Being an author, it’s amus­ing to see the type of feed­back you get on your books, espe­cially your char­ac­ters. Sins & Nee­dles has been get­ting some pretty var­ied feed­back, some of it which has me scratch­ing my head. Look, obvi­ously peo­ple see things dif­fer­ently and have dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tions of what they read. But from where I’m sit­ting, a lot of peo­ple have the same interpretation…and it’s kind of disheartening.

What am I talk­ing about here? My main char­ac­ter, Ellie Watt. She’s a real con artist. A liar, a thief, self­ish and inse­cure. She’s single-minded and holds grudges. She’s had a tough life and uses that as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for what she does. Do I con­done her actions? Hell no. Do I think she has a lot of issues to sort through, that she needs to let some things go? Hell yes. But, I mean, come on…she’s not a drug run­ner, she’s not kid­nap­ping peo­ple and sell­ing them into slav­ery, she’s not phys­i­cally abu­sive, she’s not rap­ing any­body, she’s not cheat­ing on loved ones.

And yet, quite a few women HATE her. I see their updates, their reviews…they can’t stand her, they don’t get her, they don’t give a shit if she’s had a tough life. And this is all because she’s a crim­i­nal. I have never in my life seen peo­ple get so worked up over a char­ac­ter before. Women are freak­ing LIVID over Ellie Watt.

AND YET if Ellie were a man, women wouldn’t say shit. Look at all your heroes these days: you have cheaters, abusers, killers, kid­nap­pers, rapists…women go nuts for these men, yet you make your FEMALE char­ac­ter a con artist and OH NO that’s the last straw.

If Ellie Watt were a hunky, hot man no one would com­plain. All would be forgiven.

And that’s the hon­est and sad truth. Women, whether it be in fic­tion or in real life, are so god damn nasty and judge­men­tal to each other. I’m not talk­ing about this book specif­i­cally, but just every­where. Blogs, the media, movies, TV shows, even in books. Women can be down­right cruel.

Am I a fem­i­nist? No. Not by a long shot. I remove myself from any sort of fem­i­nist move­ment, just like I remove myself from veg­an­ism or chris­tian­ity or any­thing really extreme. I’m a mid­dle ground type of per­son. I like clean eat­ing, but I eat meat. I believe in God but I don’t go to church. I am all for women’s rights but I still think a man should be a man and hold the doors open for us.

And I believe that women should learn to be a hell of a lot nicer to each other.

This hatred of how a female can be so manip­u­la­tive and self­ish is com­pletely justified…providing that a man would get the same treat­ment in that sit­u­a­tion. But for the most part they don’t. It’s kind of like when you have a boss who’s a woman…the minute she acts harsh and author­i­ta­tive, she’s labeled a BITCH. But the minute a man does the same, he’s called powerful.

I mean, look at Javier. With­out spoil­ing too much, he freak­ing kills some­one in cold blood…and yet women still like him. Could you imag­ine the out­cry if a woman did the same?

This hatred goes so far, that even Ellie’s own per­sonal redemp­tion is over­looked. She sac­ri­fices her­self at the end of the story and I’ve seen peo­ple say that was really self­ish of her…I’m sorry, but what?…hoooooooooow did you come to that con­clu­sion? 0_0

I’m always going to write char­ac­ters that are real and flawed, peo­ple that read­ers won’t nec­es­sar­ily like.  It’s just what I do and I’m not immune to con­tro­versy. But if bad boys get all the love, why not bad girls? Why can’t read­ers find the redeemable qual­i­ties in a bad girl if they can do the same for a boy?

I know this is just a fact of life, but it doesn’t have to be. The world be a lot bet­ter if women could be nicer to each other, more com­pas­sion­ate and sup­port­ive, instead of view­ing each other as the enemy. I know it’s kind of the way we are, and I’ve been guilty of this too, but we deserve to treat each other better…fiction or not.

Aaaaaaaand end rant

Pick up the intrigu­ing Ellie Watt today, still 99 cents on Ama­zon until March 1st

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.

Want to read more about Cam­den and Ellie? How about them as teens when they first met each other? Want to sup­port an extremely wor­thy (and per­sonal) cause at the same time, plus check out sto­ries from six­teen of today’s best sell­ing romance writers?

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Amanda Todd was a young girl who was lured into a bad deci­sion by a cyber-stalker and then mer­ci­lessly tar­geted online and in real life over and over again, until it became too much for her to han­dle and she ended her life in Octo­ber of 2012.

She wanted to help other kids by shar­ing her story and let­ting them know they should never be pun­ished for who they are or for mak­ing a mis­take. AmandaToddLegacy.org is an orga­ni­za­tion that reaches out to kids in need, edu­cates about the harm­ful effects of bul­ly­ing and pro­vides resources that can make a real difference.

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EXCERPT FROM DEFYING THE DUST

I exhaled and headed out of the med­ical build­ing and back into the inferno. The sun was high in the sky now, sear­ing my pants to my legs in sec­onds. I shielded my eyes from the glare and looked around. The van wasn’t in the park­ing lot. I guess Raquel and my father fucked off some­where. Too bad it was too hot out to even think about walk­ing back home by myself.

I sat down on the curb and waited. A few cars put­tered past on the main road, the dust ris­ing like sandy plumes behind them. There was some­thing pretty about that and had I been in a bet­ter mood, or at least had my sketch­book on me, I would have tried to cap­ture that in col­ored pen­cil. Pen was too blunt for some­thing that ethereal.

Then I saw some­thing even more poetic: the sil­hou­ette of a girl walk­ing through the dust clouds along the side­walk. I couldn’t see her face, just her shape, though I could tell she was small and walked with a pro­nounced limp. She turned in my direc­tion and headed toward me. As soon as the dust cleared, she stopped and looked around as if she were lost.

Wow. She was pretty. Very pretty. She looked about my age, too. She had long blonde hair pulled back in a pony­tail, big dark eyes, a round face, and pouty lips. I’d never seen her before—I would know if I had. I knew every girl in town—from afar, of course. No girls ever talked to me. But I kept all their names and images in my head, using the pret­ti­est ones when I was spank­ing it in the shower.

