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.

Red Fox, the sec­ond book in the EIT series, has always been a tricky book for me to make a fit­ting cover for. The first cover was orig­i­nal art­work, and though the artist fol­lowed my direction…yeah, it wasn’t very com­pelling. Fine for lit­er­a­ture I think, but not for a para­nor­mal new adult book.

So, months later, I had a new cover made. This one I put my friend Talar on the cover because she played Perry in the trail­ers and, let’s face it, she’s beau­ti­ful. I had my artist back then put an image of her as Perry with some scenery I shot in Palm Springs. I was okay with the cover…it wasn’t the best but it had to do.

And life went on.

Then I decided to put Dark­house in a matte fin­ish through Createspace’s new options and while I was doing that I thought, you know what, I should try to do Red Fox’s cover ONE more time. And so I asked my cover artist extra­or­di­naire, Naj Qam­ber, to take an image I pro­vided her and whip some­thing up.

And here it is…the new cover for Red Fox. I love the eerieness of that bull skull com­bined with the native feather’s hang­ing. It’s very sim­ple and stark but it suits the book. Plus the col­ors are to die for.

I can’t wait to get these new cov­ers on Ama­zon soon and get the paper­backs in a nice matte fin­ish. And if you’re com­ing to Rich­mond, Vir­ginia for the author sign­ing on Dec 14th, I’ll have some there avail­able to sign (along with matte fin­ish copies of Dark­house, The Devil’s Metal, The Devil’s Reprise and Ashes to Ashes).

I love Dex and Perry but my favorite duo rarely go on sale. But, for the first time ever, every sin­gle EIT book is just 99 cents dur­ing the month of Novem­ber. You MIGHT want to tell your friends…

(cur­rently 99 cents on Ama­zon but Kobo, iTunes and Nook should update the sales price within a week)

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?

The anthol­ogy Sto­ries for Amanda is out now on Smash­words, Ama­zon and all other retail­ers — you can read Defy­ing the Dust, fea­tur­ing Cam­den McQueen and Ellie Watt. Cam­den and Ellie went through nearly the exact kind of bul­ly­ing I went through as a teen (every story comes from some­where), which is why their story and this cause is so impor­tant to me.

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.

100% of the pro­ceeds from sale of this anthol­ogy will be donated toward that vision. 16 of the most pop­u­lar and best­selling authors in Con­tem­po­rary Romance, Erotic Romance and Young Adult have come together in sup­port of the fight against bul­ly­ing. Each has con­tributed a new short sto­ries or miss­ing scene from their most pop­u­lar series for this very wor­thy cause.

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.

 

Com­ing Octo­ber 29th, the sexy and scary rock and roll saga comes to an end with The Devil’s Reprise. This is the long-awaited sequel to The Devil’s Metal.

Read on for the pro­logue and an excerpt of chap­ter one. WARNING– READERS 18 AND OLDER. Rated R for lan­guage, drug use, group sex, etc.

 

The Devil’s Reprise

Pro­logue

There comes a time in every man’s life where he must face his demons.

It sounds cliché, I know.

But I break the mold.

Because I’ve faced my demons.

In the flesh.

And I’ve won.

But it’s the ones inside your head that don’t die.

They keep living.

My per­sonal demons? They’ve got­ten worse since the incident.

They’ve grown now.

They own me.

When I was fif­teen years old, I made a deal with the Devil—or at least one of his spokeswomen—on the muddy red banks of Lake Shasta, Cal­i­for­nia. I wanted tal­ent, fame, and for­tune. The dev­ils upheld their end of the bar­gain. They gave me every­thing I ever wanted. I joined a band called Hybrid, made my way to gui­tarist, and pro­pelled the band into star­dom. We gave Led Zep­pelin a run for their money. We got pussy galore (no, not Honor Black­man). We had everything.

Includ­ing the final thing. My final wish. That Hybrid go down in history.

We did. There was a music jour­nal­ist brought on by Creem mag­a­zine to cover the whole event. Our last tour (unbe­knownst to any­one but me and our man­ager, Jacob). Her name was Dawn. She was young, beau­ti­ful, and our biggest fan.

Dawn saw it all. She recorded it all.

And, some­how, she saved me.

First it giveth then it taketh away. The band broke up. The unthink­able hap­pened. Peo­ple died.

I should have died.

This was all sup­posed to end before I turned twenty-eight.

Yet I lived. Dawn lived.

