Love, in Spanish Cover Reveal & Excerpt!

I’m so excited to finally get to show you the Love, in Span­ish cover. Oh Mateo! I want to thank all of the blogs and fans who par­tic­i­pated in the cover reveal event hosted by InkSlinger PR! Also, thanks to Naj Qam­ber Designs for the cover design, as well as Scott Hoover for the photo.

If you haven’t seen this cover, check it out below! You can also get a glimpse into the book by read­ing the included excerpt at the bot­tom of this post as well.

LoveInSpanisheBook

LIS full coverRELEASE DATE: NOVEMBER 11, 2014

 

BLURB:

“She sat beside me on the bus – and she changed my whole life.” 

Suc­cess­ful, wealthy and absurdly hand­some – Span­ish ex-football player Mateo Casalles seemed like he had it all. A high-society wife, an adorable lit­tle girl, and flashy apart­ments in Madrid and Barcelona only sweet­ened the deal. But there was more to Mateo than met the eye – a life of uncer­tainty and regret that col­ored his black and white world. 

That was until Vera Miles came into his life like a shoot­ing star. Tat­tooed, wild and young, Vera seemed like Mateo’s polar oppo­site at first. But you can’t choose who you fall in love with and the two lost souls did every­thing they could to be together, all while suf­fer­ing the grave con­se­quences. 

Now with Mateo divorced and liv­ing in Madrid with Vera, there is a whole new set of chal­lenges and set­backs fac­ing the cou­ple and rock­ing the foun­da­tion of their star-crossed rela­tion­ship. 

Unfor­tu­nately for them, the brighter the star, the faster they burn. 

***Love, in Span­ish con­tains the first two chap­ters of Where Sea Meets Sky, a full-length Love, in Eng­lish spin­off star­ring Vera’s brother, Josh Miles, com­ing March 2015 from Atria Books***

ADD TO GOODREADS

PRE-ORDER NOW

EXCERPT

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

 I turn in my chair and give Vera a curi­ous look. Yet another Eng­lish say­ing that I don’t know. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

 She gives me a soft but tired smile and sits down on the arm rest. I imme­di­ately wrap my arm around her waist and pull her down into my lap, where she comes to a rest with a gig­gle, her hair obscur­ing the imp­ish smile on her face. No mat­ter where she is, I can never stop touch­ing her and now more than ever I need her to relax, to feel safe, to know I’m going to get us out of this.

 “Explain,” I demand. “Or I will pun­ish you with kisses.”

 She raises her brow. “Fol­lowed by pun­ish­ment by penis?”

 I shrug. “That can be arranged. Now, tell me my Estrella.”

 She sighs and buries her lips into my neck. I can’t help the small moan that escapes from me, nor my hard­ness build­ing beneath her plump, round ass. I close my eyes and fight the urge to pick her up and take her to the bed­room, the only other way I know how to make her feel safe and sated, the only way I know how to escape.

 “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” she says against my throat, “is a say­ing. I don’t know where it’s from but it means, well, noth­ing is scarier than a pissed off bitch.” She pauses, suck­ing in her breath and I know she fears she’s said the wrong thing. “Sorry,” she quickly adds and I feel her body tense up beneath my fin­gers. “I didn’t mean that Isabel is a bitch.”

 She is still so skit­tish over her words, the way she blurts things out, but it’s one of the rea­sons why I love her. I cup the back of her head with my hand and let the soft­ness of her hair sink over me. “I know you didn’t,” I assure her. “And, well, she is being a bitch.”

 “Can you blame her though?” she asks, her voice ris­ing a pitch and when she pulls away from me, her eyes are wet. It breaks my heart. I’m get­ting tired of my heart break­ing and I know that this isn’t going to change any­time soon. Every day there is another weight on us, another crack appears.

 “No,” I tell her hon­estly. “I can­not blame her.”

 A silence lapses over us, heavy like a wool cloak. It does this some­times. What we’ve done, it coats us.

 Finally she clears her throat. “She’s going to hurt for a long time,” she says. “She’s going to be angry. This isn’t going away. I thought every­thing was behind us now, that she’d move on. You’ve been divorced for a year, if she’s still this mad a year out…”

 “She is mad because I am going back to Atletico,” I tell her. “She is mad because of the paparazzi, the way they are hound­ing us again. She is mad because she feels she is being made to look like a fool. If I had just stayed with my head down, she wouldn’t be doing this.”

 “But you can’t live your life in fear, Mateo,” she tells me.

 I smile at her and brush her sun­set hair from her face. “And nei­ther can you.”

 She set­tles back against my body, sinks, con­forms, melds. She is sec­ond skin. She is a part of myself I can’t bear to sep­a­rate from. I pray I never have to. I pray we can sur­vive what­ever is com­ing our way.

 And I can feel it com­ing, that ten­sion, that storm rolling in the weeks and days.