But unlike a lot of the girls in Palm Val­ley, this one wasn’t show­ing a lot of skin. You get used to it in this heat, see­ing your class­mates walk­ing around in cut-offs and bikini tops that only the coolest girls could fill out. This girl already stood out by wear­ing flared jeans, Doc Martens boots and a T-shirt. She must have been boil­ing hot, just as I was.

She started walk­ing toward the build­ing, but stopped as soon as she saw me.

My first instinct was to smile at her. It made most girls turn and run away.

But then she started walk­ing again, slower this time and with delib­er­a­tion. She was try­ing to con­trol her limp, her focus now dead ahead, not let­ting her eyes waver to me. I couldn’t tell if it was because I weirded her out or if she was self-conscious. Maybe both.

She was just a few feet away, refus­ing to look at me, when I said, “If you’re look­ing for the psy­chi­a­trist, he’s upstairs.”

The girl stopped and looked at me, a mix of shock and fear on her face. Up close she was even pret­tier, with a smat­ter­ing of freck­les across her petite nose. She filled out her jeans and black shirt pretty well too. I adjusted myself and prayed I wouldn’t get another inap­pro­pri­ate boner, though at least there’d be a rea­son for it this time.

I kept my face dead­pan. Might as well give her another rea­son to be turned off. “I mean, I’d know, I was just at the shrink. Guess my father thinks I’m a bit nuts.”

She looked me up and down, her face relax­ing slightly though she still looked puz­zled. Finally she said, “I’m look­ing for a pharmacy.”

I squinted up at her. “You’re not from here, are you? I mean, this town?”

She shook her head. She looked really uncomfortable.

“Aren’t you hot in those jeans and boots?” I asked.

Her face imme­di­ately went red and I knew I struck a nerve. But instead of feel­ing proac­tive, like I’d shut her down before she had a chance to shut me down, I just felt bad.

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly and got to my feet. “I’m not one to talk.” I tow­ered over her, awk­wardly adjust­ing my pants and rat­tling my wal­let chain, but to her credit she still stood there and folded her tanned arms across her chest. Her T-shirt was an aged look­ing Metal­lica Mas­ter of Pup­pets. I nod­ded at it. “Cool shirt. Do you like Metal­lica or did you pick that up at a thrift store?”

“Both,” she said, rais­ing her chin. Her eyes darted to the build­ing. “So is there a phar­macy in there?”

“Yep,” I said. “What are you look­ing for?”

She gave me a look that said it was none of my business.

I raised my hands in apol­ogy. “Sorry. Just try­ing to make con­ver­sa­tion. Usu­ally I have about two sec­onds before some­one throws a lame insult in my face. You’re break­ing a record here.”

She sucked on her bot­tom lip—completely adorable. I had the sud­den urge to do the same thing.

“Did you really see the psy­chi­a­trist?” she asked, still apprais­ing me.

I looked down at my clothes and back up again. “Look at me. Don’t I look like I need to see a shrink?”

She smiled but shook her head. “No. I like the Deftones,” she said, nod­ding at my patch. “I have all their albums.”

No way. No way this cool pretty chick in the Metal­lica shirt would also like one of my favorite, more obscure bands. I was pretty sure my mouth was open so I quickly tried to fill it with words.

“Uh, oh really? Cool. Have you seen them live?”

“No…I’ve never been to a con­cert. How about you? You look like you go to a lot.”

I laughed, try­ing to fig­ure out if she was insult­ing me or not. Her face was still guarded, yet sweet, and I decided she was being genuine…which was rare around me. “No, I’ve never seen them live. I took the bus out to Palm Springs when I heard Queens of the Stone Age was play­ing at a small bar there. Course, they wouldn’t let me in, I was only ten at the time, but I saw Josh Homme from far away.”

I won­dered if she knew who the singer/guitarist was but she just said, “Was he tall?”

“Yeah, he was tall.” Even though our con­ver­sa­tion must have sounded pretty stilted and lame to any­one lis­ten­ing, I felt like I was hav­ing the best talk of my life. “All the girls were throw­ing them­selves at him,” I added, try­ing to appeal to her even more.

She shrugged. “I don’t like red­heads much but he’s good on gui­tar.” Her eyes drifted to the build­ing. “Are you busy or do you want to help me with something?”

“I’ll help you,” I said a lit­tle too quickly. I winced at my own over­en­thu­si­asm but she just nod­ded at me with a straight face.

“Good,” she said. She started walk­ing toward the build­ing, her move­ments stiff. She glanced at me over her shoul­der. “Come on.”

I looked back to the road, won­der­ing if my dad was going to kill me if I wasn’t wait­ing by the curb. Then I decided that for this girl, death was worth it.

I fol­lowed her into the build­ing, the smell of straw­ber­ries and vanilla waft­ing behind her. I tried not to stare at her ass as it wig­gled in her jeans, but I caught a few glances while I could. Who knew if I’d ever be this close to a girl again? To be hon­est, I was sur­prised that not only was she cool as hell, but she was actu­ally still talk­ing to me. There had to be a catch…

As soon as we were in the mall-like foyer and spot­ted the small phar­macy shop—the type filled with canes and foot­baths and gauze, not fun stuff like Sharpies and Super Soakers—I tried to make conversation.

“So where did you move here from?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Out East, the South, what­ever,” she said and then stopped sud­denly. I nearly ran into her and stopped myself just in time. I’m sure the last thing she wanted was a sweaty Cam­den all up against her.

She smiled like she was about to let me in on the world’s biggest secret. I felt like my breath was being leached from my lungs.

“You go talk to the clerk and dis­tract him,” she said, her voice low and hushed.

“What?”

She frowned, her smile becom­ing wry and twisted. “Come on. Be a pal.”

