Ta-da! The shiny, sparkly, ethe­real cover of Exper­i­ment in Terror’s Book #5 - On Demon Wings (pub­lished May 13th 2012). (click on image to view larger)

I sup­pose it loses some of its magic if I tell you how I made it…but…I’m going to any­way. I’m pretty ter­ri­ble at keep­ing secrets.

First of all, I wanted some­thing that rep­re­sent­ing demon pos­ses­sion, because that’s really what the book is about. And what’s your first thought when you think of demon possession?

PEA SOUP! Thank you, Linda Blair.

OK, aside from pea soup vomit and bloody crosses (egad!) you think of levitation.

So I wanted my poor lil’ Perry Palomino to be lev­i­tat­ing. Only, how to do this?

First I chose a roy­alty free, free to use stock photo. I wanted some­thing pretty yet creepy, like this for­est.
Then I tweaked the photo myself with pho­to­shop to cre­ate this aqua green/blue colour I really wanted.
Then I super­im­posed some creepy stuff into the image (if you look for it, you can see it).
Then I took my friend, put her in a white dress of mine, made her bend over awk­wardly on her couch till we got just the right, believ­able posi­tion.
Then I took pho­tos, cut her out, inserted her in the pic­ture, threw in some font and sent it to my artist Bret Tay­lor, telling him I wanted the cover to look like this, but bet­ter, obvi­ously.
He went ahead, did his thing. I asked for MORE SPARKLES AND FIREFLIES cuz you can never have too many.
AND VOILA.

Per­son­ally, I think it’s the best book cover in the series

Some­where around the same time I started writ­ing the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Series, I became a music jour­nal­ist. This meant gal­li­vant­ing around the world cov­er­ing fes­ti­vals, con­certs and inter­views for pub­li­ca­tions such as Con­se­quence of Sound and Mxdwn. I say gal­li­vant­ing because even though it was “work”, let’s face it, 90% of the job is hav­ing a fuck­ing great time (the other 10% is tran­scrib­ing inter­views — HELL). There was a lot of pho­tog­ra­phy involved, more than enough writ­ing, and oodles of hang­overs, sweat-soaked clothes, and great sto­ries. GREAT stories.

Behold, geeky pho­tos of myself geek­ing out over peo­ple I admire (except Jes­sica Simp­son and that girl from Gos­sip Girl who I think looks like Ada Palomino…cuz I no haz admire for dem).

Some of my high­lights include being back­stage with Faith No More in Fin­land, hang­ing out on the Slayer tour bus in Seat­tle, swoon­ing dur­ing Mondo Cane in Poland, Inter­view­ing Chris Cor­nell, catch­ing an inti­mate Queens of the Stone Age show in Seat­tle, hav­ing drinks with two of the biggest man­agers in the indus­try (and lis­ten­ing to them blab­ber about every­one you could imag­ine), fan­girling over Jerry Cantrell, annoy­ing Danny Devito, hav­ing cof­fee with Liz Phair, being able to have a one-on-one convo with Mike Pat­ton for 30 mins, almost get­ting in a fight in the Slayer mosh­pit, ran­domly hang­ing out with James Mur­phuy after LCD Soundsys­tem, being on stage at FNM a few times, going for din­ner with Dub Trio, watch­ing Brian Pohsen fangirl(boy) over Rob Zom­bie (after I did the same), get­ting John Stanier to sign my copy of Red Fox, and then him ask­ing me to sign his, dis­cov­er­ing that most musi­cians are actu­ally the coolest peo­ple ever…

But noth­ing com­pares to the great­est moment of my life.…

baha­ha­ha­haha. oh MAN. JUST LOOK AT MY FACE. I hate weddings.

Any­way, if you’re inter­ested in read­ing some of my (other) writ­ten work, you can find oodles of it here: http://consequenceofsound.net/author/khalle/

Hope­fully I’ll find the time to do more of it in the future

Well here it is, the new cover for Dark­house!

My thoughts:
Isn’t it pretty? Pretty and spooky and creepy and a whole bunch of things. Like PURPLE!

Why I did it:
Well, though I liked the orig­i­nal cover a lot, it didn’t con­vey the youth and fresh­ness (and some­times, silli­ness) in the novel. I wanted some­thing that would say “Hey, look at this book it’s all sparkly and fun but I’m kind of scared and intrigued. Must pick it up!” I’ve been get­ting a lot of com­pli­ments on it, so I know I’m on the right track.

