Every once in a while I think an author has to thank her fans and read­ers (hope­fully you’re both!) This is one of those times. With­out sup­port from my read­ers, I wouldn’t be able to write for a liv­ing. I wouldn’t be able to write about Dex & Perry (and Dawn and Sage and Ellie and Cam­den and Jamie and Chris and what­ever other char­ac­ters are com­ing down the lane). I’d be cry­ing in my room, won­der­ing if any­one liked me or my writ­ing, debat­ing if I’ve found my call­ing or not.

Now, I’m only human. I do cry in my room at times because some­times the whole self-publishing game is tir­ing. You work end­lessly around the clock at writ­ing your nov­els, mar­ket­ing your nov­els, design­ing cov­ers, hir­ing edi­tors, doing edits, mail­ing pack­ages, mak­ing con­nec­tions with blog­gers. It’s a more than a full-time gig. You can ask my friends and fam­ily who never see me any­more, it lit­er­ally con­sumes my life.

Then there’s the whole com­pe­ti­tion thing. I know you’re not sup­posed to com­pare your­self with oth­ers, but some­times it’s inevitable. You work hard, believe in your­self and your tal­ent, then watch as all the other books zoom up the charts. You feel like a fail­ure, like your books will never catch on and you won­der what it is about your books that fail to attract “everyone.”

Well, I don’t attract every­one. I know that. I know my books are a tough sell. They aren’t straight-up romance — that’s not my strong suit. The char­ac­ters are ter­ri­bly flawed and f-ed up and yes, I like to scare the pants off of peo­ple. These things do not make a block­buster book.

But what I do attract is a select group of peo­ple whom I like to con­sider more than just fans. I con­sider you all my friends. My allies. My Palo­min­ions. You pick me up when I’m feel­ing down and you make Perry and Dex come alive into this world. When I see a black High­lander come down the street, I get excited! And it’s such a won­der­ful feel­ing to know I’m not alone

So, with­out fur­ther ado, I have cre­ated a give­away just for EIT fans and read­ers. You don’t need to post about this or tweet about this. This is just for YOU.

Leave a com­ment telling me how you dis­cov­ered EIT. That’s it. On Fri­day I will draw three win­ners for these iden­ti­cal prizes (fan cho­sen). Oh, and this is open internationally:

a Raf­fle­copter give­away

An EIT hoodie and a Doucheca­noe shirt (cus­tomized to the winner’s size), an EIT logo USB stick with the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror sound­track, Fat Rab­bit stick­ers AND a signed copy of any your choice of the fol­low­ing paper­backs Dark­house, Red Fox, Dead Sky Morn­ing, Lying Sea­son, On Demon Wings.

 

Good luck. And thank you!

NOTE: In order to be entered you must com­ment on this blog post AND you must enter your email address or login via FB on the Raf­fle­copter wid­get above. Both need to be done to be entered and Raf­fle­copter will be mak­ing the actual draw…

You know what’s awe­some about read­ing? The whole word of mouth thing. I’ve per­son­ally watched on GoodReads how one per­son is read­ing a book, leaves a review (doesn’t even have to be an awe­some review) and sec­onds later another friend is snap­ping up the book and read­ing it her­self. It’s an amaz­ing process and I owe a lot of Exper­i­ment in Terror’s suc­cess to the fact that many lovely read­ers have tried to get their friends to read it…and in some cases…succeeded!

To say thanks for that, I’ve opened up a buddy con­test where you and your EIT-loving friends could win an Into the Hol­low ARC.

Now obvi­ously it’s a lit­tle hard to reg­u­late a con­test like this because any­one could say “yeah my friends Boo Boo and Mary-Sue have read the book because of me”, so the clos­est thing I could come up with is using GoodReads.

To enter the refer­ral con­test, which is run­ning until Octo­ber 1st, all you have to do is leave a com­ment below on the blog A) link­ing to your GoodReads pro­file and B) link­ing to your friend’s GoodReads pro­file (how­ever many friends you have got­ten hooked). NOTE: if your pro­file or your friend’s pro­file is pri­vate, you will have to add me as a friend. You can delete me later. I just need to be able to see that the friends have indeed read the book (they didn’t have to like it) or are cur­rently read­ing the book (and that’s ANY of the EIT books AND/OR The Devil’s Metal when it comes out).

