Not much to say about it at the moment, but I just signed a deal with Diver­sion Books for The Devil’s Metal. I’m not sure when the takeover will hap­pen, but when it does, The Devil’s Metal will be pub­lished by a rep­utable pub­lish­ing house — and I can offi­cially call myself a pub­lished author! (with­out hav­ing to put the whole “indie” and “self” in front of it).

Seri­ously, I love being an indie and I will ALWAYS be pub­lish­ing some of my work in this for­mat. I like the con­trol and the steady pay­check. I like being my own boss.

But some­times I hate being my own boss (see recent post on edit­ing my books: http://experimentinterror.com/so-you-found-a-typo/). And I hate it when peo­ple say “Oh you’re an author?” “Yes, I’ve writ­ten a few books.” “Self-published?” “Uh, yes.” “Oh…that kind of author. Not a real one.” (YES I’ve had that con­ver­sa­tion a few times).

Now I can say “NO, I’VE GOT A PUBLISHING DEAL WITH DIVERSION BOOKS FROM NYC, BITCH.”

I can’t wait for the next per­son to ask… heh heh

What does this mean for you? I’m not sure. The book will still be avail­able at all the online out­lets, maybe at a higher price of $2.99. The cover will stay the same (yay). The awe­some inside will still stay the same. And there should be a sequel out (The Devil’s Reprise) some­time this year (no idea about the details of that, however).

HOWEVER because Diver­sion Books is an e-book only pub­lisher, paper­backs of the book will soon be pulled. SO if you always wanted a paper­back ver­sion — par­tic­u­larly if you wanted me to sign one at Boston, RT, SFINE — get one NOW! I’ve ordered a bunch in so I’ll have a few to have as spe­cial give­aways but otherwise…do it now! It will be a collector’s item soon.

You can pur­chase paper­backs HERE while sup­plies last!

Mean­while, I’m also look­ing to ink a deal with Diver­sion Books for my upcom­ing book Lost in Wan­der­lust. THIS IS VERY EXCITING. I hope to have more info on that soon

And in other news, I’ve been post­ing Sins & Nee­dles teasers at my other web­site: http://khalle.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/sins-needles-teaser-1/

And yeah. That’s it. Back to my writ­ing cave. I’m get­ting good feed­back on this book, so I’m VERY happy about that. And I’m enjoy­ing writ­ing it. Always a good sign!

Hey y’all! Greet­ings from Dal­las, Texas as I write this (I am on an epic road trip — yes for work — and will be post­ing about that soon). I would love it if you could vote for me in the 2012 GoodReads Awards for Best Hor­ror for ON DEMON WINGS.

Can you imag­ine my sur­prise when I was told today that I was nom­i­nated? I mean, what the fuck­ing fuck? I’m not being weirdly hum­ble or any­thing, but I seri­ously am a wee lit­tle indie author. NO ONE KNOWS WHO I AM. Hell, three of the big six pub­lish­ers turned down my series in the past month due to the lack of romance and “saleabil­ity” (crush­ing my wee lit­tle soul and hopes and dreams) and I’ve had to push back my sixth book in a series that I feel is the red-headed stepchild of the pub­lish­ing industry.

PEOPLE, it’s not been a fun ride in Karina Halle’s writ­ing world, let me tell you that much. Rejec­tion sucks, and it sucks more when you have some fans because you’re like…well, THESE peo­ple like the books, don’t you think the rest of the world will? They like it and they’re awe­some peo­ple, isn’t the world full of like-minded folks? And the answer is…NO. They won’t. Accord­ing to the way the indus­try is and what is sell­ing. Not because I’m being dra­matic. But because I know the nature of the game. The way sales are made.

My books are weird lit­tle beasts that don’t fit into any moth­er­fuck­ing mold. But that’s the way they have to be and I’m stick­ing to my moth­er­fuck­ing guns by let­ting Dex and Perry live out their lives and rela­tion­ships the way I intended. Doesn’t mean I don’t feel insanely shitty when I see every indie book rise up the charts but that’s life and that’s what I get for being so damn…I don’t know…Dex-like

I’m not say­ing all this to com­plain, though it’s been weigh­ing on me for weeks and weeks. But that’s me and my personality…I’m a sen­si­tive, per­fec­tion­ist soul. But I am say­ing this to say OMG I have been nom­i­nated for a  GoodReads Award! Do you know what this MEANS to me? It means a fuck­ing lot. Sorry for swear­ing so much, but this is one of those cases where nor­mal words don’t work. This is INSANE!!!!!!!

