Actu­ally I have more than a few favorites (and, really, I need to start updat­ing my links list here — man, hav­ing a web­site can really suck up a lot of your time), but one of my BIG favorites is the won­der­ful, fan­tas­tic, always hilar­i­ous, often witty and for­ever endear­ing, FOREVER YOUNG ADULT.

I’ve been read­ing their web­site for years now — long before I even wrote my first novel — so imag­ine my delight when, last year, Jenny from the web­site agreed to review DARKHOUSE.

Imag­ine my delight when SHE LOVED IT. I took a shot with this web­site, not know­ing if they would review my novel or not. I mean, it is tech­ni­cally self-published and I had encoun­tered so many review­ers who raised their noses at self-published books. But she took a chance and it paid off. For both of us! She has a new series she loves and I have a new fan. And I’m for­ever grate­ful for every sin­gle reader who takes a chance on my books. I under­stand the self-pubbed stigma, but just like indie music, just because it’s not on a major label, it doesn’t mean it’s not any good.

Last week, there was a fab­u­lous review of RED FOX — it’s hard to para­phrase their cute way of rating/reviewing, so a trip to their blog via THIS LINK should help.

And this Tues­day there will be a review of my third Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror book, Dead Sky Morn­ing, fol­lowed by an author inter­view on Wednes­day! I’m deeply flat­tered that I was asked to take part in an inter­view, join­ing the ranks of some really great, well-known authors. I mean, me, I’m just nobody really so it’s really grat­i­fy­ing and hum­bling at the same time to be fea­tured on their blog. I hope you’ll enjoy read­ing it — I get to play a game of MASH! *fin­gers crossed for Robert Downey Jr.*

Any­way, I’m sort of ram­bling. But I’m excited and just had to share

The rela­tion­ship between an author and a reviewer is one of the most sym­bi­otic ones in the arts today. This is becom­ing more preva­lent with the rise of the book blog­ging career path and the increase in the publisher’s use of social media. With­out one another, they sim­ply can­not exist. Review­ers rely on pub­lish­ers and authors to sup­ply them with “work” — books to read and review. Authors and pub­lish­ers need book review­ers to spread the word and gain publicity.

Some­times, though, things get out of whack and the whole sys­tem is turned on its head. This usu­ally comes from some­thing I call “a case of the meanies.”

I was talk­ing with an author recently. Like many authors, she writes book reviews, as well as her own nov­els. After leav­ing a less than favor­able review for one book, she was sud­denly expe­ri­enc­ing “rat­ings retal­i­a­tion”. The author whose book she cri­tiqued attacked her book in return, get­ting her friends to leave one-star reviews on GoodReads.

In another, more high pro­file case, a well-known debut author with a major pub­lisher, slan­dered (quite nas­tily, I might add) a cer­tain reviewer who had left a crit­i­cal, neg­a­tive review.  I mean, really? Over a bad review? Then, of course, there is that nutjob author who went crazy because of a bad review, attract­ing hun­dreds to the com­ment sec­tion. It went viral in a mat­ter of hours, doing a lot of dam­age to self-publishers every­where (we aren’t all like that, we swear!) and to herself.

This isn’t to say that all review­ers are blame­less. I do think you CAN go too far with a scathing review, par­tic­u­larly if it turns slan­der­ous and starts attack­ing the author, rather than the work. I think review­ers who pride them­selves on being catty, should prob­a­bly take a few sec­onds and think about the dam­age they are poten­tially inflict­ing and to whom. Does Cas­san­dra Clare care if you call her writ­ing shitty? Prob­a­bly not. But would a self-published, or debut small press indie writer? They might. You want to pro­vide crit­i­cism for them. You don’t want to take away their will to live.

