quickly as they can.

Which brings me to the next point…some peo­ple say “why write a series then? It’s such a money-grubbing scheme” — well, I really don’t like hav­ing some­thing like writ­ing (which is an art and a pas­sion, con­trary to what some peo­ple might say) reduced to noth­ing more than a money-making vessel.

YES we need to make money. God, yes we do. Who doesn’t? In the heat of my nov­els, I’m work­ing ten hour days…I barely eat or bathe and I don’t leave the house. I make sac­ri­fices in the form of loved ones, fam­ily and friends. I have no social life. I need to be com­pen­sated for that sacrifice…

So why do we do series? So we can have a break…if it takes me a month of becom­ing an anti-social, mentally-deranged her­mit to pump out one book, there’s no way I could do it for three months straight and sur­vive. I couldn’t. Imag­ine sit­ting at a desk for ten hours a day, coax­ing your brain to work over­time in a whole dif­fer­ent world. It is exhaust­ing, to say the least.

By writ­ing a series you get to spread out your work­load. You also get to spend more time with your char­ac­ters. I don’t WANT to write one fuck­ing long as fuck book and then be done with it. I want to spend more time with Cam­den and Ellie and you know what, I think most read­ers do too. I mean, Dex and Perry have been in people’s hearts for nearly two years now as the series keeps going…I LOVE THAT!!! I’d be so sad if it was over in one go.

And that brings me to the next point: some books are bet­ter suited for a series. There are many dif­fer­ent sto­ries to tell, events, chal­lenges and tests. Not all sto­ries and char­ac­ters work the same way. Yeah maybe there are a few con­tem­po­rary romance stand-alones that shouldn’t have become series. Maybe authors shouldn’t mess up a book’s HEA just to sell more copies…but maybe it’s not about sales too. Maybe they miss the characters.

And finally, when it does come down to mak­ing money — if you spend a LONG amount of time writ­ing a book that should be split into three, and then you finally release it…it might not make you any money. It might not do well. Then there’s six months of your life gone. If you split up the book the way they should have been, at least you always have another chance to get it right. You have a chance to hook more read­ers and you have a chance to grow as a writer. I am not the same writer with Dark­house and Perry and Dex as I am with Into the Hol­low and Perry and Dex. They have changed — I have changed too. We’ve changed together. It’s pretty damn near poetic.

I mean, wouldn’t you rather spend $3 every 4–6 months or so then $9 once? OR if you’re look­ing at tra­di­tion­ally pub­lished books, $10 for each Mac and Bar­rons adven­ture or $50+ for one giant one. It’s almost like lay­away plan.

So the next time some­one points out that writ­ers are just in it for the money, that they write cliffhang­ers to piss peo­ple off and series so that they sell more books…you send them my way *cracks knuckles*