I mean, I tear up think­ing about it. Peo­ple, I rarely cry and I’m almost bawl­ing over this!

Accord­ing to Goodreads, “This is a tremen­dous achieve­ment as the Goodreads Choice Awards are the only major book awards cho­sen by read­ers.” AND “Instead of con­sult­ing pub­lish­ing experts or a judg­ing panel, we look to read­ers to find the best books of the year. We ana­lyze sta­tis­tics from the 170 mil­lion books added, rated, and reviewed on the site in 2012 and nom­i­nate based on a book’s num­ber of rat­ings and aver­age rat­ing. So a nom­i­na­tion is truly an honor because it comes straight from the readers!”

HOLY HELL! So, man, I am so fuck­ing hum­bled this hap­pened. I am so fuck­ing happy and I truly, TRULY feel hon­ored. Thank you, thank you, and THANK YOU. You have no idea how much I needed this news, to make me feel like I should con­tinue writ­ing and that some peo­ple really, truly do care.

SO, what can you do to make this event even brighter? Well vote HERE: http://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-horror-books-2012

If I make it to the semi-finals, I will write a scene that is fan-chosen. That’s right. Fans will chose what Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror scene I write.…this could be any­thing, includ­ing Dex and Perry goes to Tar­get or a cer­tain ON DEMON WINGS scene from Dex’s POV (you all know what I mean, I heard your cries of protest) or what­ever! So, if you’re an EIT fan or you just like me as a per­son and think my books suck ass, help me out with a vote. I would LOVE On Demon Wings to win Best Hor­ror 2012

Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror. Have you seen the 60’s film with the won­der­ful Glenn Ford? Have you heard Henry Mancini’s snazzy sound­track which was later cov­ered by one of my favorite bands of all time, Fantomas?

Well, at least here you get a snip­pet of it. This is the cred­its of the film with Fan­tomas play­ing the track on top. Fan­tomas is made up of a bunch of my most favorite people…Mike Pat­ton, Dave Lom­bardo, Buzz Osborne and Trevor Dunn. Each of those musi­cians are geniuses in their own right. And Dave, who has read Dark­house and Red Fox by the way (he says it was fucked up — I’ll take that as a com­pli­ment from Mr. Slayer), thought it was pretty cool that the series was named after a Fan­tomas song…that cov­ered a Blake Edwards song. Lol.

I do have a habit of nam­ing books after songs. I named Red Fox after a Tom­a­hawk song (about skin­walk­ers), and that in itself is funny because when I gave Dave the book he imme­di­ately started singing Tom­a­hawk. Exactly what I was going for.

Later on too, I ended up inter­view­ing John Stanier, who drums for Tom­a­hawk (and the fero­cious Bat­tles, and ex-Helmet) who also thought it was pretty cool that I named a book after one of his songs.

I got him to sign my copy of Red Fox and he got me to sign his

Any­way, music is pretty impor­tant to me obvi­ously (I’m a jour­nal­ist and fan girl all rolled into one)…and it’s some­thing that will be dis­cussed more in an upcom­ing interview/post with blog­ger Emmy Reads. Oh and The Devil’s Metal. That books is like…totally up my alley. And yours too, I hope.

So, where was I?

Oh yes, the cover for The Dex-Files! VOILA!!

And I’m proud to say it was all done by moi (click for larger image)

You can also add the book (com­ing out August 13th) to your Good Reads TBR pile HERE.

Oh and what else…hmmm. Oh…how about the pro­logue for THE DEX-FILES????!

Pro­logue

I was six years old when I got my first taste of hell.