 I pick her up in my arms and for all her pil­lowy curves, she weighs noth­ing more than a feather. I take her down the hall to the bed­room, throw her on the bed. She glows in the after­noon sun that streams in through our win­dow and it isn’t long before we are both naked and I am climb­ing over her, pin­ning her arms above her head and drink­ing in her body like the most beau­ti­ful, deca­dent wine.

 I will devour her until all of this is gone.

 I will con­sume her until we are all that’s left.

 I push inside her and let my hunger take over.

It all started with Love, in English

He’s thirty-eight. I’m

twenty-three.He speaks Spanish.

I speak Eng­lish.He lives in Spain.

I live in Canada.

He dresses in

thousand-dollar suits. I’m cov­ered in tattoos.

He’s mar­ried and

has a five-year old daughter.

I’m sin­gle and

can’t com­mit to any­one or anything.

Until now. Because

when they say you can’t choose who you fall in love with, boy ain’t that the

f*#king truth.

***

To a restless

dreamer like Vera Miles, it sounded like the expe­ri­ence of a life­time. Instead

of spend­ing her sum­mer intern­ing for her astron­omy major, she would fly to

Spain where she’d spend a few weeks teach­ing con­ver­sa­tional Eng­lish to

busi­ness­men and women, all while enjoy­ing free room and board at an isolated

resort. But while Vera expected to get a tan, meet new peo­ple and stuff herself

with wine and paella, she never expected to fall in love.

Mateo Casalles is

unlike any­one Vera has ever known, let alone any­one she’s usu­ally attracted to.

While Vera is a pierced and tat­ted free spirit with a love for music and

free­dom, Mateo is a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man from Madrid, all sharp suits and

cocky Latino charm. Yet, as the weeks go on, the two grow increas­ingly close

and their rela­tion­ship changes from purely pla­tonic to something…more.

Some­thing that

makes Vera feel alive for the first time.

Some­thing that can

never, ever be.

Or so she thinks

BUY LINKS:

AMAZON

B&N

iTunes

 

Winning Location Revealed & New Giveaway!

And the win­ner is…

ITALY!

Italy / CampaniaThanks to all your votes, it looks like Book #2 for Atria Books/Simon and Schus­ter will be set on the AMALFI COAST OF ITALY (plus the neigh­bor­ing islands)! But me and my tire­less assistant/book blog­ger Stephanie will be trav­el­ing there in Octo­ber for research, and we want to (vir­tu­ally) bring YOU with us! This is going to totally be a live, inter­ac­tive trip with daily blog posts, video, pho­tos of hot Ital­ian men of the day (rough life we have!) AND YOU the reader get to pick what activ­i­ties we do and places we go! So once again, you’ll get to help us CHOOSE THE ADVENTURE, and hope­fully those places will end up in the book!

Ready for a GIVEAWAY?

As I men­tioned before, YOU are going to help us choose where we go, and what we do while we are in Italy. Start­ing this week­end (Sept 19th), I will have a post on my Face­book page where you can vote (by leav­ing a com­ment on the pinned Face­book post on my author page). Each day that you vote, you will be entered to win one of our mys­tery grand prize packs! (This will con­tain some spe­cial items from our trav­els to Italy that YOU help to vote for!–We want to bring Italy to you!)

Sound like fun?

Stay tuned to my Face­book Page for updates once this give­away goes live this Fri­day (9/19/14)! Once again, thank you for all your con­tin­ued support!

Experiment in Terror Read-Along!

10556308_878486212179235_2866558185557666727_nTo cel­e­brate THE END of the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror series AND the release of Dust to Dust on August 11th, I’ve put together a FB group for an EPIC reada­long. Tomor­row we dis­cuss Dark­house, Red Fox and Dead Sky Morn­ing then we devote two days per Lying Sea­son, On Demon Wings, etc (check group for sched). I will be chat­ting with you at times dur­ing the day about the books in dis­cus­sion and there are con­tests, spe­cial posts, etc as well. DO NOTE: it is a pri­vate group to pre­vent spoil­ers from reach­ing the out­side world. It could take a few hours for you to be added and also, please, once in, do not add peo­ple who HAVE NOT read the series. This is just for peo­ple are cur­rently read­ing EIT or have already read it. Now…who is excited?!

Want to join the Face­book group?

Do so –>HERE<–

Dust to Dust–New Release Date

Hey folks! There’s a bit of a hic­cup with the release date of Dust to Dust, the final book in the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror series. It’s being pushed back two weeks, from July 29 to August 11th. Why? Well as you know I’ve been trav­el­ing for the last three weeks for book sign­ings in Orlando and Europe and due to jet­lag and my busy sched­ule I was not able to write as much as planned. As such, I’m a bit behind and have no desire to rush through this book (plus I caught some author bug that side­lined me for my first few days back). Also, the new release date ben­e­fits my UK pub­lish­ers, Lit­tle Brown, and allows for less scram­bling on their end too. No wor­ries tho — I’m cur­rently writ­ing the book and it’s on it’s way, I’d just rather have some extra time with it since it is the LAST EIT book after all.

