I love Dex and Perry but my favorite duo rarely go on sale. But, for the first time ever, every sin­gle EIT book is just 99 cents dur­ing the month of Novem­ber. You MIGHT want to tell your friends…

(cur­rently 99 cents on Ama­zon but Kobo, iTunes and Nook should update the sales price within a week)

So the Devil’s Reprise releases tomor­row — NO WAIT IT RELEASES TODAY!!! Early sur­prise lol. It’s live on AMAZON right now and at all other retail­ers tomor­row, Oct 29th.

This is the sec­ond book– and the last book– in this series. The Devil’s Metal will be 99 cents so that’s some­thing you may want to snap up while you can!

First, some reviews from The Devil’s Reprise Blog Blitz:

Read­ing Books Like a Boss says: “I’ve read a lot of other rock star books, but Sage Knightly is eas­ily one of the sex­i­est and most allur­ing fic­tional rock gods.  Not only is he incred­i­bly tal­ented (in more ways than one), he will go to hell and back to pro­tect the woman he loves. ”

“One of the BEST parts of The Devil’s Reprise (aside from the steamy sex scenes) was the bone-chilling, spooky scenes.  This book con­tains the scari­est imagery Karina Halle has ever writ­ten.”

CLICK TO READ REVIEW and ENTER THE GIVEAWAY

Read­ing is my Breath­ing says:

“Karina Halle doesn’t beau­tify any­thing in this book. Sex­ual orgies of drugged rock stars? Graphic. Depres­sive thoughts of char­ac­ters? No cen­sor­ship. Espe­cially when it comes to Sage’s POV. It was really piti­ful to wit­ness Sage’s behav­iour at the begin­ning. It was break­ing my heart to see this man so sad, so des­per­ate, so bro­ken. He wasn’t deal­ing with his past very well…

I think that The Devil’s Reprise may be the sex­i­est and most spicy book by Karina Halle so far. I’m not sure if it was elec­tri­fy­ing chem­istry between Sage and Dawn or the fact that hero is one hot rock­star god. But I’m 100% sure that this book is able to set things on fire with its level of hotness!”

CLICK HERE TO READ REVIEW AND ENTER THE GIVEAWAY

And finally, a creepy pre-Halloween teaser

Jacob got up and leaned across the table, look­ing every­one in the eye. “Then you’re dis­missed.” He banged the table with his fist and walked away.

“Christ on a cracker,” Garth said under his breath. He watched Jacob go in fear. He was a skinny lit­tle dude with eyes too big for his head. He seemed like an all right guy, even though he was young and skit­tish. His key­board skills were stel­lar, which was all I needed from him. “Is he always like that?”

“Jacob runs a tight ship,” I explained to him while out of the cor­ner of my eye I caught Dawn and Max get­ting up together and leav­ing. I was struck with a burst of incur­able jeal­ousy and had to swal­low it down.

“I can see that,” Garth said. “Guess it was true that Hybrid was a bit of a wild band.”

My head snapped toward him, my jaw auto­mat­i­cally tens­ing. “Don’t even men­tion Hybrid,” I growled, my voice low. “This isn’t Hybrid. It never will be. This is my band, my show. Got it?”

Garth nod­ded quickly, his eyes even wider than before. He turned his atten­tion back to his food, his shak­ing hand reach­ing for his cof­fee cup. I sat back and ran my fin­gers through my hair, exhal­ing slowly. Nice start to the morn­ing. I was all over the damn map and prac­ti­cally scar­ing my new bandmates.

I grabbed a piece of toast, excused myself from the table before I became even more of an ass, and took off for my room. The rick­ety open-caged ele­va­tor had freaked me out when I rode it the other day, so instead I took the stairs, paus­ing to catch my breath at the fourth floor. Shit, if going up stairs was mak­ing me winded, I didn’t know how I was going to han­dle the show tonight.

You’re not going to han­dle it, the voice inside my head said. You’re going to fail because you can’t han­dle any of this on your own.

I closed my eyes, my arm rest­ing on the rail­ing, and tried to make the voices shut up.

“I have another mes­sage for you.”

I opened my eyes at the whis­pered words and looked for the source. At the end of the hall, just beneath one of the sconce light fix­tures, was a very short fig­ure, a woman who couldn’t have been taller than five feet. Her sil­hou­ette was heavy­set, flabby, and though I couldn’t see her face but for her gleam­ing eyes, I had a feel­ing she was ugly as sin.

“Excuse me?” I asked, tak­ing a moment to real­ize she spoke per­fect Eng­lish, though her accent was still for­eign. Russ­ian, maybe.

“I have another mes­sage for you,” the woman repeated in her strangely monot­one voice. Then she turned around, and I noticed her wide body had been hid­ing a maid’s cart.

It all clicked. This was the house­cleaner who wrote on my mirror.

I walked off after her, more annoyed than anything.

“You wrote on my mir­ror,” I said accus­ingly as she stopped and slowly looked at me. I came to a halt, put off by her eyes, which were so heav­ily lid­ded I could barely see her irises. She was all ele­phan­tine jowls and cheeks, hair gath­ered at the top like a cow took a shit on her head. Ugly as sin was right.

She stared at me—at least I think she was star­ing at me; it was hard to tell—and then she said, “Oh, yes. You. I have another mes­sage for you.”

“A mes­sage from whom?” The lights flick­ered in the hall. “What did that mean, ‘be care­ful what she wished for’? Who is ‘she’?”

She shook her head sharply, to the left, the right, the skin under her jaw jig­gling. “I don’t know. I only pass on the messages.”

I folded my arms. “Then tell me who told you?”

She smiled, and I tried not to gri­mace at her miss­ing canines. Jesus, what was the hotel think­ing hir­ing this char­ity case? “The dark man with the white face. He tells me in my sleep.”

Okay. I blinked hard and rubbed my fore­head. Too many drugs, not enough sleep.

She went on, “He says to tell you it will all end when she appears.”