I woke up to a hor­ri­ble howl­ing noise, like a dog caught in the throes of deep emo­tional pain, agony that went beyond the phys­i­cal. It was chill­ing. Ter­ri­fy­ing. Like, make your balls shrivel up into pricks of ice sort of ter­ror. It quickly plucked away what­ever igno­rance my sleep had thrust on me and slapped me in my young face. This wasn’t a dream. This was as real as all hell. There was a mon­ster in my house, the kind that preyed on lit­tle boys, but it wasn’t under my bed or in my closet. It was next door. Or, as it seemed to be, the floor below, scratch­ing and howl­ing its way from the kitchen.

It was my mother. And from the sounds of glass break­ing and fur­ni­ture scuf­fling, my dad had found her. The howl­ing inter­mixed with his boom­ing voice, his threats, his pathetic cries that betrayed the col­lected man he was always try­ing to be. It sounded ugly. It always sounded ugly but tonight I was espe­cially scared. When a vicious cry was fol­lowed by the sound of some­one being shoved into a wall, I’m not ashamed to say I promptly wet myself. Piss­ing your pants seemed the only thing to do when the mon­ster was loose and I made a silent, naïve prayer to the man upstairs, pray­ing that it was my mother who was thrown against the wall. I’m cal­lous, maybe. I’ve been called worse. But if it were my father, and he was out cold, she’d come look­ing for me next.

I thought about pulling the cov­ers over my head and hid­ing from it all like a cow­ard, but that never worked. I would pre­tend all I could that my blan­ket was my invis­i­ble cloak and it would shel­ter me from every­thing bad in the world but I learned at a very young age that there was no such thing as shel­ter. Maybe I would have been safer if I didn’t care. Maybe indif­fer­ence could have been my pro­tec­tor. But I still loved — and feared — my par­ents. That love is what scared me. It gave them the upper hand. They sure as fuck didn’t love me.

I heard a shuf­fling from out­side my door, slow and light. It was only Michael, though it rat­tled my wee body to think things were bad enough that he got out of bed. Michael was just three years older but he might have well been another decade. He was the golden boy, the child of light. I was the runt, the child of dark. I feared. Michael didn’t.

I quickly jumped out of bed and scur­ried across to the door, pur­posely miss­ing the part of the floor that I knew squeaked. I turned the knob silently and saw Michael’s shadow just down the hall, head­ing toward the stairs. Half of him was lit up by a dying night light.

He stopped as soon as he heard me and though I could barely see it, I could feel the look. It said go back to bed, you’ll get us in trou­ble. Only I could get us in trou­ble just by being awake. I still don’t know why my mother had it in for me. Some­times I think she saw a lot of her­self in me, even at such an age. That’s a fuck­ing ter­ri­fy­ing thought. I’d be lying if that, and other things, didn’t keep me up at night.

That look though from Michael, that was the most I’d ever seen him scared. It felt good, self­ishly good, to know he wasn’t inhu­man, that he feared things too. Maybe not the way I did, but hell if I hadn’t been won­der­ing if my brother was born with­out a soul. Now I knew he was just older and bet­ter at hid­ing it than me.

I opened my mouth to say some­thing but he placed his fin­ger to his lips. We lis­tened. The wail­ing had stopped. There was no more noise.

The fresh piss felt cold against my legs and I was sud­denly, acutely embar­rassed of what I had done. It’s damn funny how Michael had that effect on me.

Even fun­nier was how I remem­ber reach­ing out for his hand, look­ing for some sort of pathetic com­fort in my blood rel­a­tive, my Mikey. He jumped as if my very touch star­tled him or scathed his skin. Yet he let me hold his hand, even though it was tiny and clammy and I grasped him hard, until bone rubbed against bone. I never felt as grate­ful to my brother as I did at that moment, for not let­ting go. Yeah the ass­wipe would let go later. Fuck, he’d order up my own exe­cu­tion if he could (don’t think he wouldn’t try). But at that moment, I wasn’t alone.

We made our way down the stairs, hold­ing hands. You’d think it would be less scary with­out the yelling and the damn woman howls, but the silence was hazed with sus­pense and unheard threats, and for­get the smell of urine ema­nat­ing from me, I was this close to shit­ting myself.

When we reached the floor we heard a very slight tin­kling of glass. We both froze and Michael’s grip on mine inten­si­fied. Just for a sec­ond. But it was enough.

The sound was fol­lowed by a groan. Then a flop­ping sound of body and skin against shiny tiled floors. This wasn’t good. This was very, very bad.