The extra time will let you read Ashes to Ashes again, some­thing I rec­om­mend before read­ing Dust to Dust. In fact, read­ing Come Alive again will help too and for any rea­son if you have not read the novel­las The Dex-Files and Old Blood, please do so as both books con­tain impor­tant infor­ma­tion about the series which will be revealed in Dust to Dust.

Thanks for under­stand­ing! I hope to get some teasers and chap­ters to share with you soon :)

LOVE, IN ENGLISHEARLY RELEASE AND PRE-ORDER LINKS

LIE TEASER 55Fab­u­lous news!  Take a look at that teaser and tell me what has changed?

The new release date for Love, in Eng­lish is April 20th — two days early!

But that’s Easter Sun­day, you all say. I won’t be home or near a com­puter, you all say.

No wor­ries — YOU CAN PRE-ORDER!

On Ama­zon –> CLICK HERE

On Barnes & Noble —-> CLICK HERE

On iTunes —-> CLICK HERE

And on KOBO…er, com­ing soon!

And paper­back pre-order on Ama­zon! Also com­ing soon :)

Still unsure about the book or want more infor­ma­tion? Well, I did a Q&A about it includ­ing answer­ing that “GOLDEN QUESTION” — you can read it here.

LIE Teaser 27 (1)

COVER REVEALEXCERPTBLURB for LOVE, IN ENGLISH

LIE full cover final jpgLove, in English

This is not sus­pense or hor­ror or a series. It is 100% stand­alone, pure NA con­tem­po­rary romance! Pub date: April 22, 2014

Syn­op­sis:

He’s thirty-eight. I’m twenty-three.

He speaks Span­ish. I speak English.

He lives in Spain. I live in Canada.

He dresses in thousand-dollar suits. I’m cov­ered in tattoos.

He’s mar­ried and has a five-year old daughter.

I’m sin­gle and can’t com­mit to any­one or anything.

Until now.Because when they say you can’t choose who you fall in love with, boy ain’t that the f*#king truth.

***

To a rest­less dreamer like Vera Miles, it sounded like the expe­ri­ence of a life­time. Instead of spend­ing her sum­mer intern­ing for her astron­omy major, she would fly to Spain where she’d spend a few weeks teach­ing con­ver­sa­tional Eng­lish to busi­ness­men and women, all while enjoy­ing free room and board at an iso­lated resort. But while Vera expected to get a tan, meet new peo­ple and stuff her­self with wine and paella, she never expected to fall in love.

Mateo is unlike any­one Vera has ever known, let alone any­one she’s usu­ally attracted to. While Vera is a pierced and tat­ted free spirit with a love for music and free­dom, Mateo Casales is a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man from Madrid, all sharp suits and cocky Latino charm. Yet, as the weeks go on, the two grow increas­ingly close and their rela­tion­ship changes from purely pla­tonic to something…more.

Some­thing that makes Vera feel alive for the first time.

Some­thing that can never, ever be.

Or so she thinks.

 

*unedited* EXCERPT!

The silence crack­led above our heads like a live wire. I could feel Jorge’s eyes on us as he reluc­tantly placed Mateo’s drink on the table and walked away. Part of me wished for him to come back, to break up the ten­sion and the star­tling inten­sity in Mateo’s eyes. The other part was self­ishly glad Jorge was leav­ing us in peace. When he dis­ap­peared back into the restau­rant, Mateo and I were the only ones on the patio.

I broke away from his eyes, focus­ing instead on his bot­tle of Aguila and the con­den­sa­tion that ran down the sides, look­ing bliss­fully cool in the sticky night air. Through all the weeks of jok­ing, talk­ing, the inno­cent phys­i­cal con­tact, now I was astutely ner­vous about being alone with him. It wasn’t so much that I was afraid of him – I was afraid of me. Ever since that remark at din­ner, I’d been afraid of what I’d do to him, how I’d break that moral code I promised for myself.

He’s mar­ried, he’s mar­ried, he’s mar­ried, I told myself, watch­ing a drop of water race from the beer to the table. His wife is beau­ti­ful and lovely, his daugh­ter is sweet and you aren’t either of those things.

But I could only tell myself that so many times.

Vera,” he said thickly. “Vera, look at me.” His voice was com­mand­ing, reach­ing a depth I hadn’t heard before.

My eyes slowly slid over to him. I tried to speak but could only suck in my lip, prob­a­bly tak­ing all my lip­stick off.

Show me the stars again,” he said. His eyes speared me like noth­ing else, his face becom­ing dan­ger­ously handsome.