Now it was my turn to frown. “I just don’t under­stand. You want me to dis­tract Mr. Sirk, the guy behind the counter? Dis­tract him from what?”

“Haven’t you ever shoplifted before?”

I was taken aback and laughed. “No.” Her mouth turned into a tight line. Oh my god, I thought she’d been jok­ing. “You’re serious.”

“Man, you guys in this town are no fun,” she said and quickly turned to the store.

I reached out, grabbed her elbow, and dropped it as soon as I felt awk­ward, which was pretty much right away. “No, no. I mean. Yeah. This town is no fun. But I’ll help you. I’ve just never done it before.” For obvi­ous rea­sons, too. I mean, one was that every­one watched me like a hawk any­way. I looked like I played Trou­ble­mak­ing Teen Num­ber One in a Life­time movie. Two was the fact that my dad was the sheriff.

Although the fact that I’d be help­ing this girl steal something—commit a crime—did make me feel like I was stick­ing it to my dad a bit.

“What’s your name?” I asked her.

She raised a thin brow. “Why?”

I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose. “Well I fig­ure if I’m going to be your accom­plice, I might as well know your name. Bon­nie and Clyde knew each other’s names.”

“They knew a lot more than that,” she said and I could have sworn another shade of crim­son dot­ted the cen­ter of her cheeks. “My name’s Ellie.”

“Cam­den,” I said. I stuck out my hand then thought bet­ter of it. Then I raised it again because I’d already gone too far. I stared at it dumbly, like it was stuck in greet­ing limbo.

Luck­ily, Ellie was a good sport and she shook my hand any­way. Her grip was strong, sur­pris­ing. Most girls my age shook hands like every­one had some disease—or maybe that’s just the way they were with me. But there was a strange sort of con­fi­dence in her hand­shake just as there was a strange sort of vul­ner­a­bil­ity in her eyes. She was already an enigma to me.

“Cam­den,” she said slowly, as if my name felt good on her tongue. “Isn’t that a town?”

I nod­ded. “I can be a lot of things.”

“So can I.” She looked to the store and back again, a grin mak­ing her cheeks pop. “So you’ll be the fall guy? I mean, you’ll dis­tract him?”

“Sure,” I said, try­ing to sound more non­cha­lant than I felt. “What are you stealing?”

“Just…nothing,” she said.

“And you’re sure you can’t buy it?”

Her face fell briefly and a wash of sad­ness flashed through her dark brown eyes. “No. My fam­ily is poor. We live on my uncle’s date farm. It’s just tem­po­rary but…”

I pat­ted her on the arm. “I get it. Let’s do it.” I could tell that what­ever brought Ellie to this town, she wasn’t happy about it. I didn’t mean to sound like the moral police any­way. I was just curi­ous as to whether it was some­thing she actu­ally needed or some­thing she was doing for kicks. From the grave look her eyes sud­denly took on, it seemed to be some­thing she needed.

We walked into the store and she veered off to my right, walk­ing pur­pose­fully down the aisle while I took in a deep breath and approached Mr. Sirk. The minute he looked up from his tat­tered paper­back novel—Tom Clancy—and saw me, his eyes nar­rowed in suspicion.

“May I help you?” he asked. He licked his lips ner­vously. Some­times I won­dered just how scary I looked to peo­ple. I mean, sure I was in all black and kinda weird, but still, I was obvi­ously just thir­teen. I wasn’t a threat. Then again, peo­ple had said that before the Columbine inci­dent, too.

Of course, now I had to dis­tract him long enough for Ellie to steal what­ever she was stealing.

I leaned on the counter, notic­ing him inch back slightly, and said, “Got any comic books?”

He looked slightly relieved. I bet he thought I was going to ask him for hard drugs or something.

“Did you check the mag­a­zine rack?” he asked.

“No,” I answered. “Thought I’d ask you first. So do you?”

“No,” he said. He brought his book out and was about to resume read­ing when I said, “Could you order some in for me?”

Okay, it was lame, and I was sec­onds from being thrown out of his store, I could tell.

He sighed angrily and said, “Look, kid, this ain’t a library. If you want to buy comic books, I suggest…”

I know he kept talk­ing, but I stopped lis­ten­ing the minute I caught Ellie leav­ing the store out of the cor­ner of my eye. I tapped the counter with my fist, mak­ing the man jump, told him “thank you”, and quickly walked out of the store after Ellie.

She hadn’t looked behind her or stopped until she was well clear of the build­ing. Though she was still limp­ing, she looked casual and care­free, like she hadn’t stolen any­thing at all. In fact, I couldn’t be sure of it until I was right beside her in the insuf­fer­able heat look­ing down at her jean pocket, which bulged at the front.

“Is that it?” I asked.

She kept her eyes to the road. “Yep. Thanks for that.”

“No prob­lem.” I really, really wanted to ask again about what it was she stole, but from the clipped way she fin­ished her sen­tences, I knew she wouldn’t tell me. Maybe it was some­thing as sim­ple as makeup.

I chewed on my lip for a sec­ond, try­ing to think of what else to say. My father hadn’t come by yet, but I felt like time was run­ning out.

“You were really good,” I told her.

She shot me a funny look.

I swal­lowed uneasily. “I mean, you looked nat­ural. Not that I think you always steal shit, it’s just…um, well it was kind of fun. More fun than what I nor­mally do.”

“And what do you nor­mally do? Aside from go to the shrink?”

She was a smart-ass, too. I liked that.

I smiled and brushed my hair behind my ears. “You know. Play gui­tar, draw, paint, lis­ten to music. Annoy my step­sis­ters. You?”

She shrugged. “I’ve been learn­ing a lot about har­vest­ing dates.”

“I think you need to get out more,” I joked. “Maybe…”

Ellie looked at me expec­tantly. It was ridicu­lous, what I was about to say, but my mouth was mov­ing and the words were com­ing out before I could stop them.

My eyes dropped to the hot asphalt as a gum wrap­per blew past on a stiff breeze. “Maybe…if you wanted…I could show you around town. I mean, if you wanted. Might be nice to know the area before school starts. I could tell you all the kids to avoid…though they’d all say to start with me.”