“I don’t think you know what you’re talk­ing about, but I’d appre­ci­ate it if you stayed away from my room,” I said, try­ing to bury the uneasi­ness in my voice. “I’ll report you if you try and talk to me again.”

“The dark man won’t care,” she said, turn­ing around to con­tinue to push her cart. “He will find her once she’s been given every­thing she wants, and it will all start all over again.”

I had to reach out and grab the edge of her cart. “Is the girl here? Is he talk­ing about Dawn? The red­head? Can you at least tell me that much?”

She watched me for a few ago­niz­ing beats before I caught the slight­est nod of her head. “There is noth­ing you can do. Noth­ing you can do but watch.”

Had this crazy shit hap­pened to me a year or two ago, I wouldn’t have a believed a word this woman said. I’d say she’s an obvi­ous men­tal case who dreams of Satan vis­it­ing her in her dreams. But now I knew better.

“Please,” I begged, feel­ing fool­ish, help­less. “You have to tell me more. Who are you?”

“I am Tatiana,” she said, her accent thick­en­ing. “I work here.”

She began to push her cart away while I heard Tricky call out, “Sage!”

I turned to look at him, want­ing to go after Tatiana, the crazy ele­phant lady, but Tricky was already run­ning down the hall­way toward me.

“You almost ready? We have to go,” he said.

I watched Tatiana and her cart rum­ble around the cor­ner and out of sight.

“Sage,” Tricky repeated. I finally looked over at him. He frowned. “You all right, man? You’re look­ing kind of pale.”

I wiped a layer of sweat off my fore­head and tried to slow my heart rate. The creepy feel­ing held on to my bones. I had to talk to Dawn. “I’m all right. Is it that time already?”

Tricky nod­ded. “Yes—well, no, but we have to get our clothes and every­thing together for tonight. We have to coor­di­nate our out­fits, don’t you think?”

I gave him a funny look. Rob­bie was like that, too, when we played shows. Fig­ures that Tricky would be dis­play­ing front-man ten­den­cies. “You know what I wear: black. I go with what­ever crazy thing you’re going to squeeze your balls into.”

He grinned. “Bright orange vel­vet jumpsuit.”

I shook my head. “My God.”

“And plat­form Alice Cooper boots.”

Tricky put his hand on my shoul­der and turned me around, lead­ing us back to our rooms while yam­mer­ing on about what he was think­ing about for the next night. Some­thing tight and ter­ri­ble. I’d stopped lis­ten­ing as we passed Dawn’s room. I needed to talk to her, even though she didn’t want to talk to me.

“Sage, we don’t have time,” Tricky said seri­ously as he noted my gaze glued to her door. “This is a big deal for you, whether you want to admit it or not. This is a big deal for your fans. We can’t mess this up, and I don’t want to mess it up for you. You need a clear head, you got it?”

I was sur­prised at the sin­cer­ity in his voice, that he was actu­ally tak­ing this seri­ously for once.

I nod­ded reluc­tantly. “Okay. Let’s get ready.”

I left Dawn’s door, think­ing I could hear her shuf­fling around on the other side. Still that bar­rier between us.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I am over the moon to be on the list again, the first time for Shoot­ing Scars. This series means the world to me. Thank you for read­ing <3

To sum it up…this is how I’m feeling

Want to read more about Cam­den and Ellie? How about them as teens when they first met each other? Want to sup­port an extremely wor­thy (and per­sonal) cause at the same time, plus check out sto­ries from six­teen of today’s best sell­ing romance writers?

The anthol­ogy Sto­ries for Amanda is out now on Smash­words, Ama­zon and all other retail­ers — you can read Defy­ing the Dust, fea­tur­ing Cam­den McQueen and Ellie Watt. Cam­den and Ellie went through nearly the exact kind of bul­ly­ing I went through as a teen (every story comes from some­where), which is why their story and this cause is so impor­tant to me.

Amanda Todd was a young girl who was lured into a bad deci­sion by a cyber-stalker and then mer­ci­lessly tar­geted online and in real life over and over again, until it became too much for her to han­dle and she ended her life in Octo­ber of 2012.

She wanted to help other kids by shar­ing her story and let­ting them know they should never be pun­ished for who they are or for mak­ing a mis­take. AmandaToddLegacy.org is an orga­ni­za­tion that reaches out to kids in need, edu­cates about the harm­ful effects of bul­ly­ing and pro­vides resources that can make a real difference.

100% of the pro­ceeds from sale of this anthol­ogy will be donated toward that vision. 16 of the most pop­u­lar and best­selling authors in Con­tem­po­rary Romance, Erotic Romance and Young Adult have come together in sup­port of the fight against bul­ly­ing. Each has con­tributed a new short sto­ries or miss­ing scene from their most pop­u­lar series for this very wor­thy cause.

EXCERPT FROM DEFYING THE DUST

I exhaled and headed out of the med­ical build­ing and back into the inferno. The sun was high in the sky now, sear­ing my pants to my legs in sec­onds. I shielded my eyes from the glare and looked around. The van wasn’t in the park­ing lot. I guess Raquel and my father fucked off some­where. Too bad it was too hot out to even think about walk­ing back home by myself.

I sat down on the curb and waited. A few cars put­tered past on the main road, the dust ris­ing like sandy plumes behind them. There was some­thing pretty about that and had I been in a bet­ter mood, or at least had my sketch­book on me, I would have tried to cap­ture that in col­ored pen­cil. Pen was too blunt for some­thing that ethereal.

Then I saw some­thing even more poetic: the sil­hou­ette of a girl walk­ing through the dust clouds along the side­walk. I couldn’t see her face, just her shape, though I could tell she was small and walked with a pro­nounced limp. She turned in my direc­tion and headed toward me. As soon as the dust cleared, she stopped and looked around as if she were lost.

Wow. She was pretty. Very pretty. She looked about my age, too. She had long blonde hair pulled back in a pony­tail, big dark eyes, a round face, and pouty lips. I’d never seen her before—I would know if I had. I knew every girl in town—from afar, of course. No girls ever talked to me. But I kept all their names and images in my head, using the pret­ti­est ones when I was spank­ing it in the shower.