And I was given another chance at life. To live free of the Devil’s shadow. To live my life, the way it should be.

I should really be the luck­i­est S.O.B. on the planet. The fates that took away Mor­ri­son and Joplin and Hendrix—that wasn’t my fate after all.

Some­how, I won.

But vic­tory is as bit­ter as the quaaludes on my tongue. How can I really live with myself when my whole life had been loaned? I lost the peo­ple clos­est to me. They died, they suf­fered, for my selfishness.

How dare I be allowed to go on, to run free, when I brought this upon them and myself?

And so I haven’t.

I’m not free.

My name is Sage Knightly. One of the few sur­viv­ing mem­bers of the metal band, Hybrid. I’m about to embark on my first solo tour, to be the rock star I was always sup­posed to be.

But some­thing tells me I’m not com­ing out of this alive.

And nei­ther is she.

 

 

 

Chap­ter One

Sage – April, 1975

 

The pink lips at the end of my dick were some of the nicest I’d ever seen.

But the chick’s tits were better.

I put my palm against her fore­head and pushed her head back until my dick bobbed out of her wet mouth.

“Lie down,” I told her. “On your back. Grab your tits and get ready for me.”

I was being com­mand­ing and a bit of an ass.

It wasn’t like me.

But noth­ing was like me lately.

And I didn’t really care.

The chick did as I asked. She was a pretty young thing, a few years above jail­bait, with long brown hair she prob­a­bly ironed every day. I didn’t remem­ber her name, and I didn’t bother ask­ing, so I just called her ‘Babe.’

I called the other one ‘Sugar.’ Sugar had Far­rah Faw­cett hair, blonde and teased and frosted like a cake. Sugar was in the same Detroit hotel room as us and cur­rently on the other bed, rid­ing my bassist, Tricky. And by rid­ing, I mean fuck­ing him sense­less, reverse cow­girl style. The chick needed a hat in her hand to make it that much more authen­tic. Tricky was even more fucked up than me, from our nightly cock­tail of vodka, beer, and cocaine. Some­times we’d throw quaaludes in there. Tonight, though, we wanted to make sure our dicks were working.

Two chicks at once: every man’s dream and every rock star’s pre­rog­a­tive. Sugar and Babe were good friends, or so it seemed, prob­a­bly brought up in a hip­pie com­mune and believed in the free love that was still trick­ling in from the 60s. They weren’t shy being naked, and they didn’t hes­i­tate when they made out with each other, not even when Tricky told Sugar to get her fin­gers up in Babe’s bush. Nat­u­rally, they were fans of Hybrid, before I basi­cally killed the band. Killed Micky Brown, Bob our bus dri­ver, and Gra­ham Freed, too. But Gra­ham didn’t count. He was the only thing that didn’t count. Every­thing else made me bleed.

The singer, Rob­bie, my best friend, wouldn’t speak to me. Noelle, our bassist, was still men­tally ill from what happened.

I didn’t need to be reminded of that. Every time Sugar or Babe would open their mouths and wax on about how much they loved Hybrid, it was a knife to my fuck­ing heart. It never stopped hurt­ing. So the next best thing was to fuck the shit out of the girls—no more talk­ing. Just suck my dick, get each other off, get me off. Give me peace. Make me forget.

I was get­ting there. I was get­ting there.

She pushed her mas­sive tits together, and I squeezed my dick between them, my eyes rolling back in my head from the fric­tion. Jesus. That’s what I was talk­ing about. What I wanted. Just vibes buzzing along, nerves on fire, space travel inside your head.

I was fucked up and fuck­ing. I was going and coming.

I drove myself between her, not both­er­ing to look at her face, at the sounds com­ing from her lips, which sounded a bit too the­atri­cal. How this was fun for her, I didn’t know, but maybe it was always her fan­tasy to have Sage Knightly’s king-sized cock between her tits. It was finally com­ing true. A story to tell her friends.

The fan­tasy is never as good as the real­ity, not for me any­way. Not that I fan­ta­sized about any­thing other than coast­ing along and feel­ing noth­ing. Even my music was slip­ping away at a time that I needed it the most. Sex and drugs and booze and sleep. This was my new life. The rock and roll played some­where in the back­ground, a reminder of where I came from. But I didn’t even know if it was where I was headed.

When I felt my balls tighten, I pulled away and looked over my shoul­der at Tricky and Sugar. She was com­ing so loudly that I was cer­tain some­one was going to com­plain. What­ever, man. I could have been Jimmy Page in here with a chick and a Great Dane; would that have been better?

“Hey, Tricky,” I called out to him. “I need her.”

Tricky grunted, his grip tight­en­ing on her small waist, his face fur­row­ing as he approached cli­max. I guess I was being rude, bug­ging him right then, but damn if I didn’t care. I just needed to get off, and I needed her to do it.

A world of want.

My lips curled at that thought, the title of my song that became a hit and let the world know that I still had “it,” even as a solo artist.

I had wanted so much.

It was given to me.

Then taken away.

Now I just wanted to come all over who­ever this chick was.

Rocket ships into the ether. Shoot myself into the abyss.

Tricky got off, and I watched with mild inter­est and sud­den impa­tience. Tricky didn’t know where he was or what he was doing, I could tell. I wanted that.

“Hey, Sugar,” I said to the girl as she slowly eased her­self off his dick. I’d seen Tricky naked in all sorts of posi­tions these days, and I was always too high to even be both­ered by it. Maybe this is what it would be like at a hip­pie whore­house. Dicks and balls and pussy every­where, served with a side of speed and whiskey.

Groovy love, man, taken to the next dimension.

Sugar stum­bled over, nearly falling into my back. She was fucked up, too. One big party. Escapism: the new religion.

“Get on the bed and get that ass in the air,” I ges­tured, absently stroking myself at the same time. I’d already done her in the back door ear­lier, when Tricky and I tag-teamed her. He in the front, me in the rear. She wasn’t as pretty as Babe, but she was built smaller and her tight ass was a fist.

She gave me an appre­hen­sive smile, like she wasn’t too sure about this. I gave her an expec­tant look in return, try­ing to be seri­ous and threat­en­ing, but a lazy smile crept up on my lips. I failed. Drugs won.

“Come on,” I said, “you want to be the one to get me off, don’t you?”

I don’t know why she was hes­i­tat­ing, maybe because she was small and I was large and per­haps once was enough for her. But she just nod­ded while I put one hand on her firm ass and waved at Tricky.

“Tricky,” I said, slur­ring slightly. “Pow­der her nose.”

Tricky stag­gered over to the desk, naked as a jay­bird, and then brought over the mir­ror, the rolled fifty, and the line that was still left. He gave me a look as he came over, like, “you sure you don’t want this?”

I did. But relief was so close. Bet­ter to give it to the girl, make her have fun in the last five minutes.

He put the mir­ror on the bed below her, and she dipped down to snort it up. He walked over to the mini fridge and brought out the half-drunk bot­tle of cham­pagne and flopped down on the couch, con­tent to watch. If he wanted to stare at my ass, he could go right ahead.

I waited a few sec­onds, teas­ing her crack with my tip, before she shook her head and seemed to loosen.

“What should I do?” Babe asked qui­etly, look­ing rejected since I gave up on her titty-fucking so soon.

“Lie back down, Babe,” I told her. “Spread those legs. Sugar here will take care of both of us.”

Babe’s eyes widened as she lay back down. I pushed into Sugar, slowly, as gen­tly as I could. The tight­ness squeezed me. It took hold of my dick, my balls, all the way into the pit of my stom­ach. It made me dizzy, vibrant, real.

So close.

I kept push­ing into her, in and out, her body tense from my move­ment while she tried to go down on her friend. Tricky watched it all. Girl on girl. Cham­pagne and blow. Rock star life.

Life.

What a waste.

I pumped into her harder until the pres­sure was too much and I was ready to blow.

I pulled out of her and came in hot, sticky spurts onto her back. I was pretty sure she was moan­ing from relief while I moaned just to moan. To get it all out. Every­thing that was buried inside me.

When my mind rolled back down to planet earth, I looked at the mess I made on her. I tried to hold on to the frag­ment of feel­ings as they passed through me.

That feel­ing of happiness.

Of safety.

Of love.

I thought of Dawn, the last per­son who tried to give me any of that.

I thought she’d been a fool for try­ing to fix me.

But some­times, when the endor­phins and the haze wore off, I real­ized that even fools can be right.

I slept alone that night, send­ing the girls pack­ing with signed chests and merchandise.

I tried to dream of Dawn, her beau­ti­ful face that pulled me out from so many buses, sun through so many clouds. Inno­cence, pas­sion, life…even after every­thing she’d seen. Faith. In me.

I tried to dream of Dawn, but dreams don’t work that way, espe­cially when you fall asleep with an empty bot­tle of whiskey in your clammy hands.

I dreamed of demons instead, chas­ing after Dawn in a cav­ern full of bones. My music played in the background.

It’s August 2nd (how the hell did THAT hap­pen?) which means the Sins & Authors inter­view #2 is here. Today we talk with S.L. Jen­nings, a fab­u­lously tal­ented lady (seri­ously I love her way with words) who recently became an NYT and USA Today Best-Selling Author for her book Fear of Falling. BIG con­grats to her!! I love, love, love this sassy broad.

And sud­denly I’m a 1940’s news­pa­per reporter…*cough* anyway…let’s start!

KH: What attracted you to Sins & Needles?

SL: I loved the orig­i­nal premise. It’s very rare that you find the main char­ac­ter, espe­cially a hero­ine, as the “vil­lain” or some­one that isn’t typ­i­cally vir­tu­ous. It was totally out­side the box & some­thing that, as a reader, I hadn’t stum­bled across before. Plus you gotta love the cover. I am a sucker for bad ass chicks with tattoos!

KH: Do you have any tat­toos? If so, Tell me about them, where are they?

SL: Oh God… is this inter­view PG-13? LOL I have 2 that cover my left thigh. It’s a cherry blos­som branch & Kanji sym­bols. I have an anchor on my right hand in honor of the Dark Light Series. I have my husband’s ini­tials on the inside of my left wrist. And three birds behind my right ear. The rest were done when I was very young & very stu­pid and shall not be named.

KH: I have an anchor too for my series! We shall be the best of friends, lol. Hey, your hero in your lat­est release, Fear of Falling, which has been scream­ing up the charts, has a lot of tat­toos. Can you explain Blain’s tat­toos to us?

SL: Blaine calls his tat­toos the roadmap of his life. He’s well-traveled and adven­tur­ous, and while some peo­ple col­lect sou­venirs, he col­lects art. And we shall def­i­nitely be best friends!

KH: Back to Sins & Nee­dles and The Artists Trilogy…are you Team Cam­den or Team Javier and why?

SL: Team Cam­den all the way! Is there any other choice? I love Cam­den because even though he may have done a few fucked up things, he’s still a good guy. And he truly loves Ellie. he risked his life time and time again for her. And I hon­estly believe he will step it up in Shoot­ing Scars and get his girl. I’m ready for bad ass Cam. Plus, how can you resist the tat­toos & glasses?

KH: Favorite sex scene in the book?

SL: That’s easy. Cam’s back­yard, him tak­ing Ellie from behind, while the steaks burned on the grill. As soon as he slapped her ass, I was DONE!
LOL, too much?

KH: Hahaha, not too much! NEVER TOO MUCH. Describe Ellie, Cam­den and Javier in one word

SL: Ellie– hurt
Cam­den– loyal
Javier– deceitful

KH: If you were arrested, what would it be for?

SL: With my luck, some­thing stu­pid. Like pee­ing out­side (not that I do that) or pub­lic inde­cency (not that I do that either).

KH: Lol. Why do you think Ellie, Cam­den get such a tough time from read­ers (Javier doesn’t count, because he’s insane)?

SL: I think because they are not the typ­i­cal ‘hearts & flow­ers’ cou­ple. They’ve both been through hell. They have pasts that still haunt them & they deal with those ghosts dif­fer­ently than some. And I get them. If I was in Ellie’s shoes, I’d do the exact same things that she’s done. Same with Cam­den. And that makes them more REAL to me. Some peo­ple don’t want real in their books. They want fan­tasy, which is totally under­stand­able. But for me to feel a char­ac­ter, for me to give them life, they have to be realistic.

KH: Okay, one more question…What are your hopes for Shoot­ing Scars (out August 20th)?

SL: I want Cam­den to go find Ellie and kill Javier. I want both Ellie & Cam to sur­prise every­one. I want him to get totally bad ass and I want her to soften enough to let him in completely.

KH: Me too. Let’s hope. I’ve been known for being sadistic…but as an author, I know you can relate to that!

S.L. Jen­nings
Bio: Author of The Dark Light Series & Fear of Falling. Her bio needs work. I would also add that she’s awe­some and swears like a sailor. She also lives in Ger­many and it’s sad because she’s so far away.

Web­site: http://authorsljennings.wordpress.com/
Face­book: https://www.facebook.com/authorsljennings
Twit­ter: https://twitter.com/MrsSLJ
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6572969.S_L_Jennings

ENTER THE AWESOME GIVEAWAY FOR 30-EBOOKS AND SIGNED TAT COPIES BY CLICKING THE LINK HERE—-»

AMAZING RAFFLECOPTER GIVEAWAY <———————–

SPOILER ALERT — SPOILER ALERT

This is a pre-edited teaser from the upcom­ing Come Alive (released June 23rd) — EIT #7

This is told from DEX FORAY’S POV

DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT READ INTO THE HOLLOW (#6)

 

SPOILERS!!!

SPOILERS

FOR REAL

SERIOUSLY!

 

Come Alive Teaser:

 

I slammed back a shot and slapped the table with my hand as it burned down. “Hooooo eeeeee! That takes the edge off.” I wiped my mouth and looked Max­imus square in the eye, his fea­tures hazy in the dark­ness of the bar. “So, I think you have some ‘splain­ing to do, friendo.”

“Yeah,” Perry piped up from beside me. “What hap­pened between you and Rose?”

“Noth­ing.”

I snorted. “Right, like you two didn’t hump like bunnies.”

He cocked his head. “You mean, like you two are so obvi­ously hump­ing like bunnies?”

“What does that have to do with any­thing?” Perry asked snidely.

He shrugged with one shoul­der. “How long has this been going on?”

“None of your busi­ness,” Perry said.

“Since Canada,” I answered. Proudly.

Perry kicked me under the table and shot her a sur­prised look. “What? It has. There’s no point hid­ing it, I mean we’re shar­ing a bed and every­thing, it’s kind of obvious.”

“Does Jimmy know?” he asked.

I didn’t like where this was going. “No. He doesn’t. Now that is none of his busi­ness.”

“Don’t you have a habit of sleep­ing with the women you’re filming?”

“Don’t you have a habit of being an asshole?”

“Ass­hole? I expected some­thing more orig­i­nal from you, Dex.”

“I’m run­ning out of names. There aren’t that many vile things on this earth that can describe what a cum dump­ster you are.”

 

Here’s the thing. I’m pretty good about let­ting some things slide — you kinda have to be when you’re a writer. I mean, hello, just look at any bad review. If some­one doesn’t like what you’ve writ­ten, there’s lit­tle you can do you change their mind. So let it go (eas­ier said than done, of course, but I’ve had practice).

But, when peo­ple have the wrong infor­ma­tion or the wrong idea about some­thing, well that’s a dif­fer­ent story. I have to put things right.

Ever since I announced that Grand Cen­tral Pub­lish­ing was push­ing back the release date of Shoot­ing Scars to August 20th, I’ve got­ten a hell of a lot of back­lash. This was to be expected  - in fact I voiced this con­cern to my edi­tor and she under­stood. But this was their deci­sion, not mine and I stand by them because I believe they know what they’re doing (read to the end to find out what that is) and HELL they are MY pub­lish­ers. This is my dream! Of course, they don’t deal with the backlash…I do.

And, frankly, in some cases like on Face­book or Goodreads, it’s been a bit…harsh. Like, you want to hurt me kind of harsh (and I am a fairly del­i­cate flower, so…)

Look, I under­stand being dis­ap­pointed. I’M dis­ap­pointed. I’m used to the “press pub­lish” method of self-publishing just as you’re all used to “one-click” buy­ing. I’m used to fin­ish­ing a book, edit­ing it, pub­lish­ing it. I’m a very fast writer and a very fast pub­lisher and I like to get things out to you as soon as pos­si­ble (hence why I’ve pub­lished thir­teen books in two years). But, this isn’t how the real pub­lish­ers do things. They take their time (and this is a good thing).

So you can be dis­ap­pointed all you want and I’m right there with you. I GET IT! You can cry and scream and be sad about the book being pushed back and I’ll cry and be sad, too. Honestly.

But, and here’s where things get tricky; I’ve noticed some peo­ple get­ting really angry and some false infor­ma­tion about me going around. Most notably, that I’m in charge of Shoot­ing Scars release date, that I some­how have the power over the dates and that it’s my fault the book is pushed back– in short, I’m doing this on purpose.

I am not an ass­hole. I swear.

I like to think of myself as a fairly engag­ing and gen­er­ous author. Aside from try­ing to pub­lish a lot of books for peo­ple to enjoy, I also host a looooooot of give­aways. I try and answer all my emails. I pro­vide teasers. I give away ARCs (essen­tially FREE books) to a boat­load of peo­ple and not all of them blog­gers. Some of them just ordi­nary peo­ple who love to read.

I try and keep peo­ple happy because read­ers are my every­thing. So it breaks my heart when peo­ple get the idea that I’m doing this to piss peo­ple off or to just fuck with peo­ple or I don’t care about my read­ers or I don’t know what.

Does that sound like some­thing I would do? Look, I’ve pushed back release dates on my self-published books before and I’ve admit­ted it. I said “hey you know what, Come Alive is going to be pub­lished in June because I’m bump­ing up Shoot­ing Scars till May.” I got some back­lash on that too, but at least that was fair — I was in charge of the dates. It was in my con­trol. That’s what self-publishing is all about.

But Shoot­ing Scars is NOT a self-published book. The Artists Tril­ogy, start­ing June when GCP For­ever releases it under their name, is no longer self-published. It started out that way but was bought by a big ass big six pub­lisher (see: my dream), some­thing I always wanted for this series. Now my series can go beyond the 30K peo­ple who have bought a copy (thank you!) and now hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple might get hooked on the Ellie/Camden/Javier train through Grand Cen­tral Publishing’s skilled hands. They can reach faaaaar more peo­ple than I ever could on my own.

Because it is not self-published, I do not con­trol the release dates. I am just the writer. AND I LIKE IT. It’s fuck­ing NICE to be able to just write and not worry about any­thing (except piss­ing off peo­ple, appar­ently). I don’t have to man­age the release, I don’t have to plan the pub­lic­ity attack. I don’t have to find an edi­tor and a cover and for­mat the book. They do it all for me. That is the num­ber one draw of going with a pub­lisher (that and see­ing your book in book­stores everywhere).

I’m excited!

I just wish my read­ers were excited too. I know push­ing back the release dates have made the excite­ment lev­els drop and I hope to bal­ance them out with more give­aways and post­ing whole chap­ters and more teasers closer to the release date. I know it’s tough to wait for a book. In fact, if I could go back in time I would have stuck to the orig­i­nal release date for Shoot­ing Scars, which was July. Yup. I was first going to pub­lish it in July, but then I saw so many peo­ple upset over the cliffhanger and bumped it up to May. I hate dis­ap­point­ing peo­ple, but what can you do…

I hope that cleared things up, or at least made you real­ize I am not doing this, it is out of my hands. My read­ers mean every­thing to me (as I blogged about before, the rea­son I went with Grand Cen­tral Pub­lish­ing is because the release date for SS was going to be in the sum­mer and the third book would be pub­lished in 2013 as well.…most other pub­lish­ers would spread the series out more and push it back by a year — I was not going to sign any deal that would do that). I would never push­back the release date if I could help it.

Now, I must go back to writ­ing Shoot­ing Scars. Since I signed the deal, the dead­line got extended by two weeks so I’m still plow­ing through it.

**** For those inter­ested in the pub­lish­ing process, here’s why the real rea­son why the release got pushed back *****

Pub­lish­ing houses have a sched­ule of books to be released. This sched­ule is usu­ally made a YEAR in advance, at least. Remem­ber, self-published books going to tra­di­tional is a VERY new thing. Nor­mally, books are cho­sen through agents. The agent sub­mits the author’s work to the edi­tors, they look it over, and if they like it, they make a deal. The book then goes through a VERY long edit­ing process and a very long cover process and a very long mar­ket­ing cam­paign. Mary Sue’s book “Vam­pire boyfriend” would be sub­mit­ted to the pub­lish­ers and a year or two later the book would finally come out. You know how they work…look at any trilo­gies, like Diver­gent. Roth signed the deal for those books at least a year before they were pub­lished. And all the book releases are spaced a year apart.

Pub­lish­ing houses are slooooooow.

So let’s look at GCP. They prob­a­bly have a sched­ule all set for book releases this year. They can’t all release their books on the same days (always a Tues­day) because they won’t be able to donate as much mar­ket­ing time. They want every book to have their moment in the sun. So they space them out — this thriller here, this romance there. It’s been set like that at least a year in advance (remem­ber the major­ity of the books are tra­di­tion­ally pub­lished and are still going through the stages).

Then I come along. They want my books. They want to sell Sins and OES and mar­ket them. Nor­mally, a pub­lish­ing house would say “okay, let’s release Sins in June and then OES over Christ­mas. THEN Shoot­ing Scars the fol­low­ing June and since we are feel­ing gen­er­ous, the third book in Xmas 2014″- they want to donate as MUCH time as pos­si­ble into mar­ket­ing the shit out of Sins before the release the other books. Remem­ber, I’ve sold X amount already — they need to make their pur­chase of the books worth­while. They need to reach peo­ple too.

But GCP, god bless them, said, “Hey we’ll release Sins and OES in June, and then spend June and July mar­ket­ing them, then release Shoot­ing Scars in July and then book#3 in Octo­ber.” And then they are like SHIT…we have SO many books lined up for July, that it wouldn’t be fair for Mary Sue’s “Vam­pire Boyfriend” a book that’s been made ready for a year, to sud­denly get the shaft. We’ve devoted so much time and money to it already.

So then they say, okay, well if we won’t move Vam­pire Boyfriend, then we’ll move Shoot­ing Scars since we just bought it. It’s just a month. Peo­ple will under­stand. And that way, instead of try­ing to mar­ket both those books at the same time, we can give Vam­pire Boyfriend the spot­light and then the next month do the same for Shoot­ing Scars.

And that’s what hap­pened. Shoot­ing Scars got moved to August 20th because it was the bet­ter date for both them and I. Book #3 got moved to Octo­ber 15th for the same reason.

There was no spite here. Noth­ing mali­cious. It’s just the way they work and it’s 100% out of my con­trol. I am a new-ish author with a mod­est (by their stan­dards) amount of suc­cess who has never had a pub­lish­ing deal before. They are a big pub­lish­ing cor­po­ra­tion who have been doing this for decades. I trust them.

And I hope you trust me.

<3

 

 

I’m going to try and keep this short and sweet, like the Oscar accep­tance speeches are expected to be – but like them, don’t be sur­prised if I drone on and on and am cut off by the music.

I have accepted an offer by a major “Big Six” pub­lisher for The Artists Tril­ogy, which includes On Every Street, Sins & Nee­dles, Shoot­ing Scars and Bold Tricks (the ten­ta­tively titled last book). All books will be pub­lished this year in e-book for­mat and late 2014 in mass mar­ket paperback.

*con­fetti gun goes off*

This is THE dream of all dreams for me. I wrote my first novel in 2009 (Dark­house, EIT #1) and self-published it on May 13, 2011 (after a few more books were writ­ten). Since then, I have writ­ten and pro­moted 13 books and I NEVER ever thought this day would come. I always felt like my writ­ing was unno­ticed and under­ap­pre­ci­ated. I felt like the geeky kid who can’t sit at the cool kids table (and I still feel like this). I felt like the val­i­da­tion I needed, wanted, craved was always out of my hands, a dream belong­ing to some­one else.

I felt like this for two years. But I per­se­vered. I kept writ­ing, kept try­ing to do my best. I sac­ri­ficed sleep, friends, a social life, fit­ting into my clothes, spend­ing qual­ity time with fam­ily, exer­cise, trav­el­ing, EVERYTHING. I invested money in it that, for the longest time, I NEVER saw come back. I felt like a lone sol­dier, just work­ing her ass off, some­times while hold­ing down a day job and some­times while work­ing 10 hour days of just writ­ing until my brain started to bleed. It’s been hard. It’s been tough. No one ever said being an indie author was easy but I never thought it would be SO hard. I never thought I would lose so much in pur­suit of my dream.

But, slowly, even­tu­ally, after about a year and a half of sell­ing 0–20 copies of my books a month, some­thing changed. Thanks to blog­gers like Maryse, The Book­ish Babes and For­ever Young Adult, and the hard­core fans who have been there since the start, peo­ple started to notice Dex and Perry and Exper­i­ment in Terror.

And after they noticed that, they noticed Sage and Dawn from The Devil’s Metal.

And then they noticed Ellie and Cam­den (and Javier) and Sins & Needles.

And pub­lish­ers noticed it too.