She was silent for so long that I finally had to look up at her. She was star­ing off into the dis­tance, at the dry, crack­led moun­tains. Either she was ignor­ing me or she was lost in her own thoughts.

I opened my mouth to tell her to for­get it when she said, “I guess you get bul­lied a lot, huh?”

I snorted. “Well, yeah. Last year they started call­ing me The Dark Queen. I’ve been shoved into more lock­ers than back­packs have. My lips get most of their action from other dude’s fists.”

She looked at me, her gaze lev­eled. “You sound proud of it.”

I shrugged with one shoul­der. “It’s life. Gotta make some­thing of it. I’m not going to stop being me.”

“Is that what you told the shrink?”

I nod­ded. “Pretty much.”

“But what’s the real answer? Who is the real Camden?”

“Wow. You’re all deep and shit, for a shoplifter.” I expected her to smile at that but she just looked back to the road, just in time to see my dad’s van come down into the park­ing lot. I took in a steady­ing breath. “Well, that’s my ride.”

I must have sounded odd to her because her head whipped toward me and she stud­ied my face. “Is that your family?”

“My dad and step­mom,” I said quickly. “They’ll have a heart attack when they see me talk­ing to a girl. Think the shrink scared me straight.”

Her mouth formed an “oh” and I fig­ured she was prob­a­bly assum­ing I was gay. I was tired of cor­rect­ing peo­ple though, so I didn’t add any­thing to that. Besides, maybe she’d think I was less threat­en­ing if I was.

The van came to a sud­den stop beside me, Raquel get­ting mild whiplash in the front seat. I was sur­prised to see my father hop­ping out and com­ing around the front of it.

“Dad,” I said nervously.

Only he was smil­ing faintly, like he was really impressed that I was talk­ing to a mem­ber of the female species, and a cute one at that.

“Cam­den,” he said, his eyes fixed on Ellie. “Who might your friend here be? I don’t think I’ve seen you around, young lady.”

Ellie stuck out her hand and raised her chin to look him in the eyes. There was a hint of detach­ment in her gaze, like she was pre­tend­ing to be some­thing she wasn’t.

“Hi, I’m Ellie. I just met your son.”

“Ellie?” he prodded.

She swal­lowed like some­thing was stuck in her throat. “Ellie Watt. I just moved here.”

My dad’s brows came together like two black cater­pil­lars. “Watt…are you with the folks who are liv­ing on Jim’s date farm?”

She blinked in sur­prise. “Yes, sir.”

He watched her for a few moments, wig­gling his jaw back and forth. “I see. Well, wel­come to Palm Val­ley. I’m Camden’s father. Sher­iff McQueen.”

The color quickly drained out of Ellie’s face and she ner­vously rubbed her palms along her jeans. “Oh. How cool.” Her eyes flew to mine for an instant, a mix of dis­ap­point­ment and fear tak­ing them for a sec­ond or two. Then her expres­sion was detached again.

I stared back at her, smil­ing lightly as if to tell her that her secret was safe with me. It wasn’t until my dad told her it was nice meet­ing her and barked at me to get in the car that I eyed the bulge in her pocket and gave her the thumbs up.

“If you want to hang out,” I started.

“Cam­den!” my father yelled as he got in the car. “Let’s go.”

What­ever delight my father ini­tially had at see­ing me with Ellie was sud­denly gone, like he already knew she was the shoplift­ing type and disapproved.

Still, I had to try. “Do you need a ride?” I asked. I heard my father groan from inside and Raquel telling him to be quiet.

She bit her lip and shook her head. “No, I’m okay. My mom can get me. No. Wait…I can walk home.”

“Phhff, you can’t walk home in this,” I said, glanc­ing at the sun.

“No,” she said quickly, an edge to her voice. I looked at the hard­ness in her eyes, the trep­i­da­tion in the whites of them. “Thank you. I’ll walk.”

I gave her an uneasy smile. I didn’t want her to walk, but it was obvi­ous the idea of get­ting a ride with me and my dad scared the crap out of her. I bet she thought it was a trap and we were going to lead her straight to the police sta­tion for questioning.

“Okay, well—”

“Cam­den!” my dad boomed.

“—I’ll be see­ing you. I hope.”

“I’ll see you at school,” she said, giv­ing me a quick wave. I expected her to march off toward the build­ing or maybe down the street, but she just stood there, wait­ing, until I was in the van and we were mov­ing away.

I watched her until she was gone; my neck craned around until it hurt. Then I sat back in my seat and let a small smile play on my face. I didn’t know what had hap­pened, but some­how my day turned around one hun­dred per­cent. For once, I was able to talk to some­one with­out them being weird about how weird I was. For once, I was able to meet some­one who seemed to have secrets and prob­lems of her own.

For once, I met a girl who was cool as hell and totally took my breath away.

And so, nat­u­rally, for once, I wasn’t going to let this girl get away that easily.

I had hope.

Wel­come to the first Sins & Authors post, where your favorite authors sit down and chat about The Artists Tril­ogy. Today we have the lovely Court­ney Cole who talks about her con artist alias, sexy Cam­den scenes and her newest book.

Karina: So Court­ney, to get us all caught up on the books for peo­ple who haven’t read them, the In a sen­tence, describe what Sins & Nee­dles is about.

Court­ney: A hard-edged girl who goes home to hide and to heal, only to find more trou­ble than she bar­gained for and the man who is worth the trouble.

Karina: LOVE IT! Seri­ously, you should write my blurbs lol. Okay, so Ellie Watt, our hero­ine, is a con artist who is eas­ily mis­un­der­stood. Name some things you admire about Ellie.

Court­ney: I loved Ellie’s char­ac­ter because even though she’s hard-edged and tough, she’s soft on the inside. She’s dam­aged and vul­ner­a­ble.  Because of that, she’s strong.  I love smart strong heroines.