Dark­house also got edited. Yes, I edited it before — as did a few beta read­ers — but I’m a shitty edi­tor (I can see most of you nod­ding your head) and my GOODNESS is it tough to edit your work! But Dead Sky Morn­ing and Lying Sea­son were both edited pro­fes­sion­ally by Robert Helle and I think he did a great job, so I decided to give Dark­house a lil makeover (Red Fox is next).

Self-pubbed books get a bad rap, mainly because many writ­ers don’t bother with an edi­tor (or they can’t tell a story, which is another issue for another time) but I really didn’t want to add to that with Dark­house. I wanted some­thing to be proud of, inside and out. It’s a tough, cruel world out there and I needed every chance to stand out.

Sure, Dark­house is not for every­one. Some read­ers will be irked by her voice, her way of look­ing at things. Perry Palomino is who she is and she’s unapolo­getic about it. But I didn’t want to give read­ers a headache with bad edit­ing. I mean, it’s your money and it’s your time and I wanedt to do my hard­est not to waste it.

So a big, BIG thank you to every­one who has already read Dark­house and — gasp — liked it enough to read Red Fox and the rest of the series. I get a lot of feed­back from fans here and on my Face­book page (see side­bar) and it means a lot to me that you’ve weath­ered through my debut novel, con­tin­ued on with the series, and have gone on to become big fans. Thank you for tak­ing a chance on me, Perry and Dex. Seri­ously, I really appre­ci­ate it.

How I did it:
The cover design process is SO much fun! Well, for me, not for my graphic artist Bret Taylor.

Me: Use this light­house stock photo! Add in Perry! Make her look more organic. How about we add stars! Now I want light­en­ing around the name! And clouds! And neb­u­las! I want more stars on the bottom…she’s in a place in nei­ther time nor space! Now I want eyes on the cover, Dex’s eyes, really faint! Now I see eyes every­where, scary. Oooh that’s pretty! Can we jazz up the spine? Let’s put stars on it!! More stars! ALL THE STARS IN THE WORLD.

Yeah, it goes some­thing like that. The man has the patience of a saint!

When it’s available:

The new ver­sion of Dark­house should be avail­able on Ama­zon and other usual retail­ers next week. I’ll let you know. Mean­while, the Kin­dle ver­sion is ready to go!

What else?

ON DEMON WINGS cover will be revealed on March 14th at the fol­low­ing blogs:

See­ing Night Reviews
Unput­down­able Books
Attack the Stacks
Hacka­roos reviews
Tales of an Inner Book Fanatic
Paw­ing Through Books

There might be an ARC give­away for On Demon Wings at a few of them too

I am also super, duper excited about this one. And yes, the man­u­script is com­ing along. Scary stuff here peo­ple, scary stuff.

I got an inter­est­ing phone call the other day. I won’t say much about it, but it made me do a pre­ma­ture happy dance (no, my shoes did not fly off). If even greater news comes out of it though, I’ll be sure to share.

So what’s new? Well I’ve been doing a lot of “think­ing about writ­ing” and then some actual writ­ing, which is great. The last book I wrote was The Ben­son and that was a shorty, so it’s tak­ing me some time to ease back into the writ­ing game. But I have big plans for this year in terms of what I’m writ­ing — lot’s of fun stuff com­ing down the pipeline. You just need to take that first, tiny, but very impor­tant step.

Don’t worry, On Demon Wings is still com­ing. Judg­ing by the com­ments and reviews I’m get­ting, I think I’d have to fear for my life if I didn’t deliver.

There’s also some news about Dark­house — it went through a pro­fes­sional edit and is get­ting a new cover next week which I will reveal here. Per­son­ally, I do like the cur­rent cover and I would love to have that option avail­able if peo­ple pre­fer that cover over the new one. But I know what direc­tion the future cov­ers will go and I’d like all the books to look the same. As for the edit, even though Dark­house was edited a mil­lion times by moi and beta readers…it’s not enough. It never is. And while I can write, edit­ing my own stuff is damn hard. I suck at it. So I extended the cour­tesy to that all impor­tant first novel (Dead Sky Morn­ing and Lying Sea­son have been pro­fes­sion­ally edited), because I want to be proud of it and I want read­ers to be happy. Any­way, I’ll talk more when I reveal the new cover next week, but just a head’s up.