This con­test is open inter­na­tion­ally and there will be one win­ner and their friends announced on Octo­ber 1st. Obvi­ously there is more than one way to win because if there is a group of you and you’ve got­ten each other hooked, you can be entered as a friend…for exam­ple: Perry reads Dark­house rec­om­mends it to Ada who reads Dark­house and then they both rec­om­mend it to their friend Pippa who reads it. Perry could enter the con­test link­ing to both Ada and Pippa, who both read the book per her sug­ges­tion. But Ada could ALSO enter the con­test, say­ing she got Pippa to read it. So Ada gets two chances to win..see what I mean? So, the­o­ret­i­cally, there could be a lot of win­ners here! And isn’t it fun to win stuff for your friends??

Any­way, that is the refer­ral con­test on GoodReads! Do you have an account? Have you got­ten at least one other friend on Goodreads to read EIT and/or The Devil’s Metal? Then you can enter and you both have  the chance to win a copy. Easy as pie (and you know how Dex feels about pie).

There MIGHT be some pretty cool EIT merch thrown in too…just say­ing That plus an Advanced Reader’s Copy of Into the Hol­low BEFORE pub­li­ca­tion date…pretty cool, right?

Speak­ing of The Devil’s Metal…that segue doesn’t work, but ANYWAY we have our early reviews AND a pub­li­ca­tion date: Sep­tem­ber 21st. I’ll be back to remind you, but I thought I’d give you a heads up…THIS FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21st, THE DEVIL’S METAL WILL BE AVAILABLE ON KINDLE AND SMASHWORDS. Nook, Kobo, etc to fol­low. AND YES paper­backs are com­ing too.

Oh, and about those reviews.…here they are!

Amanda says:

I was for­tune enough to be a Beta reader for this book. And I am so glad I got to read it first because I can tell you all how amaz­ing it is! If you are a fan of EIT you will love The Devil’s Metal. I won’t give away too many details because I don’t want to spoil the awe­some­ness that is this story, but I will share some highlights.

First of all, holy fuck Karina Halle is bril­liant. Not only are the char­ac­ters so real and lik­able, espe­cially Dawn, but the plot moves so well I for­got I was read­ing. It felt like a movie being played out in my mind. Vivid and detailed and totally intriguing.

Dawn is such a great char­ac­ter. Strong and deter­mined but also a lit­tle young and impres­sion­able. I like her dynamic with Sage and how their rela­tion­ship grows and changes through­out the book. And the sex? Hoo boy! HOT! Dawn has her typ­i­cal “rock band” expe­ri­ences but still man­ages to keep her head and do her job amognst the young and sexy rock stars. A true feat in my opinion.

The 70’s vibe came through loud and clear and there were great snip­pets of life back then, very authen­tic. The author def­i­nitely did her reasearch. And the rock side of the story was fun! 70’s rock is not really my favorite genre but the depth of knowl­edge about the music, the bands, the feel­ings of that time in his­tory were so real I felt like I was expe­ri­enc­ing the con­certs and back­stage antics for myself.

The hor­ror aspect was really good and mixed in well with the story. There were parts when I was glad all the lights were on and I was safely inside my house. This book will most likely scare your socks off.

Over­all, if you are a fan of EIT you will love this book. It has incred­i­ble depth and the char­ac­ters come to life in such a way you have deep feel­ings for all of them, whether bad or good. The hor­ror quo­tient is high and the plot has enough twists to keep you won­der­ing what will hap­pen next. I highly rec­om­mend it!

5 stars!

Kara says:

So I was one of the edi­tors assigned to this book. As much as I want to rate it, it would be inap­pro­pri­ate and a con­flict of inter­est for me to do so. But those that know me and trust me know that I wouldn’t scam them, so I decided to write a lit­tle review with­out a rat­ing. That way I can still share my thoughts because I really want to.

First thing you should know, if I could rate this book, it would have EASILY got­ten 4 stars, but there’s a good chance I would have given it 5. I adored this book. The char­ac­ters are ridicu­lously well-developed and there are a good num­ber of char­ac­ters here. Some I hated, some I loved, but most of all, they make you feel.

The plot is scary, roman­tic, and mes­mer­iz­ing. I know this term is overused, but this book is utterly unput­down­able. I’m a huge fan of Karina’s writ­ing style. She has a way of get­ting her point across in a beau­ti­ful but easy to under­stand way. The way she writes scenes from scary to sexy will leave you want­ing more.

This book is set in the 70s. And I really think she cap­tured the atmos­phere and the essence of the decade won­der­fully. The boys in the band are swoon­wor­thy, the groupies are ridicu­lous, the sex is hot, the fash­ions are out­ra­geous, and there are men­tions of great music and leg­endary artists. Oh, and drugs. You will truly feel like you are there on tour with the band.

But most of all, you will feel unset­tled and creeped out. After all, at its core this is a hor­ror novel. And a really fun ride at that.

I’m extremely relieved at these early reviews, even if they are of the 1st draft. There were times when I was plow­ing through this book (I think I wrote it in three weeks, but don’t quote me on that!) that I was like “how is this ever going to be any good?” and full of the usual self-doubt. I was wor­ried it sounded too much like another book and when I was done wor­ry­ing about that, I was wor­ried it would never get fin­ished and when I was done wor­ry­ing about that, I was wor­ried it would suck balls. And not good balls, BAD balls. BUT…so far, people’s reac­tions have sur­prised me. These two ladies up there aren’t the only beta read­ers, just the only ones who have left a review (so far), so I’m con­fi­dent now that if you like to be scared (and per­son­ally I don’t think it’s scarier than any EIT book, so wimps rest assured) and you like sexy times and ten­sion and exotic, 6’4″ tat­tooed rock stars and rock n’ roll and the 70’s and some­thing really dif­fer­ent, you’ll like The Devil’s Metal. You may even love it. I know I do

WOO HOO! I am pleased, so fuck­ing pleased, to announce that The Devil’s Metal has been com­pleted (1st draft any­way). It was a fun, hell­ish ride and I’m grate­ful to my friends, fans and beta-readers for encour­ag­ing me to keep going with it. I feel like I’ve been on a hot, smelly tour bus with a bunch of fucked up rock stars for two weeks. yeesh. LET ME OFF!

Now that it’s all done, I can safely say that I don’t think the book can be com­pared to anything…except Almost Famous. And In the Mouth of Mad­ness. And Jennifer’s Body. And The Devil’s Advo­cate. And Final Des­ti­na­tion. And so on. OK, well you’ll have to see for yourselves.

Here’s Teaser #4 — as my beta reader Emmy pointed out, EIT “the­o­rists” might be intrigued (do note, as usual, this is unedited).

Even­tu­ally Jacob noticed some­thing was going on. Or he’d always noticed and had waited for the right time to bring it up. With nor­mal Jacob fla­vor, it hap­pened to be a few min­utes before the show.

“Tell me what’s on your mind, Rusty,” he said dryly as we stood at the side of the stage. He was run­ning a nail file under­neath his nails and flick­ing out the dirt.

“I got a call from Barry today.”

“Oh?”

“He said he’d been receiv­ing some let­ters about me.”

“Oh?” he repeated, a bit more interested.

“If I didn’t know bet­ter I’d say that Terri or one of the other Get The Fuck Outs is behind it. It kind of gels with what you said back…well what­ever city that was in. That it was groupie high school.”

His golden eyes remained on his nails. “Oh yes, ain’t that the truth, love.”

“So, that’s going on. I’m mildly freaked out.” I crossed my arms feel­ing a chill.

“I can see that. I don’t blame you. Do you think these girls are…dangerous?” he said the last word like it was laden in silk.

I gave him a weird look. “You tell me! I’ve just learned who they are. You’ve dealt with them longer.”

He exhaled sharply through his nose and finally looked me in the eye. His red hair flamed under the stage lights, giv­ing him a hell­ish aura. “Every­one has the chance to become dan­ger­ous. If the right weather pat­terns are cre­ated, if the right feel­ings are invoked…feelings of injus­tice. Jeal­ousy. Feel­ings of being owed some­thing they believe they have a right to have. To…collect. We all have it in us to become a dan­ger, either to oth­ers or to our­selves. It’s a mat­ter if the right clouds are brew­ing. Cer­tain clouds will cre­ate a storm.”