Karina: Most read­ers are severely (but pas­sion­ately) divided over the two male leads in the book, Cam­den McQueen and Javier Bernal. Whose team are you on and why?

Court­ney: I’m Team Cam­den all the way.  There’s some­thing about an under­dog that gets me… and what’s more under­dog than a kid who was bul­lied in high school grow­ing up to be badass and amaz­ing… but yet still trou­bled and vul­ner­a­ble on the inside?  Cam­den melted my panties.  (Was that TMI?)

Karina: You can never be too TMI with me! Your char­ac­ter from the best-selling If You Stay, Pax, is a bit of an ass­hole and rough around the edges (just the way I like them!). Do you think Pax and Ellie would make a good cou­ple? Why or why not?

Court­ney: Nope.  I don’t think they would make a good cou­ple at all.  Like Ellie, Pax is dam­aged.  He needs some­one more whole, more emo­tion­ally healthy than Ellie in order to help him heal.  Mila was def­i­nitely his per­fect match.

Karina: Two wrongs don’t make a right! What scene in Sins & Nee­dles was most mem­o­rable to you?

Court­ney: I loved the scene when Cam­den and Ellie had sex after *spoiler* died.  It was mak­ing love– soft and sweet.  It was perfect.

Karina: Def­i­nitely under­stated. Any favorite quotes?

Court­ney: “I regret my actions but I can’t reject the con­se­quences.  Every­one we meet, every­thing we do, it changes us.”   I love that, because it’s the truth.

Karina: If you were to get arrested, what would it be for?

Court­ney: Hmm­mmm.  Prob­a­bly for drink­ing too many long islands and streak­ing down the street.

Karina: Remind me to buy you a long island next time I see you. Now, if you were a con artist, what would your alias be?

Court­ney: Ooohhh.  Some­thing awe­some, like Wil­low Zane.  Or Alessa Michaels.

Karina: And those might up being great pen names! Tell me a bit about your next book.

Court­ney: My next book, IF YOU LEAVE, is the sec­ond book in the Beau­ti­fully Bro­ken series, which comes out on August 6th.  It fol­lows Madi­son and Gabriel… two peo­ple who are bro­ken, but tough and bad ass at the same time.  In the first book, Pax was a bad­boy.  I wanted to do a story about a badass hero this time around– so Gabriel is an ex-Army Ranger.  I love a man in uni­form. 

Karina: Sigh. Me too. I can’t wait to get my lit­tle paws on this!! SO soon now, six days! *dances for Courtney*

Court­ney Cole is a nov­el­ist who would eat mythol­ogy for break­fast if she could.

She has a degree in Busi­ness, but has since dis­cov­ered that cor­po­rate Amer­ica is not nearly as fun to live in as fic­tional worlds.

Every Last Kiss is her debut novel and she fol­lowed it with the rest of The Blood­stone Saga (Every Last Kiss, Fated, With My Last Breath and My Tat­tered Bonds).

Court­ney lives in quiet sub­ur­bia, close to Lake Michi­gan, with her real-life Prince Charm­ing, her ornery kids (there is a small chance that they get their orner­i­ness from their mother) and a small domes­tic zoo.

Web­site:  http://www.courtneycolewrites.com/

Face­book:  https://www.facebook.com/#!/courtneycolewrites

Twit­ter:  https://twitter.com/Court_Writes

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3112212.Courtney_Cole

ENTER THE GIVEAWAY BY CLICKING THE LINK BELOW

(sorry, Raf­fle­copter is being weird but if you click the link, it will take you to the page where you can win 30 E-books from all par­tic­i­pat­ing authors OR the signed Artists Trilogy!)

a Raf­fle­copter give­away <—- GIVEAWAY!

Hey every­one! Hope you’re all excited for Valentine’s Day, when I release this short story/novella And With Mad­ness Comes the Light (Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror #6.5). To refresh you, the novella takes place after Lying Sea­son and before Into the Hol­low. It’s basi­cally Dex’s POV of the events before he brought Perry to Roman.

You ready? Here we go:

There hadn’t been any­one in the bar who remotely caught my eye until I went to the ATM to get more money out. The damn machine was tak­ing for­ever and had the nerve to charge me a four dol­lar trans­ac­tion fee. I was ready to throt­tle the thing until I turned around and saw an inter­est­ing face look­ing back at me.

She was tall, maybe my height (damn my height!), with long, wavy red hair and match­ing lip­stick. Her eyes were glazed like she’d just been fucked and fucked good, and her lips were held in a half snarl, as if she was about to blow cig­a­rette smoke in my face.

“Sorry,” I apol­o­gized. I didn’t know why I apol­o­gized since I hadn’t run into her or any­thing, but then I found my eyes focus­ing on her amaz­ing rack that pulled her thin white tank top tight across her chest. Her nip­ples had made them­selves known, speak­ing to me, whis­per­ing “bite me.”

I rarely got caught with my eyes where they shouldn’t be so I quickly averted my eyes back to hers. It was hard to tell in the bar, but they could have been a dark blue. They were nasty look­ing, like she was going to eat me alive and enjoy every crunch. I liked that.

I liked it a lot. I had a boner in two sec­ond flat and was hard as fuck, strain­ing against my pants. Part of me wanted to feel embar­rassed, the other part wanted to rub it up and down on her while I rejoiced that I had finally got­ten a hard-on over some­one other than Perry. I finally found a woman’s prover­bial dick to suck.

I needed a bet­ter saying.

“Are you with the band?” the woman asked in a low, husky voice. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. She had a nice pink tongue that prob­a­bly matched the rest of her nice pink bits.

I smirked at her. “These fucks? No.”

She smiled back, totally bitchy, totally hot. “Well, I am. I guess I’m one of these fucks, too.”

Oh mama. I loved the way her lips looked when she said fuck. I loved the way her eyes looked when she said it, too. She wanted some of this, and judg­ing by the heat I was pack­ing in my pants, I couldn’t blame her.