I’ve been doing a lot of read­ing lately. It’s vital as a writer. Though I’ll never be a book reviewer (I don’t write very good reviews and there are lovely review­ers out there who do a much bet­ter job than I ever could), I do like to read and com­pare notes.

This is what I got from the library this month:

The Lantern by Deb­o­rah Lawrenson(I’m a BIG fan of Daphne Du Mau­rier, so I know I’ll love this)
The Girl in the Steel Corset by Kady Cross (First foray into Steam­punk)
Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake (Obvi­ously I like ghosts, want to see what the fuss is about)
This Dark Endeav­our by Ken­neth Oppel (Cana­dian, FTW)
Before I Fall by Lau­ren Oliver (I read a bit of Lisel and Po, think she’s an amaz­ing writer)

The last few months I’ve been buy­ing Kin­dle books if they are a good deal or free. But I don’t have a Kindle.

UNTIL NOW.

Well, until I dis­cov­ered the Kin­dle app for my iPhone. Sud­denly, all these books appeared in my phone! Man, I sound like my mother when she dis­cov­ered the internet.

Any­hoo, I decided my wee phone would be the per­fect place to try out a lot of self-published works, cheap books, or books I’m unsure of. I LOVE buy­ing books and putting them on my actual shelves, so if there is a book that I love, I will buy the paper­back. But it’s good to try it out first. One thing I’m find­ing with Kin­dle as I wrap my old-fashioned brain around it…I can’t spent over $5 on a book. Some­times you have to if it’s Kin­dle only, but if I’m going to pay over $5 for a novel, I want the phys­i­cal object in my hand. I want it to occupy my home. I want to look at it for­ever. Funny, that.

Here’s what I have on my Kin­dle — I really want this to be the place where I read a lot of GOOD self-published work that might be over­looked. It’s actu­ally quite fun dis­cov­er­ing the indie gems:

Hol­low­land by Amanda Hock­ing
With­er­ing Tights by Louise Ren­ni­son
Descended by Blood by Ange­line Kace
Everblue by Brenda Pan­dos
Ethe­real by Addi­son Moore
Telsa — The Covenant Keeper by Lani Wendt Young
This — A Vam­pire Cure for For­ever by Shaun Roundy (really not a vamp fan but love the title! Please cure us all!)
Stained by Ella James
Dai­mon — A Pre­quel to Half-Blood by Jen­nifer L. Armen­trout
A Job From Hell by Jay­den Scott
Dirty Blood by Heather Hilden­brand
Jenny Pox (The Para­nor­mals) by JL Bryan
Unearthly by Cyn­thia Hand
Angell­fall by Susan Ee
Entwined by Heather Dixon
Jessica’s Guide to Dat­ing the Dark Side by Beth Fantaskey

In other news, I AM BANNED FROM BUYING MORE KINDLE BOOKS.

You can fol­low my half-assed reviews at: GOODREADS

Right?

I’m a life­long lover of Monty Python so I’ve been dying to incor­po­rate them into a blog post. This works perfectly.

Because, really, now is the time for some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent. I’m tak­ing an extremely short break from the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Series to work on some­thing that’s a lot like the video. FISH-SLAPPING!

Actu­ally no, but it does involve rabid mon­keys and lots of laughs.

Back in 2004/2005 I wrote a roman­tic com­edy script called THE TRAVEL DIARY which then later became WANDERLUST. Which is now called Wan­dered, lusted because DAMN YOU JENNIFER ANISTON you stole my movie title (but not damn Paul Rudd, I could never damn you Paul Rudd). The script was mildly suc­cess­ful in attract­ing inter­est from pro­duc­ers but alas, the com­pa­nies that really liked the script could never afford to make it. The movie would have been set in Europe, on the Mediter­ranean to be exact, and that would have put it into a high bud­get bracket. Fac­tor in the rabid mon­keys and a big cli­max on a ferry and, well, who would take a risk on wee screen­writer like myself.

Fast for­ward to 2012. I’m in the midst of my delight­fully macabre but emo­tion­ally drain­ing Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Series. I’ve plot­ted out Book #5, On Demon Wings, in detail and am ready to jump right in but.…but…

I’m not ready for it. It’s not going to be an easy breezy cov­er­girl book to write. It’s going to be emo­tional and scary and dif­fi­cult and I’m just not “there” yet. It’s a com­mit­ment I must make, of being a crazy per­son for the next few months as Perry’s story becomes my story.

