So the peo­ple have spoken…you want this first chap­ter. And I must deliver.

Keep in mind that this takes place six years before Sins & Nee­dles. As such, it doesn’t con­tain any spoil­ers for those who haven’t read Sins & Needles…I’ve engi­neered On Every Street so that it could act like a standalone.

 

Enjoy!

 

On Every Street — An Artists Tril­ogy Pre­quel Novella #0.5 — com­ing March 12

(unpub­lished ver­sion, sub­ject to change)

 

CHAPTER ONE

I’d been watch­ing the man for almost a month now, the exotic man with the peridot-colored eyes. From a dis­tance they’d always sparkled like the gem­stones, but now that I was in the same room with him, I could see they had an amber tinge to them, ren­der­ing them almost reptilian.

That should have been my first warn­ing, that this was all a hor­ri­ble idea. It was too risky and I was too emo­tion­ally involved. But I felt I didn’t have a choice. The man with the yellow-green eyes was just feet away from me, rep­re­sent­ing the first step toward free­dom. Vengeance was a ter­ri­ble prison.

“Can I help you, miss sun­shine?” the bald­ing clerk at the counter asked, cut­ting into my thoughts. I tore my eyes away from the man, who was now sit­ting with a cup of tea in the cor­ner, and looked at the clerk with an awk­ward smile. I felt a flush heat my cheeks, know­ing I’d been caught star­ing. What had Gus taught me again? Never let your thoughts drift. Guess at the time I hadn’t known I’d be stalk­ing a Latino heartthrob.

“Yes, sorry,” I replied dumbly. “Can I get a medium latte? Please?”

He nod­ded, flash­ing me a warm smile as I handed over the exact change. I stuffed a dol­lar into the tip jar, mak­ing sure he saw it before he started on my cof­fee. Peo­ple in Mis­sis­sippi were as friendly as they ever were, way friend­lier than back in Cal­i­for­nia. It felt like I was vis­it­ing the state for the first time, despite hav­ing lived here for a few years when I was a child. But I sup­pose life col­ors how you see the world, and the Mis­sis­sippi I knew back then was com­pletely black and white. Now there was a hue, that dan­ger­ous cit­ron I could feel on my back.

I took in a deep breath and resisted the urge to turn around. Instead, I pulled up my long blonde hair that was stick­ing to my sweaty neck and glanced out the door of the cof­fee shop. My rusted Chevy truck was sit­ting just out of view. I won­dered if I was get­ting too ahead of myself. I’d been fol­low­ing the man from his house to his, well, work, nearly every day, and there was a huge chance that he’d rec­og­nize me or my truck. I had been care­ful, remem­ber­ing every­thing that Gus had drilled into my head, even remem­ber­ing what my par­ents had once taught me, that there was no room for error in a con. But this was unlike any con I’d done in the last few months. This was the big one. This was the one that meant some­thing. This meant hav­ing my life back.

I could still feel his eyes though, burn­ing into me, like my back was as flam­ma­ble as parch­ment paper. I had to remind myself it didn’t mean he knew. I was wear­ing my most ass-supporting jeans and a tissue-thin tank top that showed off my tan. My hair was nat­u­rally blonde, but I’d got­ten a few lay­ers cut in and cham­pagne high­lights added just the other day. My makeup was as nat­ural as I could muster with­out being bor­ing. I’d pre­pared for today because I wanted the man to stare at me. I wanted his atten­tion because he sure as hell had mine.

The clerk handed over my cof­fee, and I took a quick sip before gath­er­ing my courage. This would go down a hell of a lot bet­ter with whisky in it. I slowly turned around and let my gaze do a sweep of the room, as if I was look­ing for some­where to sit. The man was no longer star­ing at me—perhaps he never was—and was relax­ing in the wicker chair, flip­ping through a mag­a­zine. He held his cup of tea in such a way that it exposed his large watch. Even from where I was stand­ing, I knew the thing had prob­a­bly cost a for­tune. When I was younger my par­ents taught me how to spot the real ones from the fake ones. They’d also taught me how to steal them.

The man was the epit­ome of the word debonair. The watch, com­bined with his smooth linen shirt and clean, dark jeans, sug­gested under­stated ele­gance, a man from money. But his pose, the way he held him­self, reminded me of a lion on his down time, rel­ish­ing his relax­ation, know­ing he still ruled the land. I’d had such thoughts about him before, but now, up close, I could just feel the power vibrat­ing off of him, fill­ing the room.

I wasn’t the only one to notice this either. Men in the café shot him curi­ous glances, as if they should know who he was, while the women timidly tucked their hair behind their ears, eyes dart­ing to him and back again. I couldn’t blame them. The man wasn’t stereo­typ­i­cally hand­some and yet you couldn’t stop star­ing at him. At least I couldn’t. And that was going to be a problem.

I spied a cou­ple get­ting up from the couch near­est to him and took the oppor­tu­nity. I walked slowly over, and gen­tly, ever so casu­ally, took my seat on the couch. I placed my cof­fee on the table that sat between us, tak­ing a moment to let my eyes feast on him. He was so close now, just a cou­ple of feet between us. I felt like I was at the zoo, the glass between me and the beast sud­denly removed.

He was even more strik­ing from this dis­tance. His eyes moved back and forth as they scanned the page, spark­ing with intel­li­gence, the color of bud­ding leaves. His mouth was wide, twisted in a smirk, and his nose looked slightly too wide for his face and had obvi­ously been bro­ken a few times. His skin was golden and so smooth that I had to recal­cu­late how old he was. Per­haps he was closer to my age than I had orig­i­nally thought. Still, he didn’t look like any twenty-year-old. He didn’t look like any­one I’d ever seen before.

