It’s only been a cou­ple of weeks since the book’s release, but reviews are already com­ing in. And — huz­zah — won­der­fully detailed and pos­i­tive reviews to boot! Who knows how long this will keep up, but for now, I’m shar­ing the love.

Here’s what Char­lie Court­land at Bitsy Bling Books had to say:
Five Stars for Dark­house — a Rainy Sum­mer­time Read

“I started this book on a chilly Pacific North­west after­noon and read until 3 am. I didn’t antic­i­pate get­ting hooked, but the pac­ing cre­ated an irre­sistible page-turner that had me read­ing until my eyes ached. Who needs sleep? Sleep is over-rated! Dark­house is seduc­tively enter­tain­ing and I’m con­vinced that it has some secret ingre­di­ent (like the sauce on a Big Mac or the cof­fee beans at Star­bucks) that makes it imme­di­ately addic­tive. Red Fox is com­ing out soon and I sim­ply can’t wait (okay, maybe I’m beg­ging a lit­tle) for the author to send me an advanced copy. What makes it so good? Perry is a reli­able char­ac­ter: flawed, inse­cure, impul­sive, but despite her own road­blocks she has a deter­mi­na­tion that the audi­ence can clearly see even if she does not (yet). It is her self-awareness that makes the char­ac­ter appeal­ing, trust­wor­thy and hon­est. Her vul­ner­a­bil­ity pro­vides sym­pa­thy with­out demand­ing pity. Dex is sim­i­lar and it is not sur­pris­ing that the Clown Lady insin­u­ates Perry and Dex are cut from the same cloth. Their con­tra­dic­tions show strength of char­ac­ter and reveals a great deal about the indi­vid­u­als. For exam­ple, Dex admits he lies and by doing so dis­proves he’s a liar because he con­fesses to the deceit. A true liar would never will­ingly reveal this dep­re­cat­ing detail.

The para­nor­mal ele­ments and spook fac­tor are unique and pro­vide just enough to let the imag­i­na­tion cre­ate the set­ting with­out com­ing across as silly, imma­ture or easy to dis­missed. The creepi­ness I expe­ri­enced was real and I loved the light­house scenes. The splat­ter­ing men­tions of pop cul­ture ref­er­ences were excel­lent and worked to cre­ate a men­tal map of the char­ac­ters per­cep­tion and think­ing. I knew where they were com­ing from, what images came to mind dur­ing their expe­ri­ences, and how they related to the world unfold­ing in front of them.

Frankly, I’m sur­prised by the lower rat­ings received at places such as Goodreads because this con­tem­po­rary humor­ous spook fest might read fast-paced and easy, which it does, but the voice is not absent of sub­stance. The lan­guage doesn’t try too hard to con­vince intel­li­gence and by doing so, is smartly com­posed to do what a story should, enter­tain. Don’t get me wrong, there is mean­ing here, but the fact that the story isn’t try­ing so hard to show (or prove it) makes it that much more clever. Dark­house is an exam­ple of a con­fi­dent and assured author’s ‘voice.’ The writer con­nects with the char­ac­ters, deeply under­stand­ing and chan­nel­ing them onto the page. By the end I was con­vinced Perry was writ­ing this story. I have no doubt that Perry and Dex are real–and they live through author Karina Halle.”

And Can­dice over at the Baked in Van­cou­ver blog included pic­tures(!) in her cute review. Here are some excerpts:

“Right from the start the main char­ac­ter, Perry Palomino, sucks you in with her relat­able and sar­cas­tic personality.”

“Not only had Dark­house turned me into a sexy bitch, but it also left me crav­ing answers. I con­tem­plated pay­ing Karina to tell me what hap­pens at the end, but I know it will be far more inter­est­ing to explore and grow with these char­ac­ters in the books to come. This series will no doubt have more twists then I can even begin to antic­i­pate right now — and that is what a series should be. Addicting.”

GoodReads.com and Dark­house have teamed up for a give­away. Been think­ing about get­ting in on the adven­tures of ghost hunters Perry Palomino and Dex Foray, but haven’t taken the plunge yet? Now might be a great time to enter this give­away for one of five paper­back copies avail­able. See below for details and to enter! Con­test closes May 31st, 2011.

Writ­ing a book is sim­ple. It really is. If you have a story, some tal­ent, and a whole lot of pas­sion, writ­ing should come eas­ily to you. I mean, sure, there are times you’ll want to bang your head against the com­puter (or just chuck it out the win­dow, or drown your sor­rows in a bot­tle of Jack Daniels), but when you look back on it — wow, writ­ing was a trip.