And authors…I think a lot of authors need tougher skin. My nov­els aren’t always well-received — I accept that because it’s the nature of art. It’s sub­jec­tive. And I rec­og­nize that my char­ac­ters are DEFINITELY not for every­one. But you take the neg­a­tive reviews with a grain of salt. Maybe lis­ten if they have some­thing con­struc­tive to say, oth­er­wise, brush it off and con­cen­trate on the good reviews. It can sting but it’s not hard to do. The worst thing you could ever do as a writer is to A) get mad at the reviewer or B) retal­i­ate against them. Don’t com­ment (other than to say “Sorry you didn’t like it, thanks for giv­ing it a try!”), don’t argue, don’t take your issue pub­licly… and for heaven’s sake, don’t try and exact some kind of revenge on the reviewer. Just let it go, let the bal­ance between reviewer and author go back to nor­mal and enjoy the work­ing order of things. We aren’t ene­mies, we are here to help each other and share our love of the writ­ten word.

And here’s some­thing totally unre­lated and creepy now… the offi­cial trailer for the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Book #3, DEAD SKY MORNING (to read more about how I made the trailer and to enter a fan­tas­tic give­away, visit The Book­ish Babes).

Pretttty self-explanatory title.

Dark­house is free on Amazon’s Kin­dle from Jan­u­ary 3rd till mid­night Jan­u­ary 4th — LINK

Com­bine that with the fact that Red Fox (EIT #2) and The Ben­son (EIT #2.5) are both FREE on Smash­words, and you can get THREE free books today!

Tell your friends, your co-workers, your dog, your dog’s friends at the park, etc.

Need incen­tive? How about ALL FOUR Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror books in Paper­back (Dark­house, Red Fox, Dead Sky Morn­ing and Lying Sea­son)? Wanna win Amer­i­can Apparel Team Dex under­wear (in your size)?

Help me pro­mote Dark­house over the next two days and you’ll be entered to win! Open to North Amer­i­can res­i­dents only. Basi­cally, just tweet this post or share on Face­book or your blog. Or just fol­low @metalblonde on Twit­ter and help me out with a Dark­house RT. Make sure you let me know you’ve done so by leav­ing a com­ment below, or tweet me. I’ll be keep­ing tabs and putting all the names in a ran­dom­izer draw at week’s end!

And for a spe­cial NY mes­sage from moi, read onto the next post or click here!

Turn it up! I’m quiet

Remem­ber, Dark­house (Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror #1) will be avail­able for FREE on KINDLE on Jan 3rd and 4th.

Red Fox (EIT #2) and The Ben­son (EIT #2.5) are both FREE on Smashwords.

Start 2012 off with the first 2.5 books in this fan favorite ghost-hunting series for FREE!

Need more con­vinc­ing? Check out these two amaz­ing reviews of Dark­house:

5/5 Stars from Unput­down­able Books “Oh my freak­ing God! Why did I take so long to pick up this book?
The entire time I was read­ing this book, I felt as if I was watch­ing an episode of a brand new series. Now, I can’t wait to read the next installments. ”

4/5 Stars from Demons Read Too “The sim­i­lar­i­ties between my life and that of the main char­ac­ter, Perry, were freak­ishly uncanny. I enjoyed slip­ping into her world and going along with her some­times wacky, but often under­stand­able trains of thought. The mys­tery of the light­house had its creepy moments, but what I loved came more through the ban­ter between Perry and Dex. The roman­tic under­cur­rents were paced real­is­ti­cally, and fun to watch unfurl.”

Dark­house also won the Top YA Hor­ror of 2011 from Unput­down­able Books as well.

And the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Series placed on another Top 10 of 2011 List HERE.

First things first: Because it’s the hol­i­days and I am in the Christ­mas spirit (yes, I said Christ­mas, so sue me), I have decided to make Red Fox a free book. In dig­i­tal form, at least. And pos­si­bly for­ever. I’m cel­e­brat­ing its new cover and also I really liked this whole “giv­ing” thing with The Ben­son. And it’s the sea­son to give. Yadda, yadda.

So, folks, if you haven’t read Red Fox yet (the sec­ond book in the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Series) or you want an edi­tion with the new cover, just head on over to Smash­words here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/66366 and down­load it. It’s avail­able for any e-reader device.

Red Fox is actu­ally my favorite book of the series (other than Lying Sea­son) and really deserves more atten­tion, so hope­fully this will bring it some. If you can help spread the word, that would be great.