But unlike a lot of the girls in Palm Val­ley, this one wasn’t show­ing a lot of skin. You get used to it in this heat, see­ing your class­mates walk­ing around in cut-offs and bikini tops that only the coolest girls could fill out. This girl already stood out by wear­ing flared jeans, Doc Martens boots and a T-shirt. She must have been boil­ing hot, just as I was.

She started walk­ing toward the build­ing, but stopped as soon as she saw me.

My first instinct was to smile at her. It made most girls turn and run away.

But then she started walk­ing again, slower this time and with delib­er­a­tion. She was try­ing to con­trol her limp, her focus now dead ahead, not let­ting her eyes waver to me. I couldn’t tell if it was because I weirded her out or if she was self-conscious. Maybe both.

She was just a few feet away, refus­ing to look at me, when I said, “If you’re look­ing for the psy­chi­a­trist, he’s upstairs.”

The girl stopped and looked at me, a mix of shock and fear on her face. Up close she was even pret­tier, with a smat­ter­ing of freck­les across her petite nose. She filled out her jeans and black shirt pretty well too. I adjusted myself and prayed I wouldn’t get another inap­pro­pri­ate boner, though at least there’d be a rea­son for it this time.

I kept my face dead­pan. Might as well give her another rea­son to be turned off. “I mean, I’d know, I was just at the shrink. Guess my father thinks I’m a bit nuts.”

She looked me up and down, her face relax­ing slightly though she still looked puz­zled. Finally she said, “I’m look­ing for a pharmacy.”

I squinted up at her. “You’re not from here, are you? I mean, this town?”

She shook her head. She looked really uncomfortable.

“Aren’t you hot in those jeans and boots?” I asked.

Her face imme­di­ately went red and I knew I struck a nerve. But instead of feel­ing proac­tive, like I’d shut her down before she had a chance to shut me down, I just felt bad.

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly and got to my feet. “I’m not one to talk.” I tow­ered over her, awk­wardly adjust­ing my pants and rat­tling my wal­let chain, but to her credit she still stood there and folded her tanned arms across her chest. Her T-shirt was an aged look­ing Metal­lica Mas­ter of Pup­pets. I nod­ded at it. “Cool shirt. Do you like Metal­lica or did you pick that up at a thrift store?”

“Both,” she said, rais­ing her chin. Her eyes darted to the build­ing. “So is there a phar­macy in there?”

“Yep,” I said. “What are you look­ing for?”

She gave me a look that said it was none of my business.

I raised my hands in apol­ogy. “Sorry. Just try­ing to make con­ver­sa­tion. Usu­ally I have about two sec­onds before some­one throws a lame insult in my face. You’re break­ing a record here.”

She sucked on her bot­tom lip—completely adorable. I had the sud­den urge to do the same thing.

“Did you really see the psy­chi­a­trist?” she asked, still apprais­ing me.

I looked down at my clothes and back up again. “Look at me. Don’t I look like I need to see a shrink?”

She smiled but shook her head. “No. I like the Deftones,” she said, nod­ding at my patch. “I have all their albums.”

No way. No way this cool pretty chick in the Metal­lica shirt would also like one of my favorite, more obscure bands. I was pretty sure my mouth was open so I quickly tried to fill it with words.

“Uh, oh really? Cool. Have you seen them live?”

“No…I’ve never been to a con­cert. How about you? You look like you go to a lot.”

I laughed, try­ing to fig­ure out if she was insult­ing me or not. Her face was still guarded, yet sweet, and I decided she was being genuine…which was rare around me. “No, I’ve never seen them live. I took the bus out to Palm Springs when I heard Queens of the Stone Age was play­ing at a small bar there. Course, they wouldn’t let me in, I was only ten at the time, but I saw Josh Homme from far away.”

I won­dered if she knew who the singer/guitarist was but she just said, “Was he tall?”

“Yeah, he was tall.” Even though our con­ver­sa­tion must have sounded pretty stilted and lame to any­one lis­ten­ing, I felt like I was hav­ing the best talk of my life. “All the girls were throw­ing them­selves at him,” I added, try­ing to appeal to her even more.

She shrugged. “I don’t like red­heads much but he’s good on gui­tar.” Her eyes drifted to the build­ing. “Are you busy or do you want to help me with something?”

“I’ll help you,” I said a lit­tle too quickly. I winced at my own over­en­thu­si­asm but she just nod­ded at me with a straight face.

“Good,” she said. She started walk­ing toward the build­ing, her move­ments stiff. She glanced at me over her shoul­der. “Come on.”

I looked back to the road, won­der­ing if my dad was going to kill me if I wasn’t wait­ing by the curb. Then I decided that for this girl, death was worth it.

I fol­lowed her into the build­ing, the smell of straw­ber­ries and vanilla waft­ing behind her. I tried not to stare at her ass as it wig­gled in her jeans, but I caught a few glances while I could. Who knew if I’d ever be this close to a girl again? To be hon­est, I was sur­prised that not only was she cool as hell, but she was actu­ally still talk­ing to me. There had to be a catch…

As soon as we were in the mall-like foyer and spot­ted the small phar­macy shop—the type filled with canes and foot­baths and gauze, not fun stuff like Sharpies and Super Soakers—I tried to make conversation.

“So where did you move here from?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Out East, the South, what­ever,” she said and then stopped sud­denly. I nearly ran into her and stopped myself just in time. I’m sure the last thing she wanted was a sweaty Cam­den all up against her.

She smiled like she was about to let me in on the world’s biggest secret. I felt like my breath was being leached from my lungs.

“You go talk to the clerk and dis­tract him,” she said, her voice low and hushed.

“What?”

She frowned, her smile becom­ing wry and twisted. “Come on. Be a pal.”

Now it was my turn to frown. “I just don’t under­stand. You want me to dis­tract Mr. Sirk, the guy behind the counter? Dis­tract him from what?”

“Haven’t you ever shoplifted before?”

I was taken aback and laughed. “No.” Her mouth turned into a tight line. Oh my god, I thought she’d been jok­ing. “You’re serious.”