I looked up to the clear sky, to see the stars, but he reached out and grabbed my hand. His touch was hot, like his fin­gers were sear­ing into my skin, that feel­ing of enter­ing a hot tub on a cold night. I couldn’t help the shiver that ran gen­tly down my spine.

Not those stars,” he said huskily, lean­ing for­ward. His lips were wet and slightly open. “Your stars. Why I call you Estrella.”

I swal­lowed hard, my pulse burn­ing along. I turned around in my chair so my back was to him and lifted up my hair, gath­er­ing it on the top of my head.

His chair scraped loudly on the ground as he got up, a sound that struck a new kind of fear in me.

No. Not fear.

Antic­i­pa­tion.

I heard him stop right behind me. I held my breath, won­der­ing what he was going to do.

One rough fin­ger pressed down against the back of my neck, right on the spine where the tat­too began. I closed my eyes to the feel­ing, the cur­rents it caused, trav­el­ing all the way down, mak­ing me wet. Jesus, I needed to get a hold of myself.

What star is this?” he asked, sound­ing like silk. I could wrap myself in his voice.

Alpharatz,” I whis­pered, as if I was let­ting him in on a secret. Maybe I was.

His fin­ger slid diag­o­nally down, a trail of fire across the Pega­sus line. “And this one?”

Markab.”

Why Pega­sus?”

I paused, the truth on my lips. Fuck it. We’d been noth­ing but hon­est with each other. “Because I want to fly free. And there’s no place higher than the stars.”

He didn’t say any­thing for a few beats. I was tempted to turn around, to look at him, but I didn’t want him to take his fin­ger off my neck. I was leav­ing in three days. He was going back to his fam­ily. This was all I had, his skin on my stars.

He leaned in, his hot breath at my neck. “Are you afraid that love will clip your wings?”

His words sank into me, mak­ing my blood buzz. Love. This was too haz­ardous a sub­ject to dis­cuss with him, not now. Not ever. With my breath shak­ing, I inched my neck away from his mouth and turned to face him.

No,” I said, look­ing him straight in the eye. “I’m afraid that los­ing love will.”

His expres­sion soft­ened. He looked at my lips, his beau­ti­fully long eye­lashes cast­ing shad­ows on his tawny skin.

Then that makes two of us,” he whis­pered softly and for a long sec­ond I thought he was going to get it over with and finally kiss me, put an end to this strain between us, the yearn­ing that made me ache inside. But he straight­ened up, his gaze avoid­ing mine, and went to retrieve his beer from the table.

 

Want to read my book for free? Free is good.

DP 2This year I decided to do some­thing dif­fer­ent. I know how tight money can be for every­one after the hol­i­day sea­son and I know I needed a bit of a kick in the ass to start writ­ing after tak­ing a month off. I also know a lot of you were curi­ous about my writ­ing process. So I came up with some­thing very “ballsy” but free­ing as well for me and some­thing that I hope you’ll all enjoy.

I’m writ­ing a novella/short story (around 20K words) on Wattpad. It’s free for any­one to read. Every time I press “save” it actu­ally pub­lishes the story. I’m just writ­ing and pub­lish­ing as I go. No edi­tors. No rough draft. This IS my rough draft. You are see­ing all my mis­takes LIVE (haha, oh how excit­ing). And, to shake things up even more, I’m not even writ­ing as I nor­mally do. For every sin­gle book I write out and plot in detail — a skele­ton keeps me in line and gives me a place to shoot for.

But while I have a rough idea in my head about this story and how I want it to go, I haven’t offi­cially plot­ted it out. This is the clos­est to just writ­ing by the seat of my pants as I’ll get.

Which is free­ing as well…also, ter­ri­fy­ing. I miss my chap­ter by chap­ter break­downs and my out­lines but because this is such a short story, I’m hop­ing I can get by.

But hey — so far peo­ple seem to be enjoy­ing it. If you want to join in on the event and watch as I write (I have the first two chap­ters down), visit: http://www.wattpad.com/34268226-dark-paradise

The story is called Dark Par­adise. In it’s edited, sculpted final form it will be in Kin­dle as part of Made­line Sheehan’s up com­ing anthol­ogy to profit women and children’s ser­vices (so when you do get a chance to buy it, it’s going to a great cause).

Hope you’ll all join me on this jour­ney! I’m about 25% through so it’s a great time to fol­low me to this Dark Paradise.

Chapter One of Ashes to Ashes

Ashes to Ashes (com­ing Dec 11th)

Unedited

 

Chap­ter One

 

It’s been two months since I first told Dex Foray that I loved him. Two months since we’ve lived together, as an actual cou­ple, in his Seat­tle apart­ment. And two months since Rebecca Sims joined us as our wel­comed third wheel in the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror show. It goes with­out say­ing that they’ve been the best two months of my life.