The other thing is, I’ve been hear­ing a lot about the KDP Select Pro­gram. This is the pro­gram where authors make their e-books avail­able through Kin­dle and the books are pro­moted and shared, with the author get­ting a piece of the fund pie. You have to enroll for 90 days but the catch is, in a very Microsoft-type deal, the books can ONLY be avail­able through Kin­dle. You can not sell your E-book ver­sion any­where else. At least not for those 90 days.

I like the idea of get­ting free pro­mo­tion and actu­ally mak­ing a bit of com­pen­sa­tion for my work. I don’t like the idea of Ama­zon try­ing to take over the sys­tem and essen­tially make all other e-readers moot. That’s just…not very nice. That said, you can down­load the Kin­dle app for your iPhone or iPad and the .mobi for­mat does work in other devices.

So I have decided to do a lit­tle exper­i­ment. An Exper­i­ment in Pub­lish­ing ha. Might end up being an Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror, I don’t know. Any­way, I have enrolled Dark­house in the pro­gram. The rest of the series (Red Fox, The Ben­son, Dead Sky Morn­ing, and Lying Sea­son) will still be avail­able else­where (B&N, Smash­words, iTunes) but Dark­house will be exclu­sive to the Kin­dle for the next 90 days.

Let’s see what happens.…

Here’s the truth about book cov­ers — they are really, REALLY impor­tant. A great cover (such as Lying Season’s) will entice the reader to pick it up (maybe explains why Lying Season’s sales last week were through the roof…well, for the EIT series any­way), while a bad or unin­ter­est­ing cover may cause peo­ple to hes­i­tate or even refuse to read a book.

I was eter­nally unsat­is­fied with the cover of Red Fox. Though the artist at the time did com­ply with what I asked for, I thought the end result was mud­dled and NOT AT ALL rep­re­sen­ta­tive of this fun and fast-paced story. It is well-drawn, detailed, moody and makes for nice art but just isn’t book cover mate­r­ial. But when you’ve com­mis­sioned a piece and you have a pub­li­ca­tion date to hit, you some­times have no choice but to make do.

I also noticed that a lot of read­ers were skip­ping RED FOX which I thought was a real shame since an infor­mal poll has placed Red Fox as the best written/most enjoyed Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror novel (though that may change with Lying Sea­son now out). I could only attribute the gloss­ing over of this awe­some book because of the dull and unin­ter­est­ing cover. It just didn’t cap­ture the magic or the eye.

And so, me and my (new) artist have been hard at work cre­at­ing a new cover that’s a lit­tle more eye-pleasing.

Start­ing Tues­day, this cover will be re-issued on all E-versions of the book on Smash­words, Kin­dle, Nook, etc (which is also get­ting some extra inter­nal re-formatting for glitchy issues) and hope­fully by the end of week, the paper­back re-issues will be done as well. I’ll announce when they are avail­able. I’ll be hav­ing a give­away too, so be sure to check back then!

Oh right…the new cover…ta-da!

Yeah. Lying Sea­son is actu­ally song by Alice in Chains. It was a b-side, so a lot fans don’t even know about it. I loved the song, thought it was fit­ting for the set­ting (Seat­tle, yo) and, well, all the lies…and so, voila.

Lying Sea­son has a playlist, as do all of my books. With this book it was less about the indi­vid­ual songs and more about what albums I lis­tened to dur­ing cer­tain scenes. Actu­ally, music plays a very impor­tant role in this book, more so than in any of the other ones. And thus, I invite you to down­load and lis­ten to the songs below at play them at the right moments.

Lying Sea­son Playlist

The Bea­t­les Abbey Road - “Oh! Dar­ling” and “Maxwell’s Sil­ver Ham­mer” fea­tured promi­nently dur­ing Jenn and Dex’s car sing-along (ugh). “Come Together” is heard play­ing in Rebecca’s car. Perry almost hears “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” dur­ing a piv­otal scene near the end.

Soundgar­den — “Hands All Over”, “Gun” and any song from Louder than Love make good dri­ving music on your way to a men­tal asy­lum. Cor­rec­tion: a haunted men­tal asy­lum. “Pretty Noose” Perry’s Karoake song of choice.

Rob Zom­bie The Sin­is­ter Urge — Perry’s “get­ting ready for a date” album of choice. Nor­mal, right?