“Man, you guys in this town are no fun,” she said and quickly turned to the store.

I reached out, grabbed her elbow, and dropped it as soon as I felt awk­ward, which was pretty much right away. “No, no. I mean. Yeah. This town is no fun. But I’ll help you. I’ve just never done it before.” For obvi­ous rea­sons, too. I mean, one was that every­one watched me like a hawk any­way. I looked like I played Trou­ble­mak­ing Teen Num­ber One in a Life­time movie. Two was the fact that my dad was the sheriff.

Although the fact that I’d be help­ing this girl steal something—commit a crime—did make me feel like I was stick­ing it to my dad a bit.

“What’s your name?” I asked her.

She raised a thin brow. “Why?”

I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose. “Well I fig­ure if I’m going to be your accom­plice, I might as well know your name. Bon­nie and Clyde knew each other’s names.”

“They knew a lot more than that,” she said and I could have sworn another shade of crim­son dot­ted the cen­ter of her cheeks. “My name’s Ellie.”

“Cam­den,” I said. I stuck out my hand then thought bet­ter of it. Then I raised it again because I’d already gone too far. I stared at it dumbly, like it was stuck in greet­ing limbo.

Luck­ily, Ellie was a good sport and she shook my hand any­way. Her grip was strong, sur­pris­ing. Most girls my age shook hands like every­one had some disease—or maybe that’s just the way they were with me. But there was a strange sort of con­fi­dence in her hand­shake just as there was a strange sort of vul­ner­a­bil­ity in her eyes. She was already an enigma to me.

“Cam­den,” she said slowly, as if my name felt good on her tongue. “Isn’t that a town?”

I nod­ded. “I can be a lot of things.”

“So can I.” She looked to the store and back again, a grin mak­ing her cheeks pop. “So you’ll be the fall guy? I mean, you’ll dis­tract him?”

“Sure,” I said, try­ing to sound more non­cha­lant than I felt. “What are you stealing?”

“Just…nothing,” she said.

“And you’re sure you can’t buy it?”

Her face fell briefly and a wash of sad­ness flashed through her dark brown eyes. “No. My fam­ily is poor. We live on my uncle’s date farm. It’s just tem­po­rary but…”

I pat­ted her on the arm. “I get it. Let’s do it.” I could tell that what­ever brought Ellie to this town, she wasn’t happy about it. I didn’t mean to sound like the moral police any­way. I was just curi­ous as to whether it was some­thing she actu­ally needed or some­thing she was doing for kicks. From the grave look her eyes sud­denly took on, it seemed to be some­thing she needed.

We walked into the store and she veered off to my right, walk­ing pur­pose­fully down the aisle while I took in a deep breath and approached Mr. Sirk. The minute he looked up from his tat­tered paper­back novel—Tom Clancy—and saw me, his eyes nar­rowed in suspicion.

“May I help you?” he asked. He licked his lips ner­vously. Some­times I won­dered just how scary I looked to peo­ple. I mean, sure I was in all black and kinda weird, but still, I was obvi­ously just thir­teen. I wasn’t a threat. Then again, peo­ple had said that before the Columbine inci­dent, too.

Of course, now I had to dis­tract him long enough for Ellie to steal what­ever she was stealing.

I leaned on the counter, notic­ing him inch back slightly, and said, “Got any comic books?”

He looked slightly relieved. I bet he thought I was going to ask him for hard drugs or something.

“Did you check the mag­a­zine rack?” he asked.

“No,” I answered. “Thought I’d ask you first. So do you?”

“No,” he said. He brought his book out and was about to resume read­ing when I said, “Could you order some in for me?”

Okay, it was lame, and I was sec­onds from being thrown out of his store, I could tell.

He sighed angrily and said, “Look, kid, this ain’t a library. If you want to buy comic books, I suggest…”

I know he kept talk­ing, but I stopped lis­ten­ing the minute I caught Ellie leav­ing the store out of the cor­ner of my eye. I tapped the counter with my fist, mak­ing the man jump, told him “thank you”, and quickly walked out of the store after Ellie.

She hadn’t looked behind her or stopped until she was well clear of the build­ing. Though she was still limp­ing, she looked casual and care­free, like she hadn’t stolen any­thing at all. In fact, I couldn’t be sure of it until I was right beside her in the insuf­fer­able heat look­ing down at her jean pocket, which bulged at the front.

“Is that it?” I asked.

She kept her eyes to the road. “Yep. Thanks for that.”

“No prob­lem.” I really, really wanted to ask again about what it was she stole, but from the clipped way she fin­ished her sen­tences, I knew she wouldn’t tell me. Maybe it was some­thing as sim­ple as makeup.

I chewed on my lip for a sec­ond, try­ing to think of what else to say. My father hadn’t come by yet, but I felt like time was run­ning out.

“You were really good,” I told her.

She shot me a funny look.

I swal­lowed uneasily. “I mean, you looked nat­ural. Not that I think you always steal shit, it’s just…um, well it was kind of fun. More fun than what I nor­mally do.”

“And what do you nor­mally do? Aside from go to the shrink?”

She was a smart-ass, too. I liked that.

I smiled and brushed my hair behind my ears. “You know. Play gui­tar, draw, paint, lis­ten to music. Annoy my step­sis­ters. You?”

She shrugged. “I’ve been learn­ing a lot about har­vest­ing dates.”

“I think you need to get out more,” I joked. “Maybe…”

Ellie looked at me expec­tantly. It was ridicu­lous, what I was about to say, but my mouth was mov­ing and the words were com­ing out before I could stop them.

My eyes dropped to the hot asphalt as a gum wrap­per blew past on a stiff breeze. “Maybe…if you wanted…I could show you around town. I mean, if you wanted. Might be nice to know the area before school starts. I could tell you all the kids to avoid…though they’d all say to start with me.”

She was silent for so long that I finally had to look up at her. She was star­ing off into the dis­tance, at the dry, crack­led moun­tains. Either she was ignor­ing me or she was lost in her own thoughts.