So, while I plan to start ODW in a few weeks and attack it with guns a blaz­ing, I decided to start with an appe­tizer. An amuse bouche if you will (well, it is a-muse-ing, cue Chan­dler Bing).

I’m adapt­ing my script Wan­dered, Lusted into a novel. An adult con­tem­po­rary fluffy (but not too fluffy I’M STILL ME) funny roman­tic read. With heart. And a love­able main char­ac­ter called Chris Warner whom I am a bit in love with. And a girl-guy trad­ing of POVs. And a nice bout of escapism on the sunny Mediter­ranean. Ahh­hhh, just feel the sea breeze, smell the lemons on the trees. And it’s a stand-alone too, which is rare these days in the land of sequels and series (ahem, EIT 8 books).

Want more info? Here’s the offi­cial blurb:

“The hol­i­day from hell just got ugly.

As if get­ting dumped on his vaca­tion wasn’t enough, British jour­nal­ist Chris Warner finds him­self stranded on the Mediter­ranean with a des­per­ate boss push­ing dead­lines down his throat and an uncer­tain future.
…
Enter Jamie Cooper, a free spir­ited and slightly unsta­ble travel writer whose arrival only seems to make mat­ters worse. All Chris wants is to get back to Lon­don, win back his ex and start climb­ing up the cor­po­rate lad­der. Unfor­tu­nately, Jamie has dif­fer­ent plans for him and the may­hem that fol­lows turns both their lives upside down and up again.

“Wan­dered, lusted” is a rowdy roman­tic com­edy about two active yet aching char­ac­ters who embark on a jour­ney through hell, high water and a lot of wine, in order to find them­selves, each other and a mis­placed diary that holds the key to their happiness.”

This is going to be a fun lit­tle sum­mer fling before I set­tle down with Ms. Perry Palomino and Mr. Dex Foray. I’m still torn whether I should self-publish or seek tra­di­tional pub­lish­ing for Wan­dered, lusted, but I’ll let you know how it goes!

First the bad news: Casablanca didn’t make it into the com­pe­ti­tion *sob* — we did feel the love though! Over 700 votes which is amaz­ing and awe­some, so thank you all for your help. I’m proud to have worked on such a film and I thought we did an awe­some job. But alas, Clas­sic Films are over­looked these days (hence why two ver­sions of the Matrix made the com­pe­ti­tion) espe­cially by the pop music pub­lic. Not an easy sell!

No wor­ries though, because I was glad to help out and get some expo­sure for my hard­work­ing friends. And also, we have a win­ner of the The Ben­son Paperback!

And that is…ANDY!! Con­grat­u­la­tions Andy I’ll be in con­tact with you shortly.

I also decided to put forth a sec­ond prize, a signed copy of Lying Sea­son, and that book goes to Kristi Perry (love your last name, btw

Thanks every­one for play­ing! Con­tests are fun

OH RIGHT — and while I have your atten­tion, check out For­ever Young Adult’s review of LYING SEASON! Once again, Perry and Dex break the SWOON-O-METER (if that’s a thing!)

Hi folks!

My friends and I made a short film and entered it in a con­test. The basis is that you have to accu­rately recre­ate a film in 60 sec­onds. Then you have to get lots of peo­ple to like it. If the judges like what you’ve done on both accounts, you win the con­test — $10,000.

I did makeup/hair and wardrobe on the film, which enti­tles me to a chunk of change from the pot. It was a load of fun, and though hair isn’t my exper­tise (I didn’t go to school for makeup though…12 years ago), I think we made a great film.

What would be even greater though, is if we won. You all know I need the help, and that amount would mean On Demon Wings might come out ear­lier (after all, I need to cash to pay my edi­tor — and he’s already doing me a huge favor).

That sounds like bribery though, doesn’t it? Mwha­haha. Seri­ously though, if I could get YOU my dear read­ers and fans and looky-loos to “like” the film, I’ll give you some­thing in return.

A signed copy of The Ben­son — IN PAPERBACK.

Do you know who has copies of The Ben­son in paper­back? NO ONE. Not even ME! For realz. I only made this as an E-version, so I’m going to print just one of them. It’s going to be cus­tomized. It’s going to have the first two pages of On Demon Wings at the back of it. That’s right…I’m includ­ing an excerpt from Book #5…something that won’t see the pub­lic eye until at least May.

I will ship this puppy any­where in the world. And I will throw in a signed Dark­house book­mark as well!