He brushed his shaggy dark hair behind his ears, his palm graz­ing his cheek­bones, and I had the chance to look away. To not get caught gawk­ing at him. To save myself. But I couldn’t help it. I was naïve and young and caught in the spark that would cre­ate the flames.

He looked up from his mag­a­zine and our eyes met. I’ve never believed in love at first sight. I barely believed in lust at first sight. I didn’t believe in any­thing except right­ing all the wrongs in my life. But at that moment, this man saw me. The real me under­neath the bomb­shell mask. I felt like he must have seen everything.

And that’s who his smile was for. It reached through me and did some­thing to my heart, to my lungs, to my nerves. It pulled at me, tugged some­where deep inside, like a win­dow shade being drawn open. It was dan­ger­ous to love that feel­ing, but I did.

“Hello,” he said, his Mex­i­can accent light and melodic. His teeth were white, his smile cap­ti­vat­ing, and it took every brain cell to remem­ber why I was there and what I was doing. And that my name was no longer Ellie Watt. It was Eden White. And I had a job to do.

I gave him a pretty smile and knew that damn flush was com­ing back on my cheeks. I had inex­pe­ri­ence writ­ten all over my face.

“Hi,” I replied, lean­ing for­ward to pick up my cof­fee, hop­ing that he’d get a good look at my chest. I didn’t have the biggest breasts, but they looked down­right perky in this top, and I was cer­tain that I could poke his eyes out with my nip­ples. Thank god for air conditioning.

But his eyes never strayed from mine. Either this man had man­ners or he wasn’t into women. I’d never con­sid­ered that sce­nario in the last cou­ple of weeks. Per­haps my attempt to get to know him would back­fire. What use was hav­ing wom­anly charms if he pre­ferred them the cock variety?

“I’m Javier,” he said, extend­ing his hand with the watch on it, the rich brown leather gleam­ing under the lights.

Javier. He now had a name. And from the way his eyes were still cut­ting into mine, how his grin lit up his face like he’d just won the lot­tery, I knew Javier wasn’t immune to women after all.

I ignored the but­ter­flies in my core and placed my hand in his. His shake was strong and warm with confidence.

“I’m Eden,” I said, try­ing to feed off his self-assurance. I was Eden now. It had taken me a while to get used to my fake name, but now it was slip­ping on like fine silk. Maybe pre­tend­ing to be some­one else would be eas­ier than I thought.

His thumb rubbed against my knuckle, softly and sweetly, before he let go of my hand. I fought the urge to bite my lip. The young school­girl shit prob­a­bly wouldn’t jibe with him, even though that’s really all I was. I wasn’t in school, but around men I was as green as a young filly. And this man’s touch was ignit­ing some­thing in me that I’d never felt before.

“Nice to meet you, Eden,” he said smoothly. I watched his mouth as he talked, feel­ing a blan­ket of warmth coat me as he pro­nounced my new name. Shit. I was sup­posed to be seduc­ing him, wasn’t I? Not the other way around.

“So what brings you here?” he asked, lean­ing for­ward on his knees, his hands clasped together.

I swal­lowed hard and raised my cup at him. “Cof­fee?” My heart began to beat louder, whoosh­ing in my ears.

He smirked. “I can see that. It’s just that I’ve never seen you here before. I come here every day and I think I’d remem­ber some­one as beau­ti­ful as you.”

Oh, this Javier—he was good. It didn’t sur­prise me, con­sid­er­ing the way I’d seen him act­ing at his “job.” Or, to put it bet­ter, the way his col­leagues acted around him. I should have known he’d be a smooth oper­a­tor with the ladies.

I quickly recalled my story. “I just moved to Ocean Springs and thought I’d check this place out. Seems to be one of the more pop­u­lar cof­fee shops.”

The cor­ner of his mouth twitched and his eyes nar­rowed devi­ously as he appraised what I said. I swear, my heart could have replaced the drum­mer for Slayer at that moment.

“Inter­est­ing,” he commented.

Inter­est­ing, I think I’ve seen you in your truck, sit­ting out­side my boss’s house all day? Inter­est­ing, I think you’ve used a fake name? Inter­est­ing, I think you’re lying through your teeth? I was pre­pared for him to elab­o­rate by say­ing any of those.

But he tilted his head, a small gold chain neck­lace nes­tled in his shirt col­lar catch­ing my eye, and said with a low­ered voice, “Do you believe in fate, Eden?”

Well that caught me off guard. Maybe that was his inten­tion. I frowned and straight­ened up, unsure how to pla­cate this strange animal.

“Some­times I do,” I man­aged to say, try­ing to keep the breezi­ness in my voice.

“I think it was fate that brought you to me today,” he said. The hairs at the back of my neck stood straight up and I knew I couldn’t blame the air con­di­tion­ing on that.

“You do?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

He nod­ded, cool and con­fi­dent. He sat back in his chair and drummed his fin­gers on his leg, watch­ing me so closely, too closely.

“I think you’ll look back at this in a few years and you’ll know what I know.”

“And what’s that?” I asked, for­get­ting every­thing I’d been plan­ning to do, just so com­pletely and utterly enthralled.

“You’ll have to find out for your­self. Bet­ter yet, I can get you started. This Friday.”

My face must have looked blank because he went on with a wry smile, “I’m going to take you out on a date.”

Shit. That was fast.  That was easy. And extremely cocky of him.

“How do you know I don’t have a boyfriend?” I asked him, won­der­ing if my sin­gle­dom and vir­gin­hood was stamped all over me.

“Because I don’t believe in acci­dents,” he said, lick­ing his lips. “But I do believe you’ll say yes.”