I opened my mouth to tell her to for­get it when she said, “I guess you get bul­lied a lot, huh?”

I snorted. “Well, yeah. Last year they started call­ing me The Dark Queen. I’ve been shoved into more lock­ers than back­packs have. My lips get most of their action from other dude’s fists.”

She looked at me, her gaze lev­eled. “You sound proud of it.”

I shrugged with one shoul­der. “It’s life. Gotta make some­thing of it. I’m not going to stop being me.”

“Is that what you told the shrink?”

I nod­ded. “Pretty much.”

“But what’s the real answer? Who is the real Camden?”

“Wow. You’re all deep and shit, for a shoplifter.” I expected her to smile at that but she just looked back to the road, just in time to see my dad’s van come down into the park­ing lot. I took in a steady­ing breath. “Well, that’s my ride.”

I must have sounded odd to her because her head whipped toward me and she stud­ied my face. “Is that your family?”

“My dad and step­mom,” I said quickly. “They’ll have a heart attack when they see me talk­ing to a girl. Think the shrink scared me straight.”

Her mouth formed an “oh” and I fig­ured she was prob­a­bly assum­ing I was gay. I was tired of cor­rect­ing peo­ple though, so I didn’t add any­thing to that. Besides, maybe she’d think I was less threat­en­ing if I was.

The van came to a sud­den stop beside me, Raquel get­ting mild whiplash in the front seat. I was sur­prised to see my father hop­ping out and com­ing around the front of it.

“Dad,” I said nervously.

Only he was smil­ing faintly, like he was really impressed that I was talk­ing to a mem­ber of the female species, and a cute one at that.

“Cam­den,” he said, his eyes fixed on Ellie. “Who might your friend here be? I don’t think I’ve seen you around, young lady.”

Ellie stuck out her hand and raised her chin to look him in the eyes. There was a hint of detach­ment in her gaze, like she was pre­tend­ing to be some­thing she wasn’t.

“Hi, I’m Ellie. I just met your son.”

“Ellie?” he prodded.

She swal­lowed like some­thing was stuck in her throat. “Ellie Watt. I just moved here.”

My dad’s brows came together like two black cater­pil­lars. “Watt…are you with the folks who are liv­ing on Jim’s date farm?”

She blinked in sur­prise. “Yes, sir.”

He watched her for a few moments, wig­gling his jaw back and forth. “I see. Well, wel­come to Palm Val­ley. I’m Camden’s father. Sher­iff McQueen.”

The color quickly drained out of Ellie’s face and she ner­vously rubbed her palms along her jeans. “Oh. How cool.” Her eyes flew to mine for an instant, a mix of dis­ap­point­ment and fear tak­ing them for a sec­ond or two. Then her expres­sion was detached again.

I stared back at her, smil­ing lightly as if to tell her that her secret was safe with me. It wasn’t until my dad told her it was nice meet­ing her and barked at me to get in the car that I eyed the bulge in her pocket and gave her the thumbs up.

“If you want to hang out,” I started.

“Cam­den!” my father yelled as he got in the car. “Let’s go.”

What­ever delight my father ini­tially had at see­ing me with Ellie was sud­denly gone, like he already knew she was the shoplift­ing type and disapproved.

Still, I had to try. “Do you need a ride?” I asked. I heard my father groan from inside and Raquel telling him to be quiet.

She bit her lip and shook her head. “No, I’m okay. My mom can get me. No. Wait…I can walk home.”

“Phhff, you can’t walk home in this,” I said, glanc­ing at the sun.

“No,” she said quickly, an edge to her voice. I looked at the hard­ness in her eyes, the trep­i­da­tion in the whites of them. “Thank you. I’ll walk.”

I gave her an uneasy smile. I didn’t want her to walk, but it was obvi­ous the idea of get­ting a ride with me and my dad scared the crap out of her. I bet she thought it was a trap and we were going to lead her straight to the police sta­tion for questioning.

“Okay, well—”

“Cam­den!” my dad boomed.

“—I’ll be see­ing you. I hope.”

“I’ll see you at school,” she said, giv­ing me a quick wave. I expected her to march off toward the build­ing or maybe down the street, but she just stood there, wait­ing, until I was in the van and we were mov­ing away.

I watched her until she was gone; my neck craned around until it hurt. Then I sat back in my seat and let a small smile play on my face. I didn’t know what had hap­pened, but some­how my day turned around one hun­dred per­cent. For once, I was able to talk to some­one with­out them being weird about how weird I was. For once, I was able to meet some­one who seemed to have secrets and prob­lems of her own.

For once, I met a girl who was cool as hell and totally took my breath away.

And so, nat­u­rally, for once, I wasn’t going to let this girl get away that easily.

I had hope.

 

Com­ing Octo­ber 29th, the sexy and scary rock and roll saga comes to an end with The Devil’s Reprise. This is the long-awaited sequel to The Devil’s Metal.

Read on for the pro­logue and an excerpt of chap­ter one. WARNING– READERS 18 AND OLDER. Rated R for lan­guage, drug use, group sex, etc.

 

The Devil’s Reprise

Pro­logue

There comes a time in every man’s life where he must face his demons.

It sounds cliché, I know.

But I break the mold.

Because I’ve faced my demons.

In the flesh.

And I’ve won.

But it’s the ones inside your head that don’t die.

They keep living.

My per­sonal demons? They’ve got­ten worse since the incident.

They’ve grown now.

They own me.

When I was fif­teen years old, I made a deal with the Devil—or at least one of his spokeswomen—on the muddy red banks of Lake Shasta, Cal­i­for­nia. I wanted tal­ent, fame, and for­tune. The dev­ils upheld their end of the bar­gain. They gave me every­thing I ever wanted. I joined a band called Hybrid, made my way to gui­tarist, and pro­pelled the band into star­dom. We gave Led Zep­pelin a run for their money. We got pussy galore (no, not Honor Black­man). We had everything.

Includ­ing the final thing. My final wish. That Hybrid go down in history.