And then when you receive the book, take a pic­ture of you with it and I’ll post it here and on the EIT Face­book page

So how do you enter to win this? SO SIMPLE.

Click on the link to the con­test page and our Casablanca film: http://vancouver.virginradio.ca/FFF2012/View.aspx?PostID=45564

Click “like” below the video — no need to sign up or any­thing like that. Two clicks, two seconds.

Then come back and tell me you entered. Either email me (see con­tact page) or leave a com­ment here or leave one on the EIT FB fan page. But you MUST tell me you liked it, oth­er­wise there is no way I will know. I’ll be watch­ing the num­bers too, so I’ll know if you’ve actu­ally voted (not that I’m not trust­ing y’all

You can gain an extra entry too by “lik­ing” our Face­book Fan Page for Casablanca too or fol­low­ing @strutyourfunny on Twitter.

Did you already “like” the Casablanca video before I announced this? Just help me out with a per­sua­sive RT on Twit­ter and you’re entered too! (again, lemme know about it).

All right. That’s the con­test. It’s a con­test within a con­test. INCEPTION CONTEST. And some lucky EIT reader is going to be very, very happy. I’ll be doing the draw on Feb 5th and will announce it HERE and on the EIT FB page!

Good luck and thank you!

Well, it’s the last day of Jan­u­ary. All I can say to that is THANK THE LORD. Because, I don’t know about you, but 2012 so far has kicked my ass, worse than it’s ever been kicked before. And I’m 30…there’s been a lot of ass-kicking in my life (and I have a rather large ass).

This month has been espe­cially try­ing. Los­ing my job, plus other finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties have led to me being over­come by worry and strife. I haven’t even been able to write, all I can think about is try­ing to keep the roof I have over my head. My days have turned into long cover let­ter writ­ing ses­sions, apply­ing for every job I can think of. But it’s not easy — as most of the unem­ployed world knows. My overqual­i­fi­ca­tions mean that I’m turned away by sim­ple jobs like being a cashier. I’m sim­ply not good enough for anyone.

I’ve been hit by fam­ily prob­lems as well as other nasty issues that chip away at your heart and leave you reel­ing. Through all of this trauma and trou­ble though, I have learned a few things about myself. I learned I have hid­den resolves of strength and deter­mi­na­tion I never knew I had. I learned it’s OK to lean on your friends and loved ones and to ask for help and sup­port. As one friend pointed out, most peo­ple really do want to help you. I’ve also learned that I am a per­son worth respect. Every­one has self-worth and I’ve learned it’s OK to stand up for your­self and say “you know what, I’m worth it” (sounds like a L’Oreal ad).

All of that said though, this month has been excel­lent in one major way: my books.

Thanks to my tire­less invest­ment in self-promotion, mar­ket­ing and PR, I’ve sold more in Jan­u­ary than I have…well, ever.

These are my sales of the books last month (Dec)

these are the sales this month (Jan)

As you can see, I’m finally bring­ing in some money for my efforts — but it’s an ongo­ing game. It doesn’t mean the sales will con­tinue. It doesn’t mean I’m mak­ing all that much (Dark­house costs buy­ers 99 cents — I only get 30 cents out of it — plus 2454 of those 3424 books were free down­loads). And the pay­ment is extremely spo­radic. But it’s a great relief to know that nine months of con­stant tweet­ing, face­book­ing, blog­ging, net­work­ing, writ­ing, yap­ping, annoy­ing peo­ple, whatever…it’s finally start­ing to get some­where. And peo­ple every­where are lov­ing the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Series. I think that’s the best part of all… I get to share some­thing I cre­ated, some­thing I love, with other people.

Speak­ing of, one of the most excit­ing times this month, was watch­ing all four books reach the Ama­zon Best Sell­ers list…at once!

And this was the high­est rank­ing for Darkhouse:

I know this is peanuts com­pared to the really suc­cess­ful authors, but I’m tak­ing a moment to pat myself on the back. The work is not over, but I am grate­ful and thank­ful for this mile­stone in my life.

In other news, the blurb (for now) and pub­li­ca­tion for Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror, Book #5 is out now, check it out at Good Reads here and please add it to your books: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13442031-on-demon-wings

Thank you!

Lots of new reviews in for the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Series in the last week or so, let’s take a look shall we? First up, Dark­house reviews:

From Attack the Stacks:

First of all, if you have any pre­con­ceived notions about self-published books being infe­rior you should put them aside and read Dark­house. Karina Halle can flat-out write a good story.