But, like most things, it hasn’t been per­fect. My rela­tion­ship with my fam­ily is now awk­ward as all hell—I mean more so than it used to be, and that says a lot. I’ll talk to my mom and dad maybe every two weeks, and it’s just one of those please shoot me in the head kind of moments where you’re grasp­ing for shit to say and your mouth is mov­ing and sud­denly you’re talk­ing about the weather or the lat­est celebrity scan­dal or things you can’t even remem­ber just to keep the con­ver­sa­tion going, just so it doesn’t lag and you don’t have to address the giant flam­ing pink rollerblad­ing ele­phant in the room.

Yeah … about that giant flam­ing pink rollerblad­ing ele­phant. That would be that I left my parent’s house, where I had spent most of my twenty-three years, and decided to move in with my part­ner.  Dex. The guy that my par­ents absolutely hated because I had an ill-timed fling with him back when he had a girl­friend (no judg­ing), and he turned into a dick right after I slept with him (please no judg­ing), and I ended up mis­car­ry­ing his baby (okay, the judg­ing is inevitable). I’m not say­ing any of that lightly because it pretty much ruined the fab­ric of my being and intro­duced demonic pos­ses­sion into my life expe­ri­ences, but I mean, you can kind of under­stand why my par­ents think Dex Foray is pub­lic enemy num­ber one.

Obvi­ously, they don’t approve of my new life. I can tell that from the things they aren’t say­ing and the ques­tions they aren’t ask­ing. They don’t even won­der when or if I’m com­ing home; it’s just such a non-issue that it’s become an issue. At least for me. I want them to care. I want them to say some­thing, even if it’s just to scream at me.

The only per­son that I talk to truth­fully on a daily basis (even if it’s just mainly through texts) is my younger sis­ter Ada. She’s happy for me, happy that things are going well with Dex (even though she often starts the con­ver­sa­tion with, “You guys still together? Yes? Okay cool,”) but she doesn’t pull back from telling me how badly she wants me to come back home, even just for a visit.

The thing is, I’m totally scared. One part of me wants to go back, to try and smooth things over and make things right. Maybe if they see Dex again, months later and in a bet­ter con­text, they’ll learn to like him. To see the things I see. To see how well he treats me. And I want to see Ada and hug her and make her feel like she doesn’t have to face my par­ents alone. But the other half of me thinks it could be a mistake—that they’d never open up to him, and I’d regret even try­ing to make amends. I could make things worse.

I needed a sign.

Ouch, Jesus,” I swore at the stab­bing pain at my wrist. I glared up at the burly, bearded tat­too artist who was glar­ing back at me.

Try not to flinch,” he said gruffly, his gloved hand hov­er­ing over my bared wrist.

You’re almost done, honey,” Rebecca said in her sooth­ing British accent, pat­ting my other hand. “Few more min­utes. Looks fab.”

I sighed and tried to relax my body. Now that I wasn’t day­dream­ing, every­thing was very real. I was with Rebecca, lying on my back in a Seat­tle tat­too par­lor, get­ting some ink on my wrist. My first tat­too, and though it didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would, it was still extremely uncom­fort­able. It prob­a­bly didn’t help that it was on one of the more sen­si­tive areas. I was just lucky I decided to go with one color of ink—blue—instead of get­ting it filled in.

Oh yeah, I was get­ting a tat­too of an anchor. Cliché, I know, but I got it for Dex. After all, he had a tat­too inspired by me on his shoul­der, and I fig­ured it was only fair. And, you know, he was my anchor. When he’d given me the anchor silly band back on D’Arcy Island, that stu­pid lit­tle ges­ture meant so much to me. Then, when I’d ripped it off after, well, the “inci­dent,” I’d missed that sym­bol. Through all the ups and downs we’d gone through, in the end, he was still my rock. And an anchor was a hell of a lot sex­ier than get­ting a big ass boul­der tat­ted on you.

He’s going to be so sur­prised,” Rebecca said as the tat­too machine resumed its buzzing.

I ground my teeth together against the vibrat­ing prick­les. “Uh huh. I hope so.”

I asked Rebecca to accom­pany me here so I wouldn’t have to go through it alone. I wanted it to be a sur­prise for Dex, so I just told him we were going out and doing girly things. I know his dirty mind was prob­a­bly imag­in­ing us head­ing to some Inter­na­tional Pillow-Fighting Con­ven­tion, and a tat­too par­lor was the last place he’d think of. I wasn’t really the tat­too type—my inter­ests in life were so waver­ing and fleet­ing, but my love for Dex was as per­ma­nent as ink. I wanted him to know that.

Okay, you’re done,” the man said, lift­ing away the nee­dle, the room grow­ing tem­porar­ily quiet with­out the con­stant buzz.

For real?”