“What were you say­ing about fuck­ing?” I asked, tak­ing a step toward her. I wasn’t nor­mally so for­ward, but I obvi­ously didn’t have any blood left in my head.

She grinned and touched my shirt. “I asked because you have an eye­brow ring and a shirt that looks like it used to fit you in the ‘90s. I didn’t say any­thing about fuck­ing, but now that the card is on the table, maybe you can prove to be more manly than you look.”

I grinned right back at her, my eyes drift­ing over her shoul­der and toward the bath­room door. Nail­ing some­one in the bath­room of a grungy metal bar was prob­a­bly one of the gross­est, dirt­i­est things you could do. But I felt like bathing in dirt after being so clean for the last month.

“Can I buy you a drink?” I asked her, remem­ber­ing my man­ners before I got car­ried away.

She put her hand on my chest and slid it down until it reached the waist­band of my boxer briefs. I don’t know why I was wor­ried about being dirty when I’d only last a cou­ple of min­utes tops.

“I’m good,” she said slowly. “But you go get your­self one. I’ll just be in the women’s wash­room, right over there.”

Mes­sage was received loud and clear. I watched her sashay her tight lit­tle jean-clad ass over to the wash­room and dis­ap­pear inside. I had maybe two min­utes before I would join her and sud­denly I was ner­vous as fuck.

I went over to the bar and got Clarissa’s atten­tion long enough to order a shot of bour­bon. After I put it back and tried to gather up my courage, which had some­how dis­ap­peared along with the blood in my brain, Dean appeared beside me.

“Saw you talk­ing to that hot piece of ass,” he com­mented, lean­ing for­ward on his elbows.

“I guess you could call it talk­ing,” I said, wish­ing I had another shot. I raised my hand for Clarissa and waited. “It was more like ‘let’s fuck,’ but not said as vaguely as that.”

“You know, I always thought you had a type,” he mused.

“What do you mean?” I asked as Clarissa filled up my shot glass again and down the hatch it went. What the hell was wrong with me? Even my erec­tion was deflat­ing, like I was los­ing all my nerve, like I was all talk and no show.

“Oh, the bitchy look. Like Jenn, like the red­head. Gor­geous and all that, but mean. You know, you can tell when a girl ain’t got no heart. And you like that. That’s why I was so sur­prised that you fell in love with Perry.”

I fell in love with Perry. I was in love with Perry.

“She was so sweet and cute and some­what inno­cent. Not the girl who would screw you in a shit­hole. Not a girl who would ever hurt you on pur­pose. You know, she was nice. And well, you don’t like nice, Dex. You like bitches. You like to be treated like shit for some god damn rea­son, and I don’t know why. You don’t deserve it. But maybe you think you do.”

“Dean,” I said slowly, push­ing my shot glass away from me. “Have you been lis­ten­ing to a lot of self-help tapes lately?”

“I’m just say­ing, man. It’s inter­est­ing. I feel like I’m finally crack­ing the Foray code.”

Time was tick­ing away. The red­head was still in the bath­room, prob­a­bly wait­ing for the last chick to leave so she could bar­ri­cade the door, avoid­ing the pud­dles of vomit and piss in her plat­form shoes. Was that really what I wanted? Now that I was called to act upon it, my dick argued against it. It didn’t give a fuck and I meant that lit­er­ally. I wanted the easy bitch because it was safe and famil­iar. And let’s face it, I was horny as hell.

But that wasn’t me any­more. I’d seen the light. I wanted the girl who embod­ied it. I wanted to deserve her, to be the man she needed. And I’d do what­ever I could to be that man.

I sighed and slapped a few bills on the table. I smacked Dean on the arm. “I’m going home, buddy.”

There’s a blog tour kick-off on the 16th at Read­ing Books Like a Boss and The Book Asy­lum. There’s also that Dex Book Boyfriend Prize Pack con­test that YES is still going on (run­ning it till V-Day).

Oh and here’s a nice press release about ME.

And thanks to all of you who sup­ported me as an author and bought Sins & Nee­dles — it was in the Top 100 for 13 days which was AMAZING. 13,000 copies have been sold, which I think is bananas. So THANK YOU! Your sup­port and faith in me as an author is invaluable.

And by good news, I mean FUCKING AWESOME NEWS.

(By the way, please click on the bot­tom of this blog post if you’re read­ing this on GoodReads…for some rea­son the gifs don’t show up on there and you really need the sweet sweet gifs for this one)

Last week, just out of the blue, I was emailed by Scott Wax­man of the Wax­man Leavel Lit­er­ary Agency. He con­grat­u­lated me on my suc­cess (whut?) and said he’d like to do busi­ness with me.

Cue this emotion:

Then.…

Then, think­ing it was too good to be true, I did some research on him to make sure he’s legit. Turns out, his agency has pub­lished such awe­some titles as:

–Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

–The Hex Hall Series

–Girls of Fire and Thorns

- Deadly Cool

- Defi­ance

- Hourglass/Timpeice

- Angel Eyes

- Shit My Dad Says

And he rep­re­sents Mar­tin Sheen.…MR. PRESIDENT!!

So then my emo­tion was:

Any­hoo, I’m pleased to announce to you that I, Karina Halle, am now rep­re­sented by Scott Wax­man of the Wax­man Leavel Lit­er­ary Agency. It’s funny because when I wrote the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Series, I never queried any agents or publishers…I just wanted to self-pub (some­thing to do with impa­tience lol). So the fact that I now have one? WOW.…

Actu­ally, WOW isn’t good enough. This is how I’m feeling:

And even­tu­ally.…

As promised on my EIT Face­book page, as a thank you for my fans, here is another quick Dex POV from Dark­house — the pop­u­lar “pie” scene. Man, it is a roller­coaster being in this man’s head. The Dex-Files is going to be very inter­est­ing (and fun) to write. And I hope come August, it will be just as much fun to read.

And with­out fur­ther ado.…

Dex’s POV – Dark­house Excerpt #2

“Oh come on, just shoot the freak­ing zom­bie already!” Matt or Tony yelled at me. I couldn’t tell which one. They both looked the same and sounded the same – deafening.