So what did I love so much about Dark­house?  Well, it cer­tainly played into my addic­tion to those ridicu­lous tv ghost hunt­ing shows. Shame­ful and ridicu­lous, yes, they are. But I watch them any­way. All of them. Even the one hosted by the dude­bro with the hair and the too-tight t-shirts care­fully cho­sen to show off his tribal-tatted biceps. Don’t judge me.

Also, Halle’s writ­ing is very vivid. She sets really detailed scenes. I’ve never been to the Pacific North­west but I could pic­ture it clearly in my mind, from the waves break­ing on the shore to the foggy water to the rick­ety old light­house. Many of these scenes she sets so well are CREEPY as hell. Total night­mare stuff, which I was read­ing alone in the dark and that turned out to be not such a good idea. I found myself get­ting gen­uinely wigged out, which is pretty rare. Over­all the book flows so easily…I love, love, love books with short para­graphs (at least, the ebook had short para­graphs, not sure if the paper­back is for­mat­ted dif­fer­ently). There is just some­thing so pleas­ing about that for­mat to me, it just makes for really easy reading.

I also loved that Perry is a flawed hero­ine. She’s not a beauty queen to begin with, and she’s car­ry­ing around a few extra lbs. on top of that. She dresses like she never quite got over the grunge era. She’s stuck in a dead end job that is suck­ing the life out of her, but she can’t afford to lose. There’s no men­tion of how gor­geous she is, how charm­ing, or how every­one just loves her. Peo­ple are wary of her, even her own fam­ily. She’s weird and she’s aver­age and she’s a breath of fresh air when it seems like every book you pick up these days has an ethe­re­ally beau­ti­ful main char­ac­ter. Look, I don’t have any­thing against beau­ti­ful peo­ple – truly – but it’s nice that us aver­age folk get a kick­ass hero­ine to relate to every now and again instead of being rel­e­gated to a side­kick or a fren­emy. I was less in love with Dex, but I think that was inten­tional. The dude is just kind of dif­fi­cult to like at this point in the series. I sus­pect his background/attitude will be explored more in the next book.

Wanna know some­thing ter­ri­ble and kind of gross? I actu­ally snuck off to the bath­room at work a few times because I couldn’t stop read­ing this. I can’t remem­ber the last time I did that. At this point my co-workers prob­a­bly think I have either the world’s worst intesti­nal issues or a seri­ous drug prob­lem. To say that I’m look­ing for­ward to read­ing the rest of the series would be putting it mildly. Seri­ously, I can’t believe the ebook is only $.99 on Ama­zon. Don’t even think twice about buy­ing it.

Bonus points for the MST3K shout out!

4.5/5 stars!

From Tales of the Inner Book Fanatic:

There’s no hid­den secret about me lov­ing ghost sto­ries and the whole ghost hunt­ing busi­ness — I love it no mat­ter what book it is. For Karina Halle’s book, DARKHOUSE, the first book in the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror series, despite it being a self-published book (which I only read on a casual basis), I thor­oughly enjoyed it.

DARKHOUSE was a great intro­duc­tion to a series, with a very inter­est­ing sto­ry­line and a vari­ety of intrigu­ing char­ac­ters. Espe­cially Perry, the main hero­ine. I absolutely loved Perry from her snarky humour all the way down to her inse­cu­ri­ties of her life. She was a great char­ac­ter whom a lot of read­ers could sym­pa­thize with. But like in any com­mon para­nor­mal story there’s a love inter­est and in this case it’s Declan “Dex” Foray who is the gor­geous and sexy kind. There are many qual­i­ties to describe dear old Dex but I can def­i­nitely say he’s an enigma. He can be annoy­ing at first but then he can imme­di­ately switch straight back to damn right lov­able … but I just wanted Perry to hug and kiss him, and also attack him with a few punches. Well, he’s just that kind of guy that you get frus­trated with but I still loved him for all he’s worth.

Now as for the sto­ry­line itself, it pretty much had every­thing you want in a story. You had a good fair share of hor­ror writ­ten at its best, an enjoy­able set of char­ac­ters, an addic­tive plot where you wanted to know more and more about what’s going to hap­pen next … like I said, you have every­thing you could pos­si­bly want. While I’m still left with many unan­swered ques­tions regard­ing why Perry can see things oth­ers can’t or even what exactly Perry is run­ning from (from her past), that did not dis­tract me away from the sto­ry­line and I’m def­i­nitely inter­ested in what’s going to hap­pen next in Perry’s adven­tures espe­cially with Dex.