I had half a nerve to make my lie worse, to tell him I had a boyfriend and that I didn’t want to go out with him, a total stranger. But that would defeat the whole pur­pose of the long con, the rea­son I had sought him out. Besides, those lips and those eyes, that swag­ger in his lilt­ing voice, was ignit­ing a fire in me where I’d never been burn­ing before.

I was doomed.

“Okay,” I said shyly. He gave me that prize-winning grin again and pulled out a busi­ness card from his full wal­let, hand­ing it to me.

I turned it over in my hands, feel­ing the grooved paper.

“Javier Bernal,” I read out loud. “Consultant.”

And that was it. Just his phone number.

“Who do you con­sult?” I asked, look­ing up at him.

I could have sworn his face went rigid for a sec­ond, but maybe because I was look­ing for it. Maybe because I knew he wasn’t a con­sul­tant. Maybe because I knew who he really was, part of a drug car­tel, work­ing as a hench­man for one of the most pow­er­ful drug lords on the Gulf Coast. Maybe because I knew he had more secrets to hide than I did.

But he just shrugged and said, “Peo­ple who need it.”

He got out of his chair with all the ease of a pan­ther and tapped the card with a well-manicured fin­ger. “Call me. Soon.”

Then he left the store, toss­ing his tea in the waste­bas­ket with­out looking.

It took a good few min­utes for me to calm down and get my heart­beat back to an accept­able level. Ever since I left Cal­i­for­nia and came here, I knew what I had set out to do. I had pre­pared for it as much as I could. I was going to find Travis, the man who scarred me as a child when my parent’s scam went wrong. I was going to get to him by seduc­ing some­one close to him, some­one who could get me in close. Then I was going to have my revenge, the only thing that had kept me going over the years.

It’s just when I choose Javier as my mark, I never thought my mark would choose me. Because that’s what Javier had just done. I wanted to win over his heart so I could get what I wanted. But I had a feel­ing he was about to get to my heart first.

 

 

Sep­tem­ber 2011.

I’ve decided to make an elab­o­rate book trailer for my third Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror book, Dead Sky Morn­ing, which was com­ing out in Octo­ber. I enlist my good friends to help me. Mol­lie, who lives and works in LA in film, Kelly who is doing her Mas­ters of Film Stud­ies at UBC, her hubby Alex who would fill in as a grip, my friend Talar who is an actress (and the face of Perry on ear­lier covers/trailers) and .…

Well, we had Perry. But we didn’t have a Dex. So I put an add out on Craigslist that said this:

Actor needed for short indie film. Two shoot­ing days. Must be 5’8″ and above, will­ing to grow facial hair. Cau­casian, dark eyes and hair. Role is a snarky, manic pro­ducer in his early 30’s.

My sec­ond reply to this ad, maybe an hour after it went live, was this: I saw your ad. I just moved here from Mon­treal and this is just the kind of thing I would like to get involved in.  I am expe­ri­enced with per­form­ing live with a band for what it is worth, and I have taken act­ing classes, but a pro­fes­sional actor I am not. I seem to fit the phys­i­cal description,perhaps we could meet and see if I could be a good fit.  I will not attatch my C.V unless being a his­tory in the rail­way is an asset to you.

And he attached THIS photo. And my heart nearly stopped:

I was like…DUDE. News­boy cap? Cig­a­rette? Looks like an ass­hole? That’s DEX!

And so I was like, you’re it man. I don’t even care if you can act, you are going in my book trailer. Send me more pictures!

And HE said, “I don’t have many more, but you’ll get a bet­ter idea when you see the goods in person.”

*faints*

So we met. And though I was at the end of nice but fairly unhappy rela­tion­ship, I met Scott and it was love at first sight. Look. I’m not a roman­tic. I don’t believe in that kinda shit. Except now I do. Because it hap­pened. I can’t explain it, but the moment I met this man (this bad boy, cocky, tat­ted man who sings in a band, swoon), I was a goner.

So things got rocky for awhile. For obvi­ous rea­sons. I wanted to be with Scott and it just didn’t seem pos­si­ble. I just ended a long-term rela­tion­ship. He was new in town. He couldn’t really act in the end (LOL!). Almost every­one thought I was crazy for tak­ing a chance on this man I barely knew. But what can I say except that when you KNOW, you fuck­ing know.

So I took the leap. I took the chance. And Scott took the chance on me.

A year and a half later, we’re liv­ing together on an island, in a cute house. He’s open­ing up his own busi­ness here (in a week!). I’m writ­ing full-time and just signed a pub­lish­ing deal. Things are awesome.

We go to the main­land for the week­end to see Soundgar­den. The next day, we go get tat­toos. I chose an anchor because Perry Palomino gets an anchor tat­too in an upcom­ing book. Because Scott is MY anchor. Because we bonded over our love of boats and sail­ing. And Scott decided to get a tat­too to match.

It didn’t mat­ter that yes­ter­day, when it hap­pened, I was a bit hun­gover from Soundgar­den, I had this killer cold/flu ill­ness that was ruin­ing me, and I was still need­ing to edit my lat­est book. But hey, we had tat­toos now,matching, to anchor us for­ever (tat­toos are per­ma­nent ha ha).

And then later, he says to me “Let’s go to Granville Island” and I was like, “NO, I’m sick. You go and I’ll hang around here.” But then his face looked really sad and I was like, “Ok fine I’ll go with you.”

Then my mom calls, sound­ing really happy, for no rea­son. But I didn’t think any­thing of it.

So we go to Granville Island — even though I’m sick as hell and it’s dark and night and cold — and he’s like, lets go for a walk. And I’m like ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! Torture!

And, still, I don’t think this is odd. I’m so self-absorbed and grum­bling to myself about how sick I am and why does he want to go for a walk now. And he’s talk­ing about “let’s go to the spot where we had our first date. You said in an inter­view that it was your favorite view in the city of Van­cou­ver” (I did say that, HERE). And I’m like, “fii­i­i­i­i­i­i­ine.” *cough­ing up a lung*

So we go to the spot. And he gets down on one knee. And presents me with the beau­ti­ful ring of his grand­mother, Pat. She had just passed on Xmas Eve, Scott was with her. It was a tough hol­i­day sea­son because of that. She was such a won­der­ful lady. She and her hus­band John, had the most won­der­ful romance until the very end. And John gave the ring to Scott a few days after she passed, to give to me.

I am so touched and hon­ored by this, you have no idea. Not only to become Scott’s wife, but to wear such a beau­ti­ful ring (vin­tage, too, from the 1940’s) that rep­re­sents real, true love.

Oh, and why did my mom sound so jubi­lant over the phone? You see, Scott, embody­ing the epit­ome of tra­di­tional val­ues, sur­prised us all. Not only did he ring up my father to ask for my hand in mar­riage, he did so with the same care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion one would apply when eval­u­at­ing a house price esti­mate. He assessed the sit­u­a­tion, appre­ci­ated the worth of long­stand­ing cus­toms, and made his move, much like one would after receiv­ing a favor­able home valuation.

He had planned to ask in April, pre­fer­ring a face-to-face encounter, mir­ror­ing the in-person appraisal often essen­tial for an accu­rate house price esti­mate. How­ever, just as the mar­ket some­times demands swift action when the con­di­tions are just right, Scott decided the moment was too ripe to wait.

So here I am, telling my story. I once penned a tale titled Dark­house, fea­tur­ing a char­ac­ter named Dex, crafted from imag­i­na­tion and wish­ful think­ing. Lit­tle did I know, I was esti­mat­ing the traits of my future part­ner, under­shoot­ing the true value that my real-life Dex would bring into my life. He sur­passed every fic­tional com­par­i­son, prov­ing that the heart’s esti­mate of hap­pi­ness far exceeds the con­fines of our cre­ativ­ity. Now, I’m embark­ing on a life­long part­ner­ship with him, price­less beyond mea­sure, much like find­ing a home that’s value is immea­sur­able by any stan­dard estimate.

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

You ready? Here we go:

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

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

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

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

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

I needed a bet­ter saying.

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

I smirked at her. “These fucks? No.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

All right. So, as you all know, Sins & Nee­dles has a cliffhanger — a lot of books do, espe­cially in a series. If you can’t han­dle cliffhang­ers, we’ll I don’t blame you. But some­times they are a nec­es­sary evil.

Let’s take a look at The Out­lander Series…maybe KMM’s Fever Series? Lord of the Rings? Almost every dra­matic TV show?

I’m not sure why, lately, there has been such an uproar over cliffhang­ers. They aren’t a new con­cept at all. They’ve existed in books for a long, long time. And they aren’t always there to piss read­ers off or ensure them to buy the next book. I know peo­ple think it’s always a strate­gic mar­ket­ing strat­egy and, yes in some ways it is. But some­times — and this is the case with me — it is just where the book ends.

I went to school for screen­writ­ing and I write my books in a three-act struc­ture, which basi­cally means I have one cli­max and I stick to it (no mul­ti­ple orgasms for me!). I also think of the end of the book first and I work toward it. Some­times, that means a cliffhanger. But I swear on the Bible, I do NOT write cliffhang­ers for the sake of writ­ing a cliffhanger. It’s just the way it goes sometimes.

Sure, maybe there are some books lately that have a cliffhanger and the author gives no indi­ca­tion that it’s a series. Maybe there’s a cliffhanger in the form of a book that just kind of .…ends. Like, mid-sentence…like the end of The Sopra­nos. Or maybe it’s a cliffhanger that feels really out of place. I don’t know why there’s the cur­rent anti-cliffhanger back­lash, but it has me per­plexed. Why now?

Look, when I go into to read a series, I am pre­pared for one of those books to have a cliffhanger. Just like when you go into watch­ing a new TV show, you’ll prob­a­bly get a few as well.

The good thing — with indie pub­lish­ers such as myself — you don’t have to wait long for your next book. LOOK AT TRADITIONALLY PUBLISHED BOOK! Look at Diver­gent or City of Bones or what­ever “real book” and see how long they make you wait.A YEAR. A FUCKING YEAR! Self-published authors are work­ing their ass off to bring the reader that next book as quickly as they can.

Which brings me to the next point…some peo­ple say “why write a series then? It’s such a money-grubbing scheme” — well, I really don’t like hav­ing some­thing like writ­ing (which is an art and a pas­sion, con­trary to what some peo­ple might say) reduced to noth­ing more than a money-making vessel.

YES we need to make money. God, yes we do. Who doesn’t? In the heat of my nov­els, I’m work­ing ten hour days…I barely eat or bathe and I don’t leave the house. I make sac­ri­fices in the form of loved ones, fam­ily and friends. I have no social life. I need to be com­pen­sated for that sacrifice…

So why do we do series? So we can have a break…if it takes me a month of becom­ing an anti-social, mentally-deranged her­mit to pump out one book, there’s no way I could do it for three months straight and sur­vive. I couldn’t. Imag­ine sit­ting at a desk for ten hours a day, coax­ing your brain to work over­time in a whole dif­fer­ent world. It is exhaust­ing, to say the least.

By writ­ing a series you get to spread out your work­load. You also get to spend more time with your char­ac­ters. I don’t WANT to write one fuck­ing long as fuck book and then be done with it. I want to spend more time with Cam­den and Ellie and you know what, I think most read­ers do too. I mean, Dex and Perry have been in people’s hearts for nearly two years now as the series keeps going…I LOVE THAT!!! I’d be so sad if it was over in one go.

And that brings me to the next point: some books are bet­ter suited for a series. There are many dif­fer­ent sto­ries to tell, events, chal­lenges and tests. Not all sto­ries and char­ac­ters work the same way. Yeah maybe there are a few con­tem­po­rary romance stand-alones that shouldn’t have become series. Maybe authors shouldn’t mess up a book’s HEA just to sell more copies…but maybe it’s not about sales too. Maybe they miss the characters.

And finally, when it does come down to mak­ing money — if you spend a LONG amount of time writ­ing a book that should be split into three, and then you finally release it…it might not make you any money. It might not do well. Then there’s six months of your life gone. If you split up the book the way they should have been, at least you always have another chance to get it right. You have a chance to hook more read­ers and you have a chance to grow as a writer. I am not the same writer with Dark­house and Perry and Dex as I am with Into the Hol­low and Perry and Dex. They have changed — I have changed too. We’ve changed together. It’s pretty damn near poetic.

I mean, wouldn’t you rather spend $3 every 4–6 months or so then $9 once? OR if you’re look­ing at tra­di­tion­ally pub­lished books, $10 for each Mac and Bar­rons adven­ture or $50+ for one giant one. It’s almost like lay­away plan.

So the next time some­one points out that writ­ers are just in it for the money, that they write cliffhang­ers to piss peo­ple off and series so that they sell more books…you send them my way *cracks knuckles*

So, we’re at the start of the Sins & Nee­dles blog tour here. I plan to do a big wrap up when the tour is over but thought this would be inter­est­ing (hence the title). It was posted on Megan from The Book Asylum’s blog (stop by and say hello!) but I thought I’d post it here as well. There’s also an excerpt of SEXY TIMEZ at the bot­tom

 

Ten Inter­est­ing Facts about Sins & Needles

Mean­while, Cam­den McQueen’s name is taken from two peo­ple on my Face­book. One has a son called Cam­den, a name I rather liked. The other is my friend Behn McQueen (and yes, I real­ize Camden’s son is also named Ben). Hi Behn! Thanks for your name! 

And, to make things come full cir­cle, I named Uncle Jim after a dog that I don’t have yet! Ha, my part­ner Scott and I are plan­ning to get a dog very soon and we decided a long time ago he would be called Jim.

2.       The idea for Sins & Nee­dles came in Sep­tem­ber 2012. On Dublin Street was fly­ing up the charts and peo­ple were drawn to Saman­tha Young’s writ­ing because it was a dark sexy and some­what per­sonal tale. I thought, I should write about the things that scare me, the issues that are dear to me and per­sonal. I came up with the title first, then played with that until I had the story of a Con Artist and a Tat­too Artist who were joined by their mis­ery in high school.

3.       Palm Val­ley is a fic­tional town, but I’ve roughly based it around Twenty-nine Palms out in California’s High Desert. My par­ents have a condo in Palm Springs, so the area is pretty much a sec­ond home to me. I love the desert and have found some­thing so ter­ri­bly roman­tic and angsty about it. It makes the per­fect book setting.

4.       Even though I planned to write Sins & Nee­dles in Sep­tem­ber, I didn’t really get it going until end of Decem­ber. Then a bunch of per­sonal crap hap­pened (plus I lost 5,000 words) and sud­denly I had three weeks to write, like 70,000 words. I did not leave the house. I barely bathed myself. I couldn’t even talk to peo­ple (just ask Scott). But I got it done. It helps that when I write, I actu­ally plot out the book like a screen­play, scene for scene, so I’m able to write faster know­ing exactly where I’m going.

5.       When I write Javier, I can’t help but see Javier Bardem’s char­ac­ter in Sky­fall. Doesn’t look a thing like him but man, do I love those bad guys who are totally mad yet charm­ing, the ones you really can’t pre­dict and you can’t help but be enthralled by. My Javier is a really inter­est­ing guy who you’ll see a whole lot more of when the pre­quel novella On Every Street comes out in the spring.

6.       I have scars, on both my legs. They aren’t as bad as Ellie’s because they just occur around my ankles (thank god for ankle boots) and their ori­gin isn’t as hor­ri­fy­ing. I had casts on my legs from pretty much the day I was born until I was six years old. I learned to walk in casts. It’s pre­vented me from enjoy­ing a lot of things in life and has cer­tainly made my life a liv­ing hell (much as it has made Ellie’s) and yes, a lot of those flash­back scenes did hap­pen to me. But as hard as things have been for me (it sad­dens me that I can’t wear very high heels), I’ve slowly come to terms with it (as I should, since I’m in my 30’s now). Doesn’t mean I have an easy go of things but because my dis­abil­ity has kept me from a lot of sports and activ­i­ties, it just meant I’d play by myself and cre­ate worlds in my head. I come from a line of writ­ers in my fam­ily, but my afflic­tion def­i­nitely helped shape me into the author that I am. My scars made me who I am and I’m OK with that, because I’m a bit awesome.

7.       This book really makes me want a new tat­too. I only have two, a num­ber ‘13’ behind my ear and the star sym­bol for the band Faith No More on the back of my neck. The 13^th was in honor of Dark­house, the first book I ever pub­lished, which I released on May 13^th 2011. I’d love to get a Sins & Nee­dles tat­too but I don’t know what yet. I have plans to get another EIT-inspired tattoo…something that Perry Palomino gets in an upcom­ing book. I want it before every­one else gets it lol (there’s boat load of peo­ple with “And With Mad­ness Comes the Light” tats!

8.       Speak­ing of tats…Sins & Nee­dles is part of the The Artists Tril­ogy – I called it that because Ellie is a con artist and Cam­den is a tat­too artist. It took me a while to real­ize that the acronym is TAT. How about them apples?

9.       The next book in the series Shoot­ing Scars, should be released in the sum­mer (I don’t like to keep peo­ple wait­ing longer than six months, plus there’s On Every Street’s release before that). It’s told in the dual POV of Ellie and Cam­den. Very excited about this!

10.   In the book, I fea­ture music from a band called Guano Padano. I fell in love with their music a few years ago and decided I’d love to write a book where the music was fea­tured. Ta da! Here’s a Youtube clip for you to get an idea of how per­fect a sound­track it makes for Sins & Needles.

EXCERPT FROM SINS & NEEDLES

I turned the lawn chair around so that the high back was block­ing his view of me. Then, after a quick look around at his neigh­bors and see­ing only dark­ness from their win­dows, I shim­mied out of my jeans. Unfor­tu­nately, I was drunk and had for­got­ten to take off my boots first. I fell over side­ways onto the grass.

“What are you doing over there?” I heard Cam­den yell and the sound of metal tongs being placed on a rung.

“Stay back! I’m fine!” I yelled, hop­ing my voice wasn’t loud enough to alert the neighbors.

I thanked my lucky stars that my com­bat boots had a zip­per and quickly unzipped them. Lying on my back, with my leg bent up to my head, I pulled off the jeans and tossed them to the way­side. Then I got on my knees and started to look for my ugly Peg pants. Where the hell did they go?

“Look­ing for these?” Cam­den asked from behind me.

Swal­low­ing my pride, I turned around on my knees and looked up. Cam­den was hold­ing the pants in one hand. He dropped them beside him and then walked over to me. He held out his hand.

“Come on,” he said gen­tly, a shad­owed inten­sity in his eyes.

I shook my head quickly. “No. I’m just in my underwear.”

“I can see that,” he said. “Let me help you up.”

My heart thumped loudly in my ears and I looked away from his face and straight ahead at his legs. “I don’t want you to see.”

Sud­denly he was down on his knees and though there were a few inches between us, he was closer than he’d ever been. “I don’t care, Ellie,” he said determinedly.

I kept shak­ing my head, unable to form words, unable to tell him how I was feel­ing. I just wanted him to go away and leave me alone, let me get dressed in peace. I wanted to run. I wanted the dark­ness to swal­low me whole.

“You know how I feel about your scars. They only make you more beau­ti­ful,” he whis­pered, now stroking the side of my face. His eyes were search­ing mine, beg­ging me to open but the fear was so big and so damn real.

“You’ve never seen my scars.” My voice was barely audi­ble, even in my own head.

“No, I haven’t. But I’ve seen what they’ve made you.”

His nose nudged the side of mine and maybe because I’d been think­ing about it ever since Safe­way, or maybe because I was buy­ing some time, I leaned in and kissed him. This wasn’t the ten­der kiss of ear­lier. I had no wine bot­tles held above my head. This kiss was soft for a moment, then hur­ried. His lips sucked gen­tly on mine, his tongue rav­ish­ing my mouth like he couldn’t stop him­self. I was sud­denly insa­tiable, each kiss reach­ing down into my core, mak­ing me want all of him, every part. A mil­lion thoughts flew past my head and then there was noth­ing at all. There wasn’t even Cam­den and Ellie. There was just this hot, pri­mal, cru­cial need for each other.

Before I could stop him, or at least pre­tend to stop him, he was push­ing me back until I was falling onto the grass. I reluc­tantly slid my knees out to the side, my legs com­ing into full view; my scars vis­i­ble in the dark. He didn’t notice, didn’t care. He kept kiss­ing me pas­sion­ately, so hot, so sweet, as one of his hands dis­ap­peared into the back of my hair, cup­ping my head. He laid me on the ground, the hard grass tick­ling the sides of my ears, and that was the last time he was gen­tle. He strad­dled me and pulled my tank top over my head and tossed it aside. Then he leaned back and ripped off his own shirt. As if I wasn’t breath­ing hard enough already, squirm­ing beneath his form, he looked bet­ter than I could have imag­ined. Here was the new Cam­den McQueen, shirt­less, a tower of defined mus­cle and gor­geous, darkly dan­ger­ous tattoos.

There was a phoenix ris­ing from the ashes along the swoop of mus­cle along his hip­bones, a tiger/dragon hybrid fly­ing up the side of his stom­ach, scrip­ture peek­ing out of the top of his box­ers. I’d seen only glimpses of them before, and now they glowed before me, lit by the hun­dreds of warm lights in his gar­den. He was like a liv­ing, breath­ing paint­ing on an all-male canvas.

 

While you’re here, check out this AMAZEBALLS review from blogger-extraordinaire (and fel­low Canuck) Giselle at the rock­ing Xpresso Reads — “Dark, gritty and sexy as hell” — 5 big stars. READ IT. BASK IN HER INFECTIOUS ENTHUSIASM. She RARELY gives 5 stars, so this review means a lot (glad you loved it Giselle!!)

There’s another review at Read­ing Books Like a Boss where the book is reviewed LIKE A BOSS — read HERE.

AND OF COURSE if you have ANY inter­est in music what­so­ever, you’ll LOVE the playlist and musi­cal inspi­ra­tions for Sins & Nee­dles on Read­ing in Winter’s blog. READ HERE. DO IT.

Happy New Year everyone!

In prepa­ra­tion for And With Mad­ness Comes the Light (EIT #6.5) com­ing out Feb­ru­ary 14th, 2013, I’ve put together a lit­tle prize pack for every­one who’s wished Dex Foray could be their book boyfriend.

You could win all of the following…

- A $30 Ama­zon Gift Card

- A Dex-Files skin for the Kindle/Nook/iPad of your choice OR an iPhone skin

- A poster of And With Mad­ness Comes the Light, signed by me

- A per­son­al­ized let­ter from Dex Foray to you

- A pair of Team Dex undies

- AND a Twat­waf­fle hoodie. Oh that’s right. The llama gets it’s own sweat­shirt and you’ll be the first to wear it

This prize pack is open inter­na­tion­ally and only goes out to one win­ner. To enter, please leave a com­ment below stat­ing why you’d pick Dex to be your book boyfriend of the year. To gain an extra entry, please tweet about why you’d pick Dex Foray to be your boyfriend — make sure to use the hash­tag #EIT so I can catch those extra entries.

I’ll leave this run­ning from Decem­ber 31st to Feb­ru­ary 1st, 2013.

So, by now you’ve heard that On Demon Wings was nom­i­nated for the GoodReads 2012 Best Hor­ror Award. And you know that I’m up against some pretty heavy com­pe­ti­tion in that category…most of the books are big names from big pub­lish­ers (which is why in my case, unlike most Acad­emy Award nom­i­na­tions, it actu­ally IS an honor to be nom­i­nated). You’ve also heard that if I make it to the finals, I will be releas­ing a spe­cial EIT scene for free, just as a thank you (oh and as vot­ing incen­tive, let’s not kid our­selves here).

(vote HERE)

Here’s the deal. The Semi-Finals for the award begin on the 12th, so I have to make it through the first round before ANY of this can happen.

Three Chances to Vote!

Open­ing Round: Octo­ber 30 – Novem­ber 11
Semi­fi­nal Round: Novem­ber 12 – Novem­ber 18
Final Round: Novem­ber 19 – Novem­ber 27

Then the finals begin on Novem­ber 19th. Which means that’s when I’ll find out if I’ve made it to the end. And if I do, I will not only release the free scene.…

.…I’ll release a novella! I’d love to do a free novella, unfor­tu­nately now that I write for a liv­ing, I can’t do that. Time spent writ­ing has to be able to put food on my table.

But it’s a novella you WILL love. It may mean Ada’s novella is get­ting pushed out of the way by a few months but that’s cool, right? BECAUSE…

The novella will be The Dex-Files Part Two. OR as it will be titled: And With Mad­ness Comes the Light.

It will be a novella told from Dex’s POV and unlike the Dex-Files, it won’t be a col­lec­tion of scenes. It will explain from that last moment in Lying Sea­son, until the end of On Demon Wings, what was going on with Dex. His story of the months spent away from Perry. And YES it will include “that scene” dur­ing the exor­cism that all of you were so anx­ious to read

So there you have it peo­ple. I have ideas flow­ing, my cover artist on speed dial, I’m just wait­ing for Novem­ber 19th.

Of course, I can’t do this alone. I need your votes! Get your friends to vote, your fam­ily, your dog, what­ever. Get me to the finals at least and you will get your newest Dex-Files book in Feb/March of 2013! And remem­ber, I’ll need your votes again once I make it to the semi-finals on Mon­day (which I hope­fully will!)

Again, here’s the vot­ing link: http://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-horror-books-2012#73801-Best-Horror

*dusts off hands*

Oh right, and in case you missed these tid­bits, Into the Hol­low is being released on Kin­dle and Smash­words on Novem­ber 15th for $3.99 (and for the last time, if you HAVE A NOOK you can DOWNLOAD FROM SMASHWORDS. It’s the same type of file, same price and you don’t have to wait MONTHS for Barnes and Noble to add it!!). Really hope you find that it’s worth the slight delay!

Also, The Devil’s Metal is just 99 cents on Ama­zon Kin­dle too: http://www.amazon.com/The-Devils-Metal-ebook/dp/B009EEOM4S/ref=pd_sim_kstore_6

(thanks again Heather for that Dex button!)

Want­ing, need­ing, crav­ing some Into the Hol­low news?

Well, to start off, how about you vote for On Demon Wings in the 2012 GoodReads Awards. It’s such a freak­ing honor to be nom­i­nated (and I’m against Dean Koontz, omg) that I’m glow­ing just from that. But hey, wouldn’t it be cool if my book actu­ally made it to the finals? I would be danc­ing on the moon!

So, what you need to do is go here and VOTE for On Demon Wings as the Best Hor­ror of 2012.

Many peo­ple have asked why the other books aren’t nom­i­nated, but ODW was the only full-length EIT book released in 2012. Dark­house — Lying Sea­son were all released last year, if you can believe it (yup, released 4 books in one year!).

Any­hoo, yes, vote and I’ll reward you with a scene. I’ll decide on three pos­si­ble scenes I could write for you. You vote on which one I should write. And I’ll release it on the web­site for free. BUT.…and this is a big butt (much like my own)…I need to get to the finals first. Even if I don’t win the award, if I am a final­ist, then you guys win the scene! Deal?

So if you’ve already voted, get your friends and fam­ily to vote! Get on GoodReads and get peo­ple excited! I think Dex and Perry deserve a wee bit of recog­ni­tion these days and I would be hon­ored if they could get it.

Once again, go HERE and pick On Demon Wings — one vote for that is a vote for all EIT books

OH and I’m not done here, not by a long shot. I finally have a release date for Into the Hol­low. Thurs­day, Novem­ber 15th, the book will be live on Ama­zon and Smash­words. Sorry, Nook and Kobo users, this may take months for you (take it up with B&N) but you can always get your epub copy from Smashwords.

OH and OH…OH OH!

Here’s a lit­tle teaser for you

INTO THE HOLLOW — A SNIPPET — UNEDITED

“Up you go, drunky,” he said affec­tion­ately. He grabbed my arms and pulled me up. My feet failed – I don’t know where they went – and I fell straight into his chest. Damn. I had for­got­ten how hard it was. He tight­ened his arms around me and, damn, I had for­got­ten how hard they were too.

I was stand­ing, no, lean­ing at angle, unwill­ing to help myself. I raised up my head so that my face was peer­ing at his, inches away, and smiled. “Thank you for catch­ing me.”

“Will you be OK?” Rigby asked Dex. Dex nod­ded with­out tak­ing his amused eyes off of mine.

“I’ve got her,” he said. I kept smiling.

He raised me up eas­ily and plunked me on my feet like he was stack­ing a chair. Then he put his arm around me, hold­ing me to him, and led me to our room.

“Good night,” he told the guys over his shoulder.

They mum­bled some­thing I couldn’t hear and soon I was in the pitch black bed­room. Dex let go of me to close the door and I began to sway to the side. Sud­denly he was there, strong hands on me again, and lead­ing me to the bed.

“Here, sit down,” he said plac­ing me on it. He began to take off my boots.

I didn’t want to sit up so I leaned back until I was flat on the bed. The room began to spin a bit.

“It’s dark in here and spinny,” I mut­tered as he removed one boot. “Sorry if my feet stink.”

“I’ve dealt with worse,” he said and quickly removed the other. I was left alone for a few sec­onds while he did some­thing in the cor­ner. Then light glowed behind my closed lids. I opened them. He had got­ten the kerosene lamp going.

His face appeared above me as he leaned over. “How are you feeling?”

“Good,” I grinned. “Take off your shirt.”

He laughed. “Whoa, okay. You’re feel­ing fine, that’s for sure.”

“How about your pants?”

His smile twisted. “Oh Perry. You should be care­ful of what you ask of me.”

I reached up and grabbed his head and pulled him down toward me. My body was being pumped full of alco­hol and the adren­a­line of being scared ear­lier and the charged con­cept of sleep­ing with him. Of being naked with him. Of hav­ing sex in front of the fire­place. It swirled around in my veins, mak­ing me feel deli­ciously heavy inside and at the same time mak­ing me crave him, like I was a space that needed filling.

My fin­gers buried them­selves in his hair, wrap­ping around the thick strands and hold­ing on tight. I brought his anx­ious face down to mine and whis­pered, “You’re going to have to take my clothes off then.”

 

 

LAST BUT NOT LEAST = Because all EIT books were slashed to 99 cents last month, I’m doing the same for The Devil’s Metal this month on Ama­zon — or at last until Into the Hol­low is released. It’s only fair! So if you haven’t snatched up the book, get on it while you still can at this super duper low price! And remem­ber, The Devil’s Reprise (#2) comes out in March/April so you don’t have too long to wait to get more sexy Sage and Dawn times.

 

I’m happy to report that I’ve found my groove with Into the Hol­low. It’s gone from some­thing I must write to some­thing I need, want, crave to write. I love this obses­sive stage of the process and I love being with Dex and Perry again…even though, wow, these two…talk about sex­ual ten­sion over­load. And just plain ol’ ten­sion. If you find your­self yelling at them in your head, don’t worry, I am too. But don’t worry there’s a few nice payoffs…heh heh.

They just have a LOT of shit to work out. Not to men­tion being ter­ror­ized in the Cana­dian Rock­ies by an urban leg­end. OK, I’ll just come out and say it: Sasquatch.

Now that you’ve stopped laugh­ing, I’ll explain. When was the last time Sasquatch or Big­foot scared you? Exactly. Never. Here in Canada he’s known for steal­ing Koka­nee beer (although I think he killed The Ranger at some point and hav­ing your beer stolen is terrifying).

But I decided to take the con­cept of Sasquatch and turn it into some­thing truly ter­ri­fy­ing and even real­is­tic. This isn’t Harry and the Hendersons…this is more like those crea­tures in the movie The Descent. Eeeep.

I’ve even added a few quotes to Goodreads from the book — you can read them here: http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/19220748-into-the-hollow-experiment-in-terror-6

As I announced, the book should be out the week of the 13th but I am offi­cially choos­ing the 19th as the pub­li­ca­tion date just in case it goes a bit longer — then I don’t have to, once again, push it back. But hope­fully it will be released early. As soon as it’s all ready to go, I won’t hes­i­tate to let you know and put it out there.

I’m pretty excited about this one…to me, it’s a com­bi­na­tion of Dead Sky Morn­ing (camp­ing, BC, forests, iso­la­tion) and Lying Sea­son (sex, angst, con­flict, issues). A win­ning com­bi­na­tion (I hope).

Oh, and here’s some­thing I’ve been toy­ing with…I’ve always plot­ted out the books ahead of time, for the most part, and look­ing for­ward to book #8, it’s always been set to be about twice as long as a reg­u­lar book. Well, I might just split that book in two then.…that would make #9 books in the series. I won’t really make a deci­sion on this until I start work on book #7, Come Alive, but let­ting you know that it’s a possibility.

My friend Amanda came up with the genius idea of split­ting the title of book #8.…so

Book #8 — Ashes…

Book #9 — …To Ashes.

Or Book #8 — Ashes to Ashes

Book #9 — Dust to Dust

I kind of like that.  Stay tuned!