We did. There was a music jour­nal­ist brought on by Creem mag­a­zine to cover the whole event. Our last tour (unbe­knownst to any­one but me and our man­ager, Jacob). Her name was Dawn. She was young, beau­ti­ful, and our biggest fan.

Dawn saw it all. She recorded it all.

And, some­how, she saved me.

First it giveth then it taketh away. The band broke up. The unthink­able hap­pened. Peo­ple died.

I should have died.

This was all sup­posed to end before I turned twenty-eight.

Yet I lived. Dawn lived.

And I was given another chance at life. To live free of the Devil’s shadow. To live my life, the way it should be.

I should really be the luck­i­est S.O.B. on the planet. The fates that took away Mor­ri­son and Joplin and Hendrix—that wasn’t my fate after all.

Some­how, I won.

But vic­tory is as bit­ter as the quaaludes on my tongue. How can I really live with myself when my whole life had been loaned? I lost the peo­ple clos­est to me. They died, they suf­fered, for my selfishness.

How dare I be allowed to go on, to run free, when I brought this upon them and myself?

And so I haven’t.

I’m not free.

My name is Sage Knightly. One of the few sur­viv­ing mem­bers of the metal band, Hybrid. I’m about to embark on my first solo tour, to be the rock star I was always sup­posed to be.

But some­thing tells me I’m not com­ing out of this alive.

And nei­ther is she.

 

 

 

Chap­ter One

Sage – April, 1975

 

The pink lips at the end of my dick were some of the nicest I’d ever seen.

But the chick’s tits were better.

I put my palm against her fore­head and pushed her head back until my dick bobbed out of her wet mouth.

“Lie down,” I told her. “On your back. Grab your tits and get ready for me.”

I was being com­mand­ing and a bit of an ass.

It wasn’t like me.

But noth­ing was like me lately.

And I didn’t really care.

The chick did as I asked. She was a pretty young thing, a few years above jail­bait, with long brown hair she prob­a­bly ironed every day. I didn’t remem­ber her name, and I didn’t bother ask­ing, so I just called her ‘Babe.’

I called the other one ‘Sugar.’ Sugar had Far­rah Faw­cett hair, blonde and teased and frosted like a cake. Sugar was in the same Detroit hotel room as us and cur­rently on the other bed, rid­ing my bassist, Tricky. And by rid­ing, I mean fuck­ing him sense­less, reverse cow­girl style. The chick needed a hat in her hand to make it that much more authen­tic. Tricky was even more fucked up than me, from our nightly cock­tail of vodka, beer, and cocaine. Some­times we’d throw quaaludes in there. Tonight, though, we wanted to make sure our dicks were working.

Two chicks at once: every man’s dream and every rock star’s pre­rog­a­tive. Sugar and Babe were good friends, or so it seemed, prob­a­bly brought up in a hip­pie com­mune and believed in the free love that was still trick­ling in from the 60s. They weren’t shy being naked, and they didn’t hes­i­tate when they made out with each other, not even when Tricky told Sugar to get her fin­gers up in Babe’s bush. Nat­u­rally, they were fans of Hybrid, before I basi­cally killed the band. Killed Micky Brown, Bob our bus dri­ver, and Gra­ham Freed, too. But Gra­ham didn’t count. He was the only thing that didn’t count. Every­thing else made me bleed.

The singer, Rob­bie, my best friend, wouldn’t speak to me. Noelle, our bassist, was still men­tally ill from what happened.

I didn’t need to be reminded of that. Every time Sugar or Babe would open their mouths and wax on about how much they loved Hybrid, it was a knife to my fuck­ing heart. It never stopped hurt­ing. So the next best thing was to fuck the shit out of the girls—no more talk­ing. Just suck my dick, get each other off, get me off. Give me peace. Make me forget.

I was get­ting there. I was get­ting there.

She pushed her mas­sive tits together, and I squeezed my dick between them, my eyes rolling back in my head from the fric­tion. Jesus. That’s what I was talk­ing about. What I wanted. Just vibes buzzing along, nerves on fire, space travel inside your head.

I was fucked up and fuck­ing. I was going and coming.

I drove myself between her, not both­er­ing to look at her face, at the sounds com­ing from her lips, which sounded a bit too the­atri­cal. How this was fun for her, I didn’t know, but maybe it was always her fan­tasy to have Sage Knightly’s king-sized cock between her tits. It was finally com­ing true. A story to tell her friends.

The fan­tasy is never as good as the real­ity, not for me any­way. Not that I fan­ta­sized about any­thing other than coast­ing along and feel­ing noth­ing. Even my music was slip­ping away at a time that I needed it the most. Sex and drugs and booze and sleep. This was my new life. The rock and roll played some­where in the back­ground, a reminder of where I came from. But I didn’t even know if it was where I was headed.

When I felt my balls tighten, I pulled away and looked over my shoul­der at Tricky and Sugar. She was com­ing so loudly that I was cer­tain some­one was going to com­plain. What­ever, man. I could have been Jimmy Page in here with a chick and a Great Dane; would that have been better?

“Hey, Tricky,” I called out to him. “I need her.”

Tricky grunted, his grip tight­en­ing on her small waist, his face fur­row­ing as he approached cli­max. I guess I was being rude, bug­ging him right then, but damn if I didn’t care. I just needed to get off, and I needed her to do it.

A world of want.

My lips curled at that thought, the title of my song that became a hit and let the world know that I still had “it,” even as a solo artist.

I had wanted so much.

It was given to me.

Then taken away.

Now I just wanted to come all over who­ever this chick was.

Rocket ships into the ether. Shoot myself into the abyss.

Tricky got off, and I watched with mild inter­est and sud­den impa­tience. Tricky didn’t know where he was or what he was doing, I could tell. I wanted that.

“Hey, Sugar,” I said to the girl as she slowly eased her­self off his dick. I’d seen Tricky naked in all sorts of posi­tions these days, and I was always too high to even be both­ered by it. Maybe this is what it would be like at a hip­pie whore­house. Dicks and balls and pussy every­where, served with a side of speed and whiskey.