He grunted in response and motioned for me to sit up. I slowly did so and stared at my left wrist. It wasn’t bleed­ing like I thought it would be since I’d felt him peri­od­i­cally dab­bing it with cloth as he worked. The tat­too was shiny and raised, the skin around it red, but it looked beau­ti­ful. Sim­ple but beau­ti­ful. And I sud­denly felt infi­nitely cooler.

I looked up at Rebecca for her approval as the artist started wrap­ping it in black plas­tic. Her matte red lips were stretched into a smile, her eyes sparkling with delight. In fact, she looked bor­der­line ecsta­tic which I found almost odd.

He’s going to love it,” she said. “Really, really. It’s going to mean so much to him.”

I smiled. “Good.”

It’s not that Dex didn’t know how I felt about him. After what hap­pened to us in New Orleans, and how he’d almost died right before my eyes and I almost lost him in so many ways, I’d had ver­bal diar­rhea of the lovey-dovey kind. But for some rea­son, at times I could tell it was hard for Dex to believe me. When I told him I loved him, he had a knack for turn­ing it into a joke, like, “You say that to all the boys,” and while he played it off in his cheeky way, I could tell it came from some­where. I hoped the tat­too would ease that for him.

Like I said, they’d been the best two months of my life, but things weren’t per­fect. It’s hard to truly appre­ci­ate things when some­where in the back of your mind you’re wait­ing for the other shoe to drop.

I swung my legs off the table, admir­ing even the black plas­tic around my wrist. That, com­bined with my new twelve-hole for­est green Doc Martens and my leather jacket that was too hot for the sur­pris­ingly warm May weather, I felt bet­ter than I had in weeks. See, along with the whole imped­ing feel­ing of doom that I couldn’t shake (and I had no idea what it was about either), I’d gained some weight after mov­ing in with Dex. I could blame his diet all I wanted, but the fact was he ate fairly well and still went to the gym every day, so there goes that excuse. I knew they were “happy pounds,” like the in-love equiv­a­lent of the fresh­man fif­teen, but it still had me a bit bummed out. Dex loved me the way I was, but I still felt like I had to be some­thing he could show off, some­thing like his ex-girlfriend Jenn. I’d lost the shape I worked hard for over Christ­mas, and I always had that fear one day he’d real­ize I wasn’t good enough for him.

Come on,” Rebecca said, tug­ging on my arm toward the cash reg­is­ter. “Let’s get you home to your man.” She clicked her way over to the counter in her sky-high red heels, her small ass sashay­ing in her pen­cil skirt. Rebecca was the oppo­site of me. Since she and Emily broke up, she’d been doing noth­ing but los­ing weight, some­thing she didn’t need to begin with.

It didn’t help that when we had our last meet­ing with Jimmy Kwan at Shownet over Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror, he brought up the fact that Rebecca should be in front of the cam­era. He wasn’t try­ing to boot me off, so he said, but that two hot girls were bet­ter than one. Luck­ily Rebecca refused, say­ing she was only good as a pro­duc­tion man­ager and that her days of host­ing ended when Wine Babes did. And even though Rebecca was his good friend, Dex agreed. I prob­a­bly would have hit him if he didn’t.

Ever since we’d come back from New Orleans, we’d done about five shows together as a “three­some.” It wasn’t until the fourth show—investigating the haunted town of St. Augus­tine in Florida—that we really found our rhythm and clicked. Though film­ing hadn’t changed much, Dex and I had to adjust to a more reg­i­mented sched­ule, run­ning on Rebecca’s time now and not our own. I had to admit it helped—we never wasted too much time in one space, and we were always in the most oppor­tune areas, but there was a learn­ing curve all the same. We had to stop being “Perry and Dex” and remem­ber that Rebecca was count­ing on us as well. Then there was the fact that Rebecca wasn’t, well, she wasn’t like us. She rarely saw any­thing super­nat­ural, and I know it started to bug her too when Dex and I would be freak­ing out or talk­ing to ghosts, and she’d be star­ing at noth­ing. By the fifth episode, a haunted library in Eureka, Rebecca decided she’d only be around the actual film­ing when we needed a hand—otherwise she’d be some­where else and leave the ghosts to us.

I won­der where we’re film­ing next,” Rebecca com­mented as we walked down the street to her car.

I shot her an odd look, won­der­ing if she’d heard my thoughts. I still had this ten­dency to project my thoughts and lately I’d been pick­ing up on other people’s. It usu­ally hap­pened with Dex, though on occa­sion I’d find it in some ran­dom per­son. But Rebecca had never been on the receiv­ing end of Perry telepa­thy. At least not yet.

Did you hear what I was think­ing?” I asked.

She smiled. “No, and believe me, the day I hear you, you’ll know. It’s just we both know that Dex is hav­ing that meet­ing with Jimmy today. I’m assum­ing it won’t be about me being a host since I nearly ripped him a bloody new one. Hope­fully it will be another assign­ment.” She unlocked the door to her hatch­back and I got in in the pas­sen­ger seat. “I mean, it’s been three weeks since we returned from Cal­i­for­nia and I know the library episode wasn’t a com­plete disaster.”