Alice in Chains — Dirty, gritty, Seat­tle streets. Wet weather and despair. Drugs. Tor­ment. No way out. Pretty much every AIC song fits in with this book. Lis­ten to them all.

Bohren and Der Club of Gore Beileid — any­time Perry is feel­ing reflec­tive (so, uh, the whole book?)

The Kills Blood Pres­sures - “The Last Good­bye” is one emo­tional wal­lop of a song and pretty explanatory

Fan­tomas Delir­ium Cor­dia — lit­tle secret here…I lis­tened to this album on repeat…and only this album…while writ­ing every sin­gle scene inside the men­tal insti­tu­tion. Yeah. It scared the hell out of me and if you hap­pen to play this while read­ing it (while read­ing ANYTHING) it’ll do the same to you too. Take my word for it. Bless you Fan­tomas. You keep on giving.

PS — Lying Sea­son is now avail­able on KINDLE and in PAPERBACK on Cre­ate­space

Lying Sea­son — the fourth book in the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Series — has been released today. I’m absolutely enam­ored with the full cover, giv­ing a beau­ti­ful hint at the sex­i­ness, ghosts, chills and thrills that lie inside. Oh and INTENSITY. In my opin­ion, this is the most emo­tional, poignant and intense book of the series and my proud­est piece of writ­ing. So…take what you will from that.

So far it’s avail­able on Smash­words (in any e-format) with Kin­dle to come later in the day. I’ll keep you posted when the paper­backs are avail­able from Ama­zon (prob­a­bly in the next few days).

In the mean­time, you can read the first FOUR chap­ters HERE (what, the return of Uncle Al!) though I obvi­ously rec­om­mend that if you haven’t read the series, you start with DARKHOUSE (just $0.99) and work your way up.

OR you can down­load The Ben­son - an EIT novella — for free from Smash­words. Just click HERE for the Smash­words down­load in any e-format or read the PDF HERE (no down­load needed). It’s not the series but it gives you a wee idea of how the char­ac­ters of Perry and Dex work. And it’s free — free e-books rule.

I’m also work­ing on a give­away. A few months ago I cre­ated two excel­lent give­aways — my win­ners have been very patient, but I’m proud to say their merch has come in and will be on their way to them shortly. But I’m so in love with the EIT merch, that I want to host another one for sim­i­lar prod­ucts! Check ‘em out!

So stay tuned. I hope to have a Lying Sea­son give­away com­ing at you very soon

It’s my 30th Birth­day today *cries*

OK, I’m over it. I’m spend­ing my day clean­ing the crap out of my apart­ment — how adult is that? (note this is about as adult as I get).

I received some pretty amaz­ing gifts for my bday (bot­tles of great wine, a PS3, Mastodon CD, etc) so I thought I’d turn right back and be gen­er­ous with you, my read­ers. Also, I did say the other day if I gar­nered enough inter­est through RTs and the like about my Lying Sea­son teasers, that I’d put the sub­se­quent chap­ters up.

Well, here you go — I kept my promise. Read Lying Sea­son (EIT #4) first TWO chap­ters right HERE.

And since it IS my birth­day and all, any retweets about this blog post would be GREATLY appreciated.

Cheers and happy read­ing!

OH and don’t for­get about The Ben­son — EIT #2.5 — a free novella you can down­load HERE.

With all the hub-bub over the release of The Ben­son (my free EIT novella, which you can down­load here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/112314 — please let me know if you like it) I sorta for­got about Lying Sea­son.

Well, no not really. It’s not pub­li­ca­tion day yet. There is still some tweak­ing and for­mat­ting to be done.

But because it’s almost my birth­day, and I have a few more days left in my twen­ties to be a tease about things, I decided to put up the first chap­ter of Lying Sea­son. If it con­fuses you, that’s OK…once you read the rest of the book it will make some sense. Sorta

Read the first chap­ter of Lying Sea­son (EIT #4) HERE.

I may release the sec­ond chap­ter tomorrow…depends how naughty I feel.

OH and don’t for­get, if you like what you read, you can still enter to win paper­back copies of Lying Sea­son through Good Reads HERE: