(sung to the tune of Ball­room Blitz)

I’m embark­ing on a bit of a media blitz over the next cou­ple of weeks. In fact, I’m GOING ON TOUR! I’ve waited so long to finally be able to say that. The clos­est I’ve come to going on tour before is fol­low­ing Faith No More around and that really doesn’t count.

But before you get all excited, I should clar­ify that it’s a book tour. A book blog tour. It’s vir­tual. So while I may show up in San Fran­cisco, Seat­tle, Port­land or LA to do some book events over the next year, this upcom­ing tour is strictly…in your liv­ing room.

Start­ing this Sun­day, July 18th, I’ll be hit­ting up two book review blogs with some crafty guest posts. Then over the next two weeks I’ll be pop­ping up here and there with more guest posts, some Dark­house reviews (not by me, obvi­ously), and the occa­sional giveaway.

Here’s my agenda. I hope you join me!

7/17  guest post @ Reader Girls
7/17  guest post @ My Neu­rotic Book Affair
7/18  guest post @ It’s All About Books
7/19  review @ Just Another Book Addict
7/19  review @ Keep­ing Up With the Rhein­lan­ders
7/19  guest post @ Deena Remiel’s Place
7/20  guest post @ Just Another Book Addict
7/20  review @ Must Read Faster
7/20  review @ A Chick Who Reads
7/21  review @ Fame­less Ram­blings
7/23  guest post & give­away @ Get­ting Naughty Between the Stacks
7/23  guest post @ A Chick Who Reads
7/23  guest post & give­away @ Romanc­ing the Dark­side
7/25  guest post @ Aobib­lios­phere
7/26  guest post @ In The Name of Books
ANY   review @ The Phan­tom Para­grapher
7/28  give­away @ EARpho­ria
7/29  review @ In The Name of Books

Oh but that’s not all. On Mon­day, July 19th I’m going to be… ON THE RADIO!

How frig­gin’ excit­ing is this? OK, so I’m going to be on LA Talk Radio on Sheena Metal’s show THE SHEENA METAL EXPERIENCE. This chick is my soul­mate, musi­cally and super­nat­u­rally. I couldn’t think of a bet­ter match. Plus she used to host her own show on HOWARD STERN STATION. How awe­some. She’s had RUE MCLANAHAN ON HER SHOW (RIP Golden Girl).

Wanna here me talk/blabber about Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror and pos­si­bly my adven­tures with rock bands?

I go on at 6PM (don’t be late)

Stream it here: http://www.latalkradio.com/Sheena.php

I enjoy music writ­ing. I really do. But I am an epic pro­cras­ti­na­tor, which means I’ll put writ­ing my music work (reviews, arti­cles, etc) off until the last minute. Then I tackle them all at once (or over two days) and get it done. The prob­lem with this is the days lead­ing up to the writ­ing, the “I should really be doing this” is at the back of my head and dis­tract­ing me. Then comes the time to actu­ally write and I am left exhausted. Exhausted in the writ­ing sense. Because I have MORE writ­ing to do later…ie, my book. And I just can’t sum­mon up the men­tal energy to do it.

I’m really rather grate­ful that I don’t have a full-time writ­ing day job because I don’t think I could han­dle that. I’d be too burnt-out to write my own stuff by the time I got home. I know a lot of writ­ers who can deal with that sit­u­a­tion quite well and I say, hats off to them. Really. Take my hat.

The other prob­lem is that the inter­net is just too freak­ing dis­tract­ing. If I’m not approach­ing book review­ers or check­ing up on GoodReads or watch­ing sales on Ama­zon, I’m tweet­ing about an episode of Com­mu­nity (fort town ftw) or I’m blath­er­ing on Face­book or I’m beg­ging peo­ple to invite me to Google + (yeah, like I need ANOTHER dis­trac­tion) and what have you. In short, I wish I wrote on a type­writer, that dis­trac­tions were not just a click away.

So, I’m hav­ing an inter­net free week­end. At 5PM PST, I’m banned from going on a browser. Any browser. In fact, I’m dis­abling my wire­less so I won’t be tempted. So, no emails will be checked, no more posts will be made (and they all rejoiced mer­rily), no inane tweets will be tweeted. At least until Mon­day morning.

My hope is sim­ply this: TO GET SHIT DONE. I’m still about 30% in Book #4, Lying Sea­son, because I had to go back and change some things. I am still chang­ing these things. Perry was bug­ging me in lit­tle spots and I pin­pointed it to the fact that she needed to be more assertive and emo­tion­ally tougher. There were some scenes that, though they felt nat­ural, it just wasn’t right…and some aspects were mov­ing way too fast. No need to lay all the cards out up front…I’ve got 70% of the book for that.

I’ve also got, oh let’s say, 12 guest blog posts to write. Yup. Like I said, need to get shit done.

See you all on Mon­day, have a great weekend!

I’m so excited to finally get to show you the Love, in Span­ish cover. Oh Mateo! I want to thank all of the blogs and fans who par­tic­i­pated in the cover reveal event hosted by InkSlinger PR! Also, thanks to Naj Qam­ber Designs for the cover design, as well as Scott Hoover for the photo.

If you haven’t seen this cover, check it out below! You can also get a glimpse into the book by read­ing the included excerpt at the bot­tom of this post as well.

RELEASE DATE: NOVEMBER 11, 2014

 

BLURB:

ADD TO GOODREADS

EXCERPT

It all started with Love, in English

BUY LINKS:

AMAZON

B&N

iTunes

 

To cel­e­brate THE END of the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror series AND the release of Dust to Dust on August 11th, I’ve put together a FB group for an EPIC reada­long. Tomor­row we dis­cuss Dark­house, Red Fox and Dead Sky Morn­ing then we devote two days per Lying Sea­son, On Demon Wings, etc (check group for sched). I will be chat­ting with you at times dur­ing the day about the books in dis­cus­sion and there are con­tests, spe­cial posts, etc as well. DO NOTE: it is a pri­vate group to pre­vent spoil­ers from reach­ing the out­side world. It could take a few hours for you to be added and also, please, once in, do not add peo­ple who HAVE NOT read the series. This is just for peo­ple are cur­rently read­ing EIT or have already read it. Now…who is excited?!

Want to join the Face­book group?

Do so –>HERE<–

Hey folks! There’s a bit of a hic­cup with the release date of Dust to Dust, the final book in the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror series. It’s being pushed back two weeks, from July 29 to August 11th. Why? Well as you know I’ve been trav­el­ing for the last three weeks for book sign­ings in Orlando and Europe and due to jet­lag and my busy sched­ule I was not able to write as much as planned. As such, I’m a bit behind and have no desire to rush through this book (plus I caught some author bug that side­lined me for my first few days back). Also, the new release date ben­e­fits my UK pub­lish­ers, Lit­tle Brown, and allows for less scram­bling on their end too. No wor­ries tho — I’m cur­rently writ­ing the book and it’s on it’s way, I’d just rather have some extra time with it since it is the LAST EIT book after all.

The extra time will let you read Ashes to Ashes again, some­thing I rec­om­mend before read­ing Dust to Dust. In fact, read­ing Come Alive again will help too and for any rea­son if you have not read the novel­las The Dex-Files and Old Blood, please do so as both books con­tain impor­tant infor­ma­tion about the series which will be revealed in Dust to Dust.

Thanks for under­stand­ing! I hope to get some teasers and chap­ters to share with you soon

Fab­u­lous news!  Take a look at that teaser and tell me what has changed?

The new release date for Love, in Eng­lish is April 20th — two days early!

But that’s Easter Sun­day, you all say. I won’t be home or near a com­puter, you all say.

No wor­ries — YOU CAN PRE-ORDER!