Then there is sell­ing. In today’s world, where pub­lish­ing houses are bat­ter­ing down the hatches and a few writ­ers are mak­ing money on lucky breaks (tal­ent + good tim­ing = luck), actu­ally sell­ing books has become a fight to the death. This isn’t any­thing new, of course. Go into any book­store and you’ll see shelves of books you have never heard of. What makes peo­ple pick a book off the shelf and say “this one”? Even with rec­om­men­da­tions, a nice cover, fancy place­ment, or media blitzes, there are still no guar­an­tees that your book will sell.

Sell­ing books has never been as easy as sell­ing music, or ideas, or movies. A song you can down­load and lis­ten to in three min­utes. A movie takes two hours of your day. An idea can be had in seconds.

But a book…a book is time. When you sell a book, you are, essen­tially, sell­ing a slice of time. The time it takes to read that book. And time, in this day and age, is a lux­ury. You are ask­ing peo­ple to essen­tially indulge. To take a moment out of their busy lives to not only buy the book, but to actu­ally read the book. You are ask­ing for a com­mit­ment in a divorce-a-minute society.

No won­der sell­ing books is so hard.

I guess the secret here is to find out a way to say “Hey, my book is worth a slice of your busy day. It’s worth the time spent on your com­mute to work, it’s worth your evening rit­ual with tea and a cookie. It’s worth being a com­pan­ion on your vaca­tion to Mexico.”

And it’s a gam­ble. No one likes to waste time.

But the risk might be worth it. And if it is, those are some moments in time that will enrich you. Or at least give you a pleas­ant diver­sion while wait­ing at the bus stop. Even if my books are just the lat­ter, I’m grate­ful that peo­ple have taken a slice of time out of their lives and given it to me.

Well, it’s been one week since Dark­house went on sale. This may have been the longest week ever. There’s some­thing so… anti-climatic about finally pub­lish­ing your work. All the months (years, actu­ally) of antic­i­pa­tion, sweat, blood, tears and then… now what? Luck­ily, I imme­di­ately left for a week of music and friends in San Fran­cisco, so I wasn’t left alone at home and ana­lyz­ing my book sales (which by the way, ain’t too shabby, considering).

Any­way, I’ll be back to being a pro­mot­ing machine as soon as I return home. But for now, I’m just kick­ing back and enjoy­ing the “down time.” And cool moments, such as the photo above, where Shan­non, the swell bar­tender at Polk Street bar Blur, asked to buy a copy of the book — so as long as I signed it. And sign it I did (hope you like it, Shan­non!). Actu­ally, I’ve been sell­ing a lot of in per­son copies. Sign­ing them for cer­tain peo­ple has been quite sur­real. And silly

If you ever write a book (or get said book pub­lished), you really ought to do some­thing to cel­e­brate the occa­sion. Me? I got a tattoo.

I’m not much of a tat­too per­son, but last year, while in Fin­land, I got a tat­too of my favourite band on the back of my neck. It’s brought me noth­ing but amaz­ing luck, espe­cially with regards to my music jour­nal­ist career. I thought it was the only tat­too I’d ever get.

Until I men­tioned the Dark­house pub­li­ca­tion date to my friend Helen. She pointed out that many peo­ple get Fri­day the 13th tat­toos. Sud­denly, that’s all I wanted. A tat­too to com­mem­o­rate the pub­li­ca­tion of my first novel and the start of some­thing amazing.

So, yes­ter­day, I got the lit­tle 13 behind the ear. For some rea­son, it barely hurt, took less than 10 min­utes, and is really dis­crete. I love it, though. I think it’s going to bring me, and my books, noth­ing but good luck.

Also, now when my hair is up, I look pretty hard­core

 

 

Wel­come to Karina Halle’s Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror page. While this web­site focuses more on Perry Palomino and Dex Foray and their Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Series, you’ll find infor­ma­tion about the author and her other books. For Karina Halle’s author site, please click HERE.

WHAT IS “DARKHOUSE” and the EXPERIMENT IN TERROR SERIES?

A para­nor­mal, super­nat­ural jour­ney with two unlikely ghost-hunters who must bat­tle not only spir­its but their attrac­tion to each other. Scooby Doo, this ain’t.

“Dark­house turned out unlike any­thing I’d expected. It drew me in from page one, with its easy-to-relate to, flawed but love­able char­ac­ters, its fast pace, the unpre­dictable plot twists and its eerie, sur­real atmos­phere. If you’re search­ing for the scari­est book of this sea­son, then search no more. Dark­house is exactly what you’re look­ing for.” — I Heart Reading

“I don’t think, short of being com­pletely ridicu­lous, I can encour­age you more strongly to read this series. It has quickly moved to the top of my favorites list” - The Book­ish Babes

Pur­chase on Kin­dle HERE and on Smash­words HERE and on NOOK here. Paper­backs avail­able HERE.