“And?” I egged him on impa­tiently. “What clouds are brew­ing? Are these groupies dan­ger­ous or not? Do I need to start sleep­ing with a switch­blade under­neath my pillow?”

A slow smile spread across his rough lips. Then he shrugged and turned his atten­tion back to clean­ing his nails. “Couldn’t hurt, could it?”

Oooh, that Jacob! Any­way, I’m doing a give­away on my FB page here: https://www.facebook.com/ExperimentinTerror

Giv­ing a way a pair of Hybrid undies (Medium) and an e-format ARC of The Devil’s Metal! To enter, leave a thought­ful com­ment (just one) on the FB post. I’ll do a draw in a week for one lucky win­ner. Open worldwide.

 

 

Here’s another teaser from the upcom­ing The Devil’s Metal — to be released end of September.

And yeah, Black Sab­bath rules.

 

But first some infor­ma­tion for the newcomers:

The Devils’s Metal is a new adult hor­ror romance. What’s new adult? It’s a new genre that deals with 20-somethings. In col­lege, post college…those years. Same per­sonal fla­vor as YA, but with much more mature themes. The Devil’s Metal is part one of a two book series, the sequel com­ing out next year — The Devil’s Reprise. Also a chance for a Sage POV in the mid­dle because boy does this man have a wicked story to tell.

Blurb: It’s the sum­mer of 1974 and 21-year old Dawn Emer­son has only three things she wants to do: com­pete one last time in the Ellens­burg Rodeo, win back her ex-boyfriend Ryan, and become the best damn music jour­nal­ist at Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity. But all her plans are left in the dust when she’s con­tacted by Creem mag­a­zine to go on the road with one of her favorite groups, the up-and-coming metal band, Hybrid.

At first the assign­ment reads like a dream come true. Not only will Dawn land some much-needed cred­i­bil­ity as a female music jour­nal­ist, but she’ll finally get to expe­ri­ence life from the other side of the stage, and maybe crack the drunken, enig­matic code that is gui­tarist Sage Knightly. Instead, Dawn finds her­self on an aging tour bus filled with ego-maniacs, band pol­i­tics and a whole lot of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. When mon­sters start show­ing up in dress­ing rooms and some of Sage’s groupies become increas­ingly strange and dan­ger­ous, Dawn dis­cov­ers the band is not only going places – they’re going straight to Hell.

And Dawn has a back­stage pass.

Teaser (UNEDITED — may change prior to publication):

But try as I did, I could not keep my eyes off of Sage Knightly. I just couldn’t help myself. See­ing this man on stage was like watch­ing a lion prowl along the crest of his king­dom. He com­manded respect even when he was seated on his chair with only an acoustic gui­tar at his fin­gers and when he got up, the Mex­i­can tex­tile strap strain­ing against his neck, every eye in the crowd fol­lowed his every stride. Nor­mally Sage was a back­ground fig­ure, qui­etly com­man­deer­ing the direc­tion of the show, but tonight, with Rob­bie sub­dued, Sage became the star. With­out a doubt you knew this was the man who made Hybrid what they were.

I watched as his long fin­gers expertly picked along to com­plex and haunt­ing solos. I watched the inten­sity in his eyes as they stared off into the crowd, call­ing on his tal­ent from some­where. I watched his tall frame, his large, rounded shoul­ders muscling into the heav­ier chords. I watched his flip-flopped feet tap­ping to some inter­nal metronome.

And I watched a faint shiver roll through his body. His eyes snapped away from watch­ing Rob­bie belt out “She Could Have Loved Me” and his vision made a bee­line to the front of the stage. There, squished up along the bar­ri­cade, was a strangely famil­iar look­ing woman: Long white hair, pale face, fever­ishly gleam­ing eyes. As beau­ti­ful as she was, she gave off an immense feel­ing of dread that gripped my bones. Sage watched her as if hyp­no­tized. The woman smiled up at him.

And in that smile I saw fangs. Her face trans­formed dis­turbingly with black holes for eyes, an elon­gated, wrin­kled face of yellow-white, a wide gap­ing hole for a mouth