On Ama­zon –> CLICK HERE

On Barnes & Noble —-> CLICK HERE

On iTunes —-> CLICK HERE

And on KOBO…er, com­ing soon!

And paper­back pre-order on Ama­zon! Also com­ing soon

Still unsure about the book or want more infor­ma­tion? Well, I did a Q&A about it includ­ing answer­ing that “GOLDEN QUESTION” — you can read it here.

Love, in English

This is not sus­pense or hor­ror or a series. It is 100% stand­alone, pure NA con­tem­po­rary romance! Pub date: April 22, 2014

Syn­op­sis:

He’s thirty-eight. I’m twenty-three.

He speaks Span­ish. I speak English.

He lives in Spain. I live in Canada.

He dresses in thousand-dollar suits. I’m cov­ered in tattoos.

He’s mar­ried and has a five-year old daughter.

I’m sin­gle and can’t com­mit to any­one or anything.

Until now.Because when they say you can’t choose who you fall in love with, boy ain’t that the f*#king truth.

***

To a rest­less dreamer like Vera Miles, it sounded like the expe­ri­ence of a life­time. Instead of spend­ing her sum­mer intern­ing for her astron­omy major, she would fly to Spain where she’d spend a few weeks teach­ing con­ver­sa­tional Eng­lish to busi­ness­men and women, all while enjoy­ing free room and board at an iso­lated resort. But while Vera expected to get a tan, meet new peo­ple and stuff her­self with wine and paella, she never expected to fall in love.

Mateo is unlike any­one Vera has ever known, let alone any­one she’s usu­ally attracted to. While Vera is a pierced and tat­ted free spirit with a love for music and free­dom, Mateo Casales is a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man from Madrid, all sharp suits and cocky Latino charm. Yet, as the weeks go on, the two grow increas­ingly close and their rela­tion­ship changes from purely pla­tonic to something…more.

Some­thing that makes Vera feel alive for the first time.

Some­thing that can never, ever be.

Or so she thinks.

 

*unedited* EXCERPT!

The silence crack­led above our heads like a live wire. I could feel Jorge’s eyes on us as he reluc­tantly placed Mateo’s drink on the table and walked away. Part of me wished for him to come back, to break up the ten­sion and the star­tling inten­sity in Mateo’s eyes. The other part was self­ishly glad Jorge was leav­ing us in peace. When he dis­ap­peared back into the restau­rant, Mateo and I were the only ones on the patio.

I broke away from his eyes, focus­ing instead on his bot­tle of Aguila and the con­den­sa­tion that ran down the sides, look­ing bliss­fully cool in the sticky night air. Through all the weeks of jok­ing, talk­ing, the inno­cent phys­i­cal con­tact, now I was astutely ner­vous about being alone with him. It wasn’t so much that I was afraid of him – I was afraid of me. Ever since that remark at din­ner, I’d been afraid of what I’d do to him, how I’d break that moral code I promised for myself.

He’s mar­ried, he’s mar­ried, he’s mar­ried, I told myself, watch­ing a drop of water race from the beer to the table. His wife is beau­ti­ful and lovely, his daugh­ter is sweet and you aren’t either of those things.

But I could only tell myself that so many times.

“Vera,” he said thickly. “Vera, look at me.” His voice was com­mand­ing, reach­ing a depth I hadn’t heard before.

My eyes slowly slid over to him. I tried to speak but could only suck in my lip, prob­a­bly tak­ing all my lip­stick off.

“Show me the stars again,” he said. His eyes speared me like noth­ing else, his face becom­ing dan­ger­ously handsome.

I looked up to the clear sky, to see the stars, but he reached out and grabbed my hand. His touch was hot, like his fin­gers were sear­ing into my skin, that feel­ing of enter­ing a hot tub on a cold night. I couldn’t help the shiver that ran gen­tly down my spine.

“Not those stars,” he said huskily, lean­ing for­ward. His lips were wet and slightly open. “Your stars. Why I call you Estrella.”