I wanted to turn and run. I think I may have tried. But Michael held me there and we both watched as a dark fig­ure came crawl­ing out of the door to the kitchen. She moved on the floor like a drunk snake. That’s what she was, after all. A fuck­ing drunk snake out to eat us alive.

She didn’t get far. Her arms were out­stretched and reach­ing for us but she got two feet before she gave up and passed out. She smelt like wine and evil. Like sweat and sad­ness. Of all the feel­ings that hit me at that moment, I felt…bad. Look­ing back, I pitied her.

Michael and I stood there, star­ing dumbly at our uncon­scious mother. Michael’s eyes were hard in the dark­ness, tiny pin­pricks in the black. I won­der, did he feel hate toward her? Did he still love her? Did he feel loved? Or was he con­fused as I was, for­ever mix­ing up love and hate and fear and females. I’ll never know. I don’t think I even care.

The spell of shock wore off when we heard another sound from the kitchen. My father was stir­ring. My first instinct was to run and hide. I feared him in a dif­fer­ent way. That I’d get a spank­ing for wet­ting my pjs. That I’d be told I was noth­ing but a fuck up (not so much in those words, I was six after all, but I got the gist. I’m no dummy). But he didn’t notice in the dark­ness. He appeared in the door­way, stand­ing over my mother, with an expres­sion of hope­less­ness and utter dis­dain on his face. This is what I get, it said.

Instead he said, “You boys are get­ting a nanny. We can’t live like this.”

Same dif­fer­ence, I suppose.

My name is Dex Foray and I’m a hyp­ocrite. Proud of it, too. I call my mother a mon­ster but I’m the one who took her last name. Maybe because unlike my dad, she never left me. There’s some­thing to be said for stick­ing around…even if it kills you.

I’m a hyp­ocrite because I can’t stand weak­ness in oth­ers, even though I’m born of weak­ness myself. I dish it out and then laugh when they try and dish it back. Like I’m above it. And some­times I think I am.

I’m a hyp­ocrite because I hunt ghosts and I’ve pre­tended all this time that the ghosts haven’t been hunt­ing me.

And I’m a hyp­ocrite because I judge peo­ple. I judge the fuck out of every­one I meet, from their music tastes, to their jobs to their lifestyle choices. I judge them but fuck them if they dare judge me. They think they under­stand this mon­ster in me, the mon­ster in all of us. But they don’t.

They don’t know where I’ve come from.

They don’t know my side of the story.

But now you do.

 

And now I’ll leave you with some Dave Lombardo…Enjoy!

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.

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!)

Behold…outtakes from the Dead Sky Morn­ing trailer.

Of course these prob­a­bly won’t make any sense until AFTER you read the book, but you know… I still get a chuckle out of it

Watch out for tomor­row for lots of behind the scenes footage, plus links to where you can buy the book. Yay, so exciting!

I’ve been on tele­vi­sion before (Inside Edi­tion, a long story) so you’d think that a radio inter­view would have been a piece of cake for me.

Er, no. I mean, it went very well. Sheena was a fan­tas­tic host and had all the right ques­tions to ask me. But I was an exhausted pile of nerves by the time it was all over. It was a LIVE interview…45 min­utes long! That’s INSANE. But I got through it, so any­thing else will be golden after this. And I’d love to be on the show again, Sheena and I have way too much in com­mon and I can’t pass up any chance to blab­ber on about my nov­els

You can lis­ten to the inter­view in mp3 for­mat by click­ing HERE — just make sure to down­load the Mon­day, July 18th show. I go on at 6:05PM and I talk about a whole range of stuff from Sasquatch (yeah, what?), to why I’m a “Baby Hitch­cock” (best com­pli­ment EVER!), and how I might be going crazy with Perry and Dex liv­ing in my head. Any­way, you may learn some­thing, so listen…if you dare.

All right, some more fun stuff from my Book Lovin’ Bitches Blog Tour (say that three times fast):

- Read some short but sweet reviews at Keep­ing up with the Rhein­lan­ders and Must Read Faster

- Check out my Guest Blog Post at A Chick Who Reads, “Why Book Blog­gers Are Awe­some” (pretty self-explanatory…cuz they are