Groovy love, man, taken to the next dimension.

Sugar stum­bled over, nearly falling into my back. She was fucked up, too. One big party. Escapism: the new religion.

“Get on the bed and get that ass in the air,” I ges­tured, absently stroking myself at the same time. I’d already done her in the back door ear­lier, when Tricky and I tag-teamed her. He in the front, me in the rear. She wasn’t as pretty as Babe, but she was built smaller and her tight ass was a fist.

She gave me an appre­hen­sive smile, like she wasn’t too sure about this. I gave her an expec­tant look in return, try­ing to be seri­ous and threat­en­ing, but a lazy smile crept up on my lips. I failed. Drugs won.

“Come on,” I said, “you want to be the one to get me off, don’t you?”

I don’t know why she was hes­i­tat­ing, maybe because she was small and I was large and per­haps once was enough for her. But she just nod­ded while I put one hand on her firm ass and waved at Tricky.

“Tricky,” I said, slur­ring slightly. “Pow­der her nose.”

Tricky stag­gered over to the desk, naked as a jay­bird, and then brought over the mir­ror, the rolled fifty, and the line that was still left. He gave me a look as he came over, like, “you sure you don’t want this?”

I did. But relief was so close. Bet­ter to give it to the girl, make her have fun in the last five minutes.

He put the mir­ror on the bed below her, and she dipped down to snort it up. He walked over to the mini fridge and brought out the half-drunk bot­tle of cham­pagne and flopped down on the couch, con­tent to watch. If he wanted to stare at my ass, he could go right ahead.

I waited a few sec­onds, teas­ing her crack with my tip, before she shook her head and seemed to loosen.

“What should I do?” Babe asked qui­etly, look­ing rejected since I gave up on her titty-fucking so soon.

“Lie back down, Babe,” I told her. “Spread those legs. Sugar here will take care of both of us.”

Babe’s eyes widened as she lay back down. I pushed into Sugar, slowly, as gen­tly as I could. The tight­ness squeezed me. It took hold of my dick, my balls, all the way into the pit of my stom­ach. It made me dizzy, vibrant, real.

So close.

I kept push­ing into her, in and out, her body tense from my move­ment while she tried to go down on her friend. Tricky watched it all. Girl on girl. Cham­pagne and blow. Rock star life.

Life.

What a waste.

I pumped into her harder until the pres­sure was too much and I was ready to blow.

I pulled out of her and came in hot, sticky spurts onto her back. I was pretty sure she was moan­ing from relief while I moaned just to moan. To get it all out. Every­thing that was buried inside me.

When my mind rolled back down to planet earth, I looked at the mess I made on her. I tried to hold on to the frag­ment of feel­ings as they passed through me.

That feel­ing of happiness.

Of safety.

Of love.

I thought of Dawn, the last per­son who tried to give me any of that.

I thought she’d been a fool for try­ing to fix me.

But some­times, when the endor­phins and the haze wore off, I real­ized that even fools can be right.

I slept alone that night, send­ing the girls pack­ing with signed chests and merchandise.

I tried to dream of Dawn, her beau­ti­ful face that pulled me out from so many buses, sun through so many clouds. Inno­cence, pas­sion, life…even after every­thing she’d seen. Faith. In me.

I tried to dream of Dawn, but dreams don’t work that way, espe­cially when you fall asleep with an empty bot­tle of whiskey in your clammy hands.

I dreamed of demons instead, chas­ing after Dawn in a cav­ern full of bones. My music played in the background.

Here’s a lit­tle teaser/excerpt for you from The Devil’s Reprise, a hor­ror romance releas­ing Octo­ber 29th (it’s the sequel to The Devil’s Metal, a book worth check­ing out, but can be treated as a stand­lone). Warn­ing, the book in gen­eral con­tains graphic sex (includ­ing group sex) and is pretty fuck­ing scar­ing. Also, the swearing…

