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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two things to make this Fri­day more awesome:

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

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

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

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

CONGRATS HOLLY! I’ll be email­ing you!

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

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

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

Enjoy!

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

(unpub­lished ver­sion, sub­ject to change)

CHAPTER ONE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Inter­est­ing,” he commented.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was doomed.

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

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

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

And that was it. Just his phone number.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 happy when she called? Well, being the very tra­di­tional, manly man that Scott is, he called up my father and asked him for per­mis­sion. He wanted to do it in April, when he could see my dad face to face, but…I guess he couldn’t wait

So that’s my story. In 2009, I wrote a book called Dark­house, about a pas­sion­ate, funny and swoony guy called Dex. I never had my Dex at the time but even­tu­ally, my real life Dex showed up. And he’s bet­ter than ANY fic­tional char­ac­ter that I could ever cre­ate. And I’m very happy to spend­ing the rest of my life with him.

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.