I nod­ded as she took us out of the Queen Anne dis­trict and headed back to down­town Seat­tle. I rubbed the plas­tic over my tat­too, want­ing to peek at it again but hav­ing to restrain myself. “I know. It’s like I know there are tons of para­nor­mal hot spots all over the country—more now than ever, accord­ing to websites.”

She brought out a cig­a­rette and rolled down the win­dow before light­ing it. “I sent a bunch of sug­ges­tions to Jimmy too, but I think after Florida, he wants to keep us closer to home.”

Because he’s cheap.”

She exhaled a cloud of blue smoke. “I guess hav­ing a spon­sor didn’t really help.”

At least it’s pay­ing for your salary. We didn’t have that before.”

She gave me a shy glance. “So you’re say­ing you don’t totally resent me for being on the show with you?”

I looked at her incred­u­lously. “What? No! What makes you say that?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I feel like the third wheel sometimes.”

You are the third wheel,” I said. She gave me a half smile and I quickly con­tin­ued. “Mean­ing, you’re the wheel. You steer us, you keep us going in the right direc­tion. Yeah, it’s dif­fer­ent for me and Dex, but some­times I think it’s because our rela­tion­ship has changed too. Every­thing is dif­fer­ent from the way it used to be and that’s not a bad thing. Thanks to you, the shows are tighter and we’re not wast­ing as much money, and Jimmy doesn’t yell at us as much. The shows look bet­ter too—just hav­ing you around to put up a sec­ond light or what­ever. Seri­ously, Becs, you’re awe­some. You’re the rea­son Dex and I can still do this. You’re a lifesaver.”

Well, you’re way more fun to work with than Jenn,” she said. “Though that’s a given.”

Some­times I’d for­got­ten that Dex started out at Shownet by being the cam­era­man for Wine Babes, film­ing Jenn and Rebecca as they talked about pair­ing cer­tain wines with McShit from McDon­alds. That’s how he hooked up with that bitch to start with. I tried to shrug off the ques­tions, want­ing to ask Rebecca what they were like when film­ing together ver­sus the way Dex and I are. I was under the impres­sion that they were off hump­ing like bun­nies every time they worked together, and though Dex and I weren’t that dif­fer­ent, I think he was slightly more pro­fes­sional around me. Which was good…right?

I rubbed my lips together, keep­ing my mouth shut, and sat back as Rebecca put Lana Del Ray on her stereo. I let the music rush over me and fid­geted in antic­i­pa­tion of Dex’s reac­tion to my tat­too. I really hoped he wasn’t going to think it was too much. Sure, we’d been together for two months as an actual cou­ple, but things were still so fresh and new for us in so many ways.

a2a on kindles pic

Ashes to Ashes — A CREEPY teaser ;)

AshestoAshes.v9-Final.2.1So I asked on Face­book if read­ers would like a creepy, cute or sexy teaser and it seems like creepy one won this round! Glad to see every­one is ready to be scared because, I gotta tell ya, it’s creep­ing the shit out of me hav­ing to write this.

BUT the other choices were a close second…so before I hit pub­lish in about 8 days, I’ll also release a sexy one and a cute one. Sound good? Good!

UNEDITED AND SUBJECT TO CHANGE

ASHES TO ASHESEIT #8

TEASER

WARNING

I’M A TEASE

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, let’s go,” I said. “We don’t have all night.”

He nod­ded and aimed the cam­era in front of him. “I’m assum­ing the tun­nel runs diag­o­nally along the length of the build­ing. The very top prob­a­bly lets out above the far cor­ner of the west wing.”

I felt the dark­ness sit­ting on either side of us, the chill of the tun­nel seep­ing into my clothes. I quickly jabbed Dex in the back. “Hey, we’ll worry about that later. Let’s just get to the sec­ond floor.” It never left my mind for one sec­ond that the ball had rolled some­where behind us, toward the end of the chute, and there was no telling if the thing that kicked it there had gone after it or not.

In other words, I didn’t know what was worse – the void in front of us or the black empti­ness behind us.

Thank god I was sand­wiched between the two of them as we care­fully made our way up the pas­sage­way. I felt all my senses on fire as we went, my eyes happy to be watch­ing my feet instead of the unknown that lay in front of Dex and his cam­era. The only sounds were our foot­steps, echo­ing faintly from the closed-in walls, and the ragged­ness of our breath.

Every­one hold­ing up back there?” Dex whis­pered. As if he couldn’t feel me hang­ing onto the back of his jacket like a lit­tle kid.

Uh, huh,” I man­aged to say, my mouth dry.

We waited to hear Rebecca’s response but she didn’t say any­thing, though I could feel her breath and pres­ence at my back.