 

~~~~~~~

I moaned loudly. I hadn’t had this feel­ing, this exquis­ite, nerve-dazzling feel­ing in such a long time. I felt like I was being awak­ened from one hell of a slumber.

He reached around to his back pocket, and I heard the tear of a con­dom wrap­per. While he fid­dled with that, I grabbed his belt buckle and brought him right up to me, my legs wrap­ping around his slen­der waist, the heels of my boots dig­ging into the dents on his lower back. I unzipped his pants, free­ing his cock from them. It was still so fuck­ing beau­ti­ful, dan­ger­ously beau­ti­ful, and once it again it was mine. I bit my lip, rel­ish­ing the weight and length of it in my hands.

He slipped the con­dom on it with pre­ci­sion, then stroked his long fin­gers against my clit until they slowly entered me, one by one. His skilled fin­gers that could coax the most amaz­ing sounds from his gui­tar and make me feel like I was another one of his vir­ile instruments.

“You’re ready for me again,” he said, his eyes star­ing hard into mine, his breath shak­ing with lust.

“I never stopped being ready,” I said.

Well folks, The Artists Tril­ogy is finally fin­ished. Bold Tricks is offi­cially out, wrap­ping up this gritty roman­tic sus­pense series that USA Today calls “cap­ti­vat­ing” and RT Book Reviews calls a “grip­ping, twisted romance.”

If you’re a fan of flawed char­ac­ters, steamy sex, dicey choices, riv­et­ing action scenes, vio­lence, revenge, tragic romance, and all that other good stuff, give The Artists Tril­ogy a shot — each book is under $3.

The Artists Tril­ogy Read­ing Order

#1 Sins & Nee­dles — $2.99

#0.5 On Every Street — $0.99

#2 Shoot­ing Scars — $2.99

#3 Bold Tricks — $2.99

Avail­able at all E-book retail­ers (with print edi­tions com­ing to a book­store near you in 2014).

 

Okay, if you’re on my Goodreads, you will see this post. That’s because my blog posts pop up on the feed there…even if I’m not on Goodreads myself.

So, I left Goodreads for the time being — time being could be a long time but I’m not swear­ing off the site all together, I’m not stick­ing a fin­ger up at it or any­thing. This has noth­ing to do with cen­sor­ship or peo­ple being par­tic­u­larly “mean” but rather antic­i­pa­tion of peo­ple mak­ing me cry, even if they don’t mean to — if that makes any sense.

You see, deep down I am a frag­ile lit­tle flower (dif­fer­ent from a spe­cial snowflake). And though I’ve writ­ten over thir­teen books (a pen name book, four novel­las and seven nov­els in Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror, two books in The Devil’s Series, and three in The Artists Tril­ogy), and have had my work absolutely bru­tal­ized, torn-apart, made-fun of, my skills and tal­ent skewed, etc, etc. I thought I had devel­oped a thick skin.

Well I have in the sense that I don’t com­ment on neg­a­tive reviews. And I do under­stand every­one is enti­tled to their opin­ion (after all, I leave bad reviews too). And one person’s opin­ion doesn’t mean every­one will feel the same.

But in the end, when I see that some­one doesn’t “get” what I’m try­ing to do, it can hurt.

I don’t like to hurt. Some­times you can push off the review — as I have been doing for two and half a years since I have been pub­lished — and say, well, dif­fer­ent fucks for dif­fer­ent ducks.

And some­times I can’t. Lately…whether it be stress from writ­ing or stress from this dark, dark indus­try (let me spin you a tale there, because whoo boy you have no idea how cut­throat and unsta­ble the pub­lish­ing indus­try is these days), I can’t NOT take things personally.

Look…I know this last book in The Artists Tril­ogy is going to dis­ap­point some peo­ple. They they won’t be happy with it. And yeah, maybe it’ll ruin the whole series for them.

But I ended the book the only way I knew how, the way I had planned from the very begin­ning. I knew how Bold Tricks would go when I started writ­ing Sins & Nee­dles, that is how I plot ALL of my books and series — way the fuck in advance. It’s the only way I know how to write. I dropped clues the whole time, I mea­sured out hints, I made sure that hope­fully some peo­ple would have an idea of what was to come. My char­ac­ters did stay true to the peo­ple that I knew them to be…deep inside.

I’m fuck­ing proud of the series and that book. Bold Tricks is my favorite book because I finally got to wrap things up and give it an end­ing I found fit­ting. I cried, I laughed, I swooned and I was fuck­ing high for days when I wrote THE END. Seri­ously. It was an AMAZING feel­ing I can’t even describe.

I real­ize MANY peo­ple will not agree with me. I know I have to let it go.

There are also peo­ple who will appre­ci­ate the vision — I got a four star amaz­ing review in PRINT for Bold Tricks in the Roman­tic Times Magazine…how cool is that?

But it still stings when you can’t make every­one happy, you know? And peo­ple have their right to wish I had writ­ten an entirely dif­fer­ent book. I didn’t. But they can want that.

So really, the best thing is to keep away from the neg­a­tiv­ity and Goodreads. I’ll miss the good reviews here but I’ll also miss the bad. The point is I love the book and it told ELLIE’S STORY the way I meant for it to be told. Dis­agree with me all you want but…I won’t see it now. And I’ll prob­a­bly be a LOT happier.

That said, one of the great things about Goodreads is find­ing other books to read and leav­ing and rec­om­mend­ing books of your own. It’s hard to do that as an author because you see your own reviews a lot. So, I’m mov­ing over to Book­Likes. I already have a page there. I plan to use Book­Likes just to blog about the books I’ve read because I love doing that and hav­ing discussions…about other people’s work.

In the mean­time, I’m still on Face­book. I am on Twit­ter (see side­bar). And I’ll keep blog­ging here so peo­ple on Goodreads can still have it pop up on the feed. I’ve got more book announce­ments and cover reveals and give­aways and all sorts of things. And if you want to drop me a line, you can always email me at AuthorKarinaHalle@gmail.com

Thanks for being so great Goodread­ers for all these years!! Remem­ber, it’s not you…it’s me. And it’s just time for me to step away.

Well, after the beau­ti­ful, stark yet mono­chrome cover for Come Alive, I wanted some­thing col­or­ful. Yet eerie. Beau­ti­ful. Yet scary. Sigh. Not an easy task…luckily my designer Naj has infi­nite patience and we finally came to a cover that really cap­tured the togeth­er­ness of Perry and Dex, the beau­ti­ful yet rough Ore­gon Coast (site of their first EIT episode, Darkhouse).…and a creepy ass child. Because noth­ing is more ter­ri­fy­ing than dead chil­dren out for revenge and shit. Oh…I’m step­ping on the blurb now. All right well here is the blurb for Ashes to Ashes, EIT #8 (Decem­ber 11, 2013 — my bday):

It’s been two months since Perry Palomino and Dex Foray’s rela­tion­ship reached a new turn­ing point, two months since Perry started a new life in Seat­tle, and two months since their Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror show took on a new part­ner, ex-Wine Babe Rebecca Sims, and found a new level of suc­cess. But when­ever there is light in their lives, the mad­ness still has a way of com­ing back in.

When the team is sent back to the stormy Ore­gon coast to inves­ti­gate a haunted school, Perry wants to use the oppor­tu­nity to recon­nect with her fam­ily and rein­tro­duce Dex into their lives. Only Perry’s not the only one who’s reach­ing out – her grand­mother Pippa has started appear­ing to her with dis­turb­ing warn­ings and Perry’s pres­ence at the school has ignited a chill­ing new wave of super­nat­ural phe­nom­e­non. Once used a cen­tury ago as a sana­to­rium to house chil­dren dying of tuber­cu­lo­sis, the school’s past res­i­dents are slowly com­ing back to life and with one thing on their mind. They want some­one to play with, some­one to join them. Forever.

Even when dead, some chil­dren get what­ever they want.

And they want Perry.

And the cover:

And the full cover:

Sigh, this is almost the last book, guys. I’m really glad some of you are sad that the series is com­ing to a close — if you weren’t, it would mean it was drag­ging out. No, Perry and Dex deserve to go out with a bang!