Over­all for a self-published novel (which can be just as good as a pub­lished one), I thought Karina Halle did a fab­u­lous job in enter­tain­ing her read­ers. It may not be ‘strictly-speaking’ your young adult novel as it’s focus­ing on a 22-year-old girl, but I think read­ers with a pas­sion of hor­ror will enjoy this book immensely!

4/5 stars

From The Book Hook-Up:

My Review: Well, I need to get this off my chest imme­di­ately.  I didn’t find Dark­house par­tic­u­larly scary, even though the title warned me that I might.  Although, I must admit that I’m not eas­ily fright­ened.  I did, how­ever, find it a page turner…mostly because I liked the main char­ac­ter Perry Palomino (great name!) and wanted to make sure she was OK through all of her adven­tures.  Now, don’t get me wrong,  Ms. Halle did cre­ate a spooky set­ting and the things that went bump in the night were def­i­nitely creepy, but I don’t want you to be turned off by this book just because you think you’ll be too scared to read it!  If you’re eas­ily spooked, then just read it in the day­light and you should be just fine!

The story is writ­ten in the first per­son so we live it through Perry’s thoughts and visions of the world.  She is a char­ac­ter that has had some rough patches in her life.  As a teenager, feel­ing “dif­fer­ent” from oth­ers she had a few mis­ad­ven­tures.  But now, she’s try­ing to get her life back on track.  And, even though she doesn’t really like her job and feels like she’s con­stantly com­pet­ing with her teenage sis­ter who can do no wrong, she’s grown stronger and wants to move on from the per­son she was.  Over­all, she’s fairly easy to relate to.  Perry spends an awful lot of time “in her own head” think­ing things through and imag­in­ing all man­ner of situations…and one of the top­ics that’s fore­most in her mind is Dex.  Declan “Dex” Foray is older, more worldly than Perry.  He’s sexy and confident…and most likely, bipo­lar.  That makes him unpre­dictable, irri­tat­ing and totally mes­mer­iz­ing.  Just like Perry, I found myself intrigued by this man who only reveals what he has to…no more, no less.  There were moments where I simul­ta­ne­ously wanted her to kiss him…and punch his lights out.  This makes for a very com­plex relationship.

They’re thrown together by coin­ci­dence when they meet at her uncle’s aban­doned light­house and from that point on their lives are inter­twined and their adven­ture begins.   Dex pro­poses they work together to cre­ate a new ghost hunt­ing show and they return to the light­house where the real mys­tery and “spook­i­ness” begins.  This book focuses more on the char­ac­ters than the super­nat­ural and sets up what I know will be a very inter­est­ing series.  The pace was a bit slow in the begin­ning but that changed after the first few chap­ters.  As with many self-published books, you will find a few gram­mat­i­cal issues and some incor­rect word choices but it is min­i­mal and does not dis­tract from the story.  Over­all Ms. Halle cre­ates a solid foun­da­tion for the remain­der of the series with char­ac­ters that are unique and sit­u­a­tions that pro­vide enough unan­swered ques­tions to keep you want­ing more.

And next up, LYING SEASON, From See­ing Night Reviews:

REVIEW:
Okay so my first reac­tion to fin­ish­ing this book was a long pause and then scream­ing “OH MY GOD!” Yep that was my ini­tial reac­tion then I calmly put the book down and took a long breath, this was such a killer good fourth book in the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Series.  Karina Halle really knows how to make me want to pull my hair out and frighten me at the same time with her ghost story.

Perry and Dex are back! But this time around Perry is get­ting her­self into a dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion. The duo’s next haunted expe­di­tion is tak­ing place in Seat­tle where Dex lives and his so called “per­fect” girl­friend wants Perry to stay with them while she works with Dex on the show.  But not only does Perry have to deal with their cutesy and argu­men­ta­tive rela­tion­ship, she also has to deal with her own rela­tion­ship with Dex and it’s com­pli­cated. Then of course there’s the ghost and this one is a scary one and she’s from Dex’s past and pop­ping up every­where. What really doesn’t help the sit­u­a­tion is that they’re a shoot­ing the next show in a men­tal insti­tute, where every­thing seems to go wrong.