Feel­ing claus­tro­pho­bic yet?” I prod­ded her for an answer. When she still didn’t say any­thing, I dared to look behind me.

Despite feel­ing her breath a sec­ond ago, I could barely see her. She’d stopped in the mid­dle of the tun­nel, about ten feet away, her fig­ure back­lit faintly from the resid­ual light of the hallway.

R-Rebecca?” I asked, my voice shak­ing. I stopped and pulled Dex back. He imme­di­ately shone his light on her.

Are you all right?” Dex asked. “Why are you being creepy?”

Shhh,” she said softly. “I’m listening.”

To what?” I whis­pered as goose­bumps prick­led my arms.

She didn’t say any­thing but remained absolutely still. I could hear my own heart thud­ding in my chest, Dex’s breath­ing, the whir of the cam­era as it tried to focus.

I was about to ask again what on earth we were lis­ten­ing for when I finally heard it.

It was a few notes of music. But more spe­cific than that; it was a xylo­phone, like the kind I used to play around with as a child. I held in a gasp as my brain tried to rec­og­nize the faint melody in it. The notes would come and go, as if being swept away by an imag­i­nary breeze, so the song never felt fully formed.

Ring around the rosy,” Dex said in a low voice. I turned to look at him, winc­ing at the light he was hold­ing in his other hand. “Listen.”

He was right. I could pick out the tune and once I did, I got pum­meled with that get the fuck out of here feel­ing. We’d made it about fif­teen feet into the tun­nel and I’d already had enough.

Of course, I didn’t tell them that. I could feel Dex watch­ing me closely, wait­ing for me to freak out.

Let’s keep going,” I said quickly. I looked over to Rebecca who slowly nod­ded. I could see the music was intrigu­ing her and that her ratio­nal mind was try­ing to attribute it to some­thing log­i­cal. I wished she could have passed some of that logic onto me because her mind seemed like a safer place to be.

We resumed walk­ing and as we did the tune began to fade until we were left again with the sound of our own breath and blood pump­ing within us.

Okay,” Dex said slowly, com­ing to a stop. He shone the light for­ward, illu­mi­nat­ing noth­ing but the never-ending tun­nel as its gray­ing walls dis­ap­peared into the black. I was ter­ri­fied of the dark­ness that lay ahead, get­ting that same pecu­liar feel­ing I’d got­ten ear­lier in the day when I had stared up at the house. See­ing noth­ing but feel­ing – know­ing- that some­thing was hid­den in front of your eyes and watch­ing you.

He looked over my head at Rebecca. “Do we want to try com­mu­ni­cat­ing in here or on the sec­ond floor?”

Com­mu­ni­cat­ing?” I repeated, my skin danc­ing with raw nerves. “In here? No way. Not tonight. We should do that after the tour tomor­row so we know what the hell we’re deal­ing with.”

There’s obvi­ously some­thing in this tun­nel with us,” he said, his voice an octave lower. “Don’t you feel it?”

At that, a loud, gritty scrap­ing sound rushed up from behind us. Dex imme­di­ately shone the light down the chute, illu­mi­nat­ing the door to the first floor.

It was clos­ing on us. Slowly.

As if some­one on the other side was push­ing it shut.

Oh god,” I gasped as the door closed with a groan, seal­ing us inside the tunnel.

Cover reveal — Red Fox (version 3)

Red Fox, the sec­ond book in the EIT series, has always been a tricky book for me to make a fit­ting cover for. The first cover was orig­i­nal art­work, and though the artist fol­lowed my direction…yeah, it wasn’t very com­pelling. Fine for lit­er­a­ture I think, but not for a para­nor­mal new adult book.

So, months later, I had a new cover made. This one I put my friend Talar on the cover because she played Perry in the trail­ers and, let’s face it, she’s beau­ti­ful. I had my artist back then put an image of her as Perry with some scenery I shot in Palm Springs. I was okay with the cover…it wasn’t the best but it had to do.

And life went on.

Then I decided to put Dark­house in a matte fin­ish through Createspace’s new options and while I was doing that I thought, you know what, I should try to do Red Fox’s cover ONE more time. And so I asked my cover artist extra­or­di­naire, Naj Qam­ber, to take an image I pro­vided her and whip some­thing up.

And here it is…the new cover for Red Fox. I love the eerieness of that bull skull com­bined with the native feather’s hang­ing. It’s very sim­ple and stark but it suits the book. Plus the col­ors are to die for.

RedFox.v1

I can’t wait to get these new cov­ers on Ama­zon soon and get the paper­backs in a nice matte fin­ish. And if you’re com­ing to Rich­mond, Vir­ginia for the author sign­ing on Dec 14th, I’ll have some there avail­able to sign (along with matte fin­ish copies of Dark­house, The Devil’s Metal, The Devil’s Reprise and Ashes to Ashes).