I swal­lowed hard, my pulse burn­ing along. I turned around in my chair so my back was to him and lifted up my hair, gath­er­ing it on the top of my head.

His chair scraped loudly on the ground as he got up, a sound that struck a new kind of fear in me.

No. Not fear.

Antic­i­pa­tion.

I heard him stop right behind me. I held my breath, won­der­ing what he was going to do.

One rough fin­ger pressed down against the back of my neck, right on the spine where the tat­too began. I closed my eyes to the feel­ing, the cur­rents it caused, trav­el­ing all the way down, mak­ing me wet. Jesus, I needed to get a hold of myself.

“What star is this?” he asked, sound­ing like silk. I could wrap myself in his voice.

“Alpharatz,” I whis­pered, as if I was let­ting him in on a secret. Maybe I was.

His fin­ger slid diag­o­nally down, a trail of fire across the Pega­sus line. “And this one?”

“Markab.”

“Why Pega­sus?”

I paused, the truth on my lips. Fuck it. We’d been noth­ing but hon­est with each other. “Because I want to fly free. And there’s no place higher than the stars.”

He didn’t say any­thing for a few beats. I was tempted to turn around, to look at him, but I didn’t want him to take his fin­ger off my neck. I was leav­ing in three days. He was going back to his fam­ily. This was all I had, his skin on my stars.

He leaned in, his hot breath at my neck. “Are you afraid that love will clip your wings?”

His words sank into me, mak­ing my blood buzz. Love. This was too haz­ardous a sub­ject to dis­cuss with him, not now. Not ever. With my breath shak­ing, I inched my neck away from his mouth and turned to face him.

“No,” I said, look­ing him straight in the eye. “I’m afraid that los­ing love will.”

His expres­sion soft­ened. He looked at my lips, his beau­ti­fully long eye­lashes cast­ing shad­ows on his tawny skin.

“Then that makes two of us,” he whis­pered softly and for a long sec­ond I thought he was going to get it over with and finally kiss me, put an end to this strain between us, the yearn­ing that made me ache inside. But he straight­ened up, his gaze avoid­ing mine, and went to retrieve his beer from the table.

 

This year I decided to do some­thing dif­fer­ent. I know how tight money can be for every­one after the hol­i­day sea­son and I know I needed a bit of a kick in the ass to start writ­ing after tak­ing a month off. I also know a lot of you were curi­ous about my writ­ing process. So I came up with some­thing very “ballsy” but free­ing as well for me and some­thing that I hope you’ll all enjoy.

I’m writ­ing a novella/short story (around 20K words) on Wattpad. It’s free for any­one to read. Every time I press “save” it actu­ally pub­lishes the story. I’m just writ­ing and pub­lish­ing as I go. No edi­tors. No rough draft. This IS my rough draft. You are see­ing all my mis­takes LIVE (haha, oh how excit­ing). And, to shake things up even more, I’m not even writ­ing as I nor­mally do. For every sin­gle book I write out and plot in detail — a skele­ton keeps me in line and gives me a place to shoot for.

But while I have a rough idea in my head about this story and how I want it to go, I haven’t offi­cially plot­ted it out. This is the clos­est to just writ­ing by the seat of my pants as I’ll get.

Which is free­ing as well…also, ter­ri­fy­ing. I miss my chap­ter by chap­ter break­downs and my out­lines but because this is such a short story, I’m hop­ing I can get by.

But hey — so far peo­ple seem to be enjoy­ing it. If you want to join in on the event and watch as I write (I have the first two chap­ters down), visit: http://www.wattpad.com/34268226-dark-paradise

The story is called Dark Par­adise. In it’s edited, sculpted final form it will be in Kin­dle as part of Made­line Sheehan’s up com­ing anthol­ogy to profit women and children’s ser­vices (so when you do get a chance to buy it, it’s going to a great cause).

Hope you’ll all join me on this jour­ney! I’m about 25% through so it’s a great time to fol­low me to this Dark Paradise.

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.