I’d been play­ing video games with Perry’s cousins for the last hour while she checked her emails and we waited for night to fall. My zombie-hunting “skills” seemed just as use­less as my ghost-hunting skills and the noises and the graph­ics were fuck­ing up my equi­lib­rium. I mean, shit. After what went down in the car, run­ning into that psy­cho, Dame Edna lady again, I was sur­prised it took me this long to real­ize every­thing was doing my head in. I had enough.

“That’s it,” I said, throw­ing my con­troller down on the couch and get­ting up. “I’ve died for the last time.”

The twins made a noise in uni­son. It sounded like false dis­ap­point­ment. It was eerie.

Then they con­tin­ued play­ing like I had never even been there. Also eerie.

And nerdy.

I made my way over the kitchen and started to pull out my note­book from my overnight bag. It still smelled like apple pie here, the one that Perry man­aged to bake ear­lier.  What pos­sessed her to try bak­ing was beyond my cloudy brain. Just one more thing to scrib­ble down on my men­tal notepad head­lined PERRY and sorted:  things I needed to get to the bot­tom of.

It was good too. Not the best thing I’ve tasted in my life, but it was good con­sid­er­ing she ran­domly cooked it in her uncle’s place.  I couldn’t even remem­ber the last time I had home­made apple pie. Had I ever? The only time I could think of was the God awful Christ­mases with Jenn and her white-ass rich folks, and if I knew them, they prob­a­bly ordered those pies from some epi­curean pie cat­a­logue for old farts.

But the thing is, it wasn’t so much what it tasted like but what it smelled like. The damn pie smelled like home to me. But apple pie didn’t exist in my fucked-up youth, and if it had, it wasn’t at the hands of my mother. Per­haps a nanny had baked every now and then. I don’t know, I didn’t care to remem­ber that shit. That whole period was blocked out for very good reasons.

But the smell still stirred up mem­o­ries that never could have existed. It felt…like, warm. Good. Hon­est. How the hell did those things belong in my life?

I looked at Perry as she came into the kitchen and sat down at the table across from me. Her face was anx­ious, like she was hav­ing another bat­tle inside that head of hers. There was some­thing about her that stirred up the same feel­ings. Maybe this had noth­ing to do with apple pie at all. Maybe it’s that she made it, and when she handed over that first slice and met my eyes, I could see she made it for me. And no one had ever made me anything.

Nat­u­rally, I wasn’t about to tell her that. It was retarded, actu­ally, to even think this funny lit­tle girl thought of me more than some crazy mus­tached fucker in her uncle’s kitchen. She just met me. She didn’t know me. And if she thought she did, she was mis­tak­ing me for some­one else. Some­one who didn’t hide med­ica­tion in a hollowed-out book.

I kept my mouth shut and began to write an overview of the day. I still man­aged to watch her at the same time, watch her debat­ing whether to tell me some­thing or not. A glint of some­thing gleamed in her blue eyes. It was almost…hot. Was she think­ing some­thing naughty? I found myself shift­ing uncom­fort­ably in the chair.

“So,” she said, her voice high and self-conscious. “A local ghost hunter’s club in Salem was hop­ing I could come aboard their team and per­haps show them around the lighthouse.

The…fuck? I stopped writ­ing, try­ing to process what she was say­ing. Com­pe­ti­tion? Already? I knew I should have fuck­ing got her to sign a con­tract. I knew I was being a fuck­tard by just trust­ing that she’d stick with me and not go to some­one else with this fuck­ing access, some­one who actu­ally knew what they were doing. All that shit we said to each other in the car, all the things I said – that didn’t mean shit, did it? Fuck I was a fool.

I cleared my throat and tried to sound casual. “And?”

She shrugged. “I haven’t got­ten back to them.”

How con­sid­er­ate, I wanted to say but I shut my mouth. This was not the time to fly off the han­dle. I knew I wasn’t think­ing straight lately, espe­cially today, I knew I was pre­dis­posed to say shit I didn’t mean, hell, shit I didn’t even think. I couldn’t fuck every­thing up now, not when we were so close.

“Well, you can do what­ever you want to do,” I lied through my teeth. “You’re a free agent. We haven’t signed anything.”

Cuz I’m a dick-grabbing mon­key, that’s why.

My cell phone rang, pre­vent­ing me from say­ing any­thing else ridicu­lous. It was Jenn but I was grate­ful for any distraction.

“Hey babe,” I said.

“Dex?” Jenn’s voice sounded tinny through the poor recep­tion. “Sorry to bug you on your lit­tle adven­ture but Cyn­thia and Relece wanted to have a girl’s night out and…”

She droned on but I had quit lis­ten­ing and was watch­ing Perry again. Her nose twitched (how cute was that?) and a faint flush of red crept up her neck and onto the side of her face. She straight­ened up in her seat as soon as she noticed me look­ing but it didn’t stop the girl from look­ing like she’d rather be in a mil­lion other places than sit­ting here in front of me. I hoped she wasn’t seri­ously think­ing about that pussy ghost hunt­ing club. Who the fuck decides to form one of those?

“….and I know you won’t be home till late, but I won’t be there until prob­a­bly much later. Is that OK?”

“Yeah, that’s fine.”

“You sure?” Jenn asked and from her tone I knew she didn’t give a fuck if I said it wasn’t. She’d still go out, as she always did. I didn’t even know why she was call­ing to ask. Maybe she wanted to check up on me.

“Seri­ously, I don’t mind. Go do what­ever it is you girls do.”

After I told her I’d be home in the morn­ing now, I hung up the phone and decided to jump right back into it.

“OK, where were we?” I said out loud. What did we need to know for tonight?

“She doesn’t mind you stay­ing another night?” Perry asked.

I raised my brow. Odd ques­tion. Why did she care?