So, finally, I feel like all my hard work is finally being rec­og­nized, finally pay­ing off. I’ve made my friends proud of me (they can point to the books when they come out in book­stores and say, “I know that dork!”), I’ve made my par­ents proud of me (they can tell their friends that their daugh­ter is “actu­ally” pub­lished, since the older gen­er­a­tion doesn’t really get the whole self-pubbing thing and our fam­ily over­seas will be able to pick up MY BOOKS at the air­ports), I’ve made my fiancé proud of me (who has seen me strug­gle for far too long) and I’ve made ME proud of me. Because I made it – I finally did it. I got a tra­di­tional pub­lish­ing deal. My books will be in book­stores every­where in 2014. I will have the back­ing of a huge cor­po­ra­tion and edi­tors who believe in me. I am PROUD of myself and all the blood that went into it.

But…and here was the ques­tion that always nagged at me since the begin­ning of nego­ti­a­tions – would my READERS be proud of me?

You see, dear read­ers, I was ter­ri­fied of telling you this. Because every­one knows now that books get pushed back when a pub­lisher takes them on. And from some of the angry com­ments I had already received from  peo­ple who hated the way Sins & Nee­dles ended, I knew I was going to make a lot of peo­ple mad at me. They weren’t going to be happy for me. They wouldn’t be proud. They would be upset that Shoot­ing Scars got pushed back from May and noth­ing else would matter.

So, I kept that thought at the fore­front of nego­ti­a­tions. If the book was going to be delayed more than I thought nec­es­sary, I wouldn’t sign the deal.

I’ll repeat: I would rather give up my dream than majorly dis­ap­point and anger my readers.

Thank­fully, it didn’t have to be that way. The pub­lisher under­stood how impor­tant it was to get Shoot­ing Scars out there. They didn’t want to delay it for the sake of delay­ing it (even though it does ben­e­fit them to do so). They under­stood. They are awe­some like that.

And so I said yes.

So here it is:

Shoot­ing Scars is get­ting delayed until July 2013 (iron­i­cally, that was the orig­i­nal release date I picked for the book before I moved it up to May). It’s just two months. It could have been a lot worse. It was the best I can do and believe me, that was the lat­est I would allow it to be pushed back.

On the plus side: the book will stay around the same price of Sins & Nee­dles (def­i­nitely indie-priced) AND the final book in the series will be pub­lished sooner than I had orig­i­nally planned. I was think­ing Novem­ber for Bold Tricks but it appears to be bumped up to Sep­tem­ber. So yes, more wait­ing in the short-term but less wait­ing in the long-term.

Now I know some of you are angry and I’ve been wait­ing for the retal­i­a­tion. And I under­stand the dis­ap­point­ment. I really do! I wish it could come out in May, too (though this does give me more time to work on it and make it amaz­ing). But as another author said to me, the true fans will wait. They will under­stand. And they will be proud of what you’ve accomplished.

I hope you’re all just as proud as I am

PS — Come Alive, the 7th Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror book is still com­ing out in June (mid-month it seems). I WILL have lots of awe­somely awe­some TAT (The Artists Tril­ogy) give­aways and swag plus lots of teasers to keep you game.

PPS I am doing a LOT of book sign­ings this year — there’s RT in May, Maryse’s Book Bash in Orlando in June. There’s an east coast sign­ing or two (or three) later on. Even one in the desert. Since I will soon have to pull my paper­backs of Sins & Nee­dles and On Every Street very soon — and the paper­backs from the pub­lisher won’t be out till next year — I advise you to buy them from Ama­zon now, while you can.

Link to Sins & Nee­dles paperback

Link to On Every Street paperback

PPS I will let you know the name of the pub­lisher once the ink on the con­tract has dried

<3

 

Two things to make this Fri­day more awesome:

The win­ner of the Dex Prize pack (which included a whole bunch of awe­some Dex merch…hopefully the win­ner can give us a pic­ture of her and all the merch when she gets it)…is.…

Holly, who left this com­ment on why Dex should be her book BF:

Dex is hands down my book boyfriend of the year. Because I haven’t felt this drawn to a char­ac­ter in…well a damn long time, if ever. He is a snarky son of a bitch, acts like he’s a badass, but most of the time he is far more vul­ner­a­ble than he wants any­one to know he is. I love the fact that he now embraces his feel­ings for Perry and strives to be a good enough man to deserve her. And hell…I love how truly per­verted and twisted he is. Just when I think I have him all fig­ured out, he throws another curve ball in the mix. And I love that.

So.…to sum up. Dex is my ulti­mate book boyfriend. He might be a saras­tic ass­hat at times, but I love him just the same.

CONGRATS HOLLY! I’ll be email­ing you!

 

OH and you wanted a lengthy ON EVERY STREET TEASER? Check out Maryse’s book blog NOW.