Pretty much each time Dex and Perry go to shoot a new episode it gets more insane, scarier and dan­ger­ous. I really feel bad for Perry most of the time because of course she gets the worst of it.  The men­tal insti­tute is prob­a­bly in my mind one of the scari­est place that any­one would go to and hunt for ghost. What they find there is every­thing and more of what they were look­ing for and it’s going to put them in major dan­ger. Along with a com­pe­ti­tion ghost hunt­ing show it really made for one awe­some hor­ror ride.

Perry I have to say is one hell of a girl, she deals with the ups and downs of every­one around her. Her par­ents are prob­a­bly the worst par­ents ever, I don’t like them at all but her sis­ter is great and really sup­port­ing her the most. Then she has to deal with Jenn, the annoy­ingly per­fect girl­friend of Dex, who is really not per­fect. I felt for Perry, she held it together pretty well and really stuck up for her­self and opened up a lot more this time around. Dex doesn’t really make it easy for her to keep her emo­tions in when he really cares for her too.

The ghost are freak­ing scary, I swear as a fan of the tele­vi­sion show ghost hunters I love this kind of stuff. But actu­ally being there and hear­ing or even see­ing ghost and the ones as creepy as in Lying Sea­son I would be cry­ing a lot. Lets just stay make sure your read­ing this one with the light on.

Over­all I can’t get enough of this series, Lying Sea­son hands down was fan­tas­tic. Yes, there are some gram­mar errors but they really didn’t bother me because I love this series.  The rela­tion­ship with Dex and Perry just threw my heart around; I really love these two guys. They are both strug­gling in their own past lives but I’m pulling for them. The end­ing in this was insane and I was not pre­pared, so get pre­pared! I highly rec­om­mend this book!

RECOMMENDATION:
This is a mature young adult / adult story with very scary sit­u­a­tions and fan­tas­tic mys­tery. I highly rec­om­mend this to fans of hor­ror and para­nor­mal enthusiast.

5/5 stars

There’s also been a heap of reviews on GoodReads as well from read­ers like you — no mat­ter the rat­ing, I’m always appre­cia­tive of peo­ple who not only take the time (and money) to read my books, but who go beyond and leave a review. Each one is help­ful in their own way and it’s a great way for new read­ers to gain objec­tive insight into the nov­els. So thank you to every­one who has reviewed the series in one way or another!

If you haven’t seen this inter­view I did with For­ever Young Adult yet, here it is: CLICK MEEEEEE

It was a lot of fun, though I think I come off as a crazy per­son (note: I am a crazy per­son) and I’m not sure  how I feel about liv­ing in Toledo with Michael Fass­ben­der and our gag­gle of kids, but I’ll deal. I always do.

But I was glad to talk about the self-publishing route in an influ­en­tial YA web­site– yes, I’ve learned a lot from writ­ing Dark­house, not only has my writ­ing improved since then, I also hired a pro­fes­sional edi­tor for Dead Sky Morn­ing and Lying Sea­son. At some point, I will hire said edi­tor to give Dark­house and Red Fox a wee run through too, you know clean it up around the edges, tighten some prose, etc (I’m quite aware of my weak­nesses as a writer, and though I had many beta read­ers edit for me, it lacks the “pro­fesh” touch) but at the moment I’m just going to con­cen­trate on my cur­rent **Works-in-Progress (note: though absolutely nec­es­sary, edi­tors don’t come cheap). You learn as you go when you self-publish and I thank you all for stick­ing with me.

There’s also been this lovely review of Dead Sky Morn­ing in which Jenny pro­claims Perry and Dex have a whop­ping TEN on the Swoon­wor­thy Scale. You know the books may seem scary at first, but there is a whole lot of swoon­ing going on. I swear!

On that note, I’ve had peo­ple ask­ing if they can get the book at their library. I actu­ally believe you can. I mean, I did make Dark­house avail­able through “Libraries and Aca­d­e­mic Insti­tu­tions” so I think if you ask your library to carry the book (maybe using Title, Author and ISBN (found on the Ama­zon page here http://www.amazon.com/dp/1461079853) they tech­ni­cally should be able to order it in. Don’t quote me on that, but I did make it avail­able, so ask around! I’d be thrilled if Dark­house made it into a library.

If any­one, then, does suc­ceed with get­ting Dark­house in to a library, lemme know and I’ll send you a spe­cial gift!

**I’ll reveal the title and syn­op­sis of my cur­rent WIP as soon as I get 20% of it done — get­ting there. And of course I’ll let you know my progress with EIT #5, On Demon Wings