“No,” I said, not want­ing to talk about how pathetic our rela­tion­ship truly was. I let my gaze fall to the win­dow where the wind was shak­ing the trees loose. I breathed in and let that smell of home bring my heart rate down a notch.

“Do you have any­more pie?”

“There’s a slice or two I put back in the fridge…” she said, as if she wasn’t sure.

“Would you mind get­ting me a piece of pie?” I asked. I wanted to see if she’d do it. And if she’d hand it to me again with that look in her eyes. I needed that look right now. I sensed some changes inside, the wiring com­ing loose and need­ing a good cau­ter­iz­ing. My thoughts were get­ting lost.

She tried to look annoyed but she failed at it big time. Cuz she still got out of her chair and walked over to the fridge. She opened the door and had to bend over in front of me to get a bot­tle of milk. My God she had one hell of an ass.  Not too big that your dick would get lost but just big enough to get a good, meaty hold of and squeeze and smack and come until the cows came home.

I must have been pretty obvi­ous in my leer­ing. Wasn’t I try­ing to impress her, not creep her out?

“Were you star­ing at my ass?” she said. She sounded sur­prised but she was glar­ing at me, so I had no idea what the fuck she was think­ing. Did she like the idea? Was she going to tell her mafia uncle to pour cement in my shoes and chuck me out in the Pacific?

“Yes,” I told her. Why lie? I’d put on the cement shoes if I had to. I’ve done worse for a woman.

She made some exas­per­ated sound and shook her head. But she still came back with a piece of pie. She was beet red now and avoid­ing my eyes. Maybe she liked my atten­tion after all.

“Obvi­ously, I’ll need a nap­kin too,” I told her. Push­ing but­tons, push­ing buttons.

“Obvi­ously,” she mut­tered and she tossed one to me. I took it with all the grace of a dandy and folded it in my shirt pocket. I was a gen­tle­man over every­thing. An ass-appreciating gen­tle­man. We are the finest kind of man. I should open my own ass-appreciating gentleman’s club one day.

I shoved the pie in my face (pie-appreciating gen­tle­man that I am) and noticed she wasn’t hav­ing any. To think of it, she hadn’t had any ear­lier either. That’s prob­a­bly why I thought she baked it for me…she cer­tainly didn’t bake the desert for herself.

Oh no, don’t tell me she’s one of those self-conscious girls who have absolutely no rea­son to be self-conscious. I eyed her full breasts and couldn’t fathom why she’d want to diet.

“You’re not hav­ing any­thing?” I asked, point­ing my fork at her in an accusatory fash­ion, hop­ing she’d prove me wrong.

“I don’t like pie,” was her stu­pid answer.

I laughed and a pie of pie shot out. “You don’t like pie? What kind of per­son doesn’t like pie?”

I poked her with the fork to make sure she was still real. “You can’t be trusted.”

She took a swipe at the fork, look­ing annoyed. “You’re the one with the fork.”

With­out think­ing, I reached over for her hand and opened it, soft and warm. I placed the fork in it and gen­tly closed her fin­gers over it.

“Now you have the fork,” I said softly and sat back in my chair. She stared down at the fork, think­ing. I stared down at the paper. Think­ing. Some­times you came across women who had every­thing going for them…looks, per­son­al­ity, smarts, and they had NO fuck­ing idea what they were worth. How amaz­ing and beau­ti­ful, they were, how they oozed sex and secrets. Then you had those women who knew they had what you wanted and used it. Repeat­edly. Just to get what they wanted. It was an unbal­anced universe.

Now I could see that Perry was the for­mer. She did look self-conscious and unsure of her­self at every turn. She was always pulling down her shirt or tug­ging up her jeans, or keep­ing her chin as far away from her neck as pos­si­ble. She’d cover up her breasts with heavy jack­ets and boxy shirts, like they were some­thing to be hid­den. The girl was fuck­ing nuts and for all the wrong rea­sons. It made me feel strangely helpless.

“I just want you to enjoy all the pies in life, Perry,” I said, gaz­ing at her, try­ing to get her shy eyes to meet mine. “That’s all.”

I won­dered if she’d let me try.

I had quite the suc­cess­ful blog tour last week for On Demon Wings. In case you missed it, I’ve com­piled some of the blog posts that I wrote for the var­i­ous par­tic­i­pat­ing blogs.
Let’s start first with Rebecca’s let­ter to Perry (writ­ten after Lying Sea­son) – as seen on Good Choice Reading

Dear Perry,

Your friend Rebecca Sims

Then there is the pop­u­lar bar scene from Red Fox, writ­ten from Dex’s POV – as seen on What the Cat Read

Red Fox — Dex

“Sex­u­ally frus­trated?” Perry asked, her voice strug­gling to be heard in the noisy bar.
I turned my head away from my beer bot­tle and looked at her in sur­prise. The girl must have been psy­chic, though I could see from the way her round eyes were slant­ing at the cor­ners that she might just be drunk.

I had to know. I stared into her eyes, lost in the storm, and started singing along with Joel. Softly, and at a dis­tance to start, then I leaned into her ear where it smelled like sun­shine and baby pow­der. I closed my eyes and sang, feel­ing my breath bound off of her ear in hot clouds. It was tak­ing all of my willpower to not take this fur­ther, to not wrap my lips around it and lick the lobe to see what it would taste like. See if I could make those eyes roll back and make her for­get every­thing that had hap­pened to her. I didn’t want to be Red Fox’s sav­ior, but I wanted to be hers.

NOTE: I was sur­prised at how fun and easy it was to get inside Dex’s head – and boy, do you guys love it! It looks like I’ll be releas­ing a com­pi­la­tion of scenes from all the books from his POV, most likely in August or Sep­tem­ber. And yes, the strip club scene from Dead Sky Morn­ing will be in it (you perverts!)

Here are some more posts too:
– A blog from Ada Palomino

– An inter­view with everyone’s favorite, Jenn

– Dex and why you should watch EIT

– And Perry’s thoughts on love and ghosts

Thanks to See­ing Night Reviews for host­ing the won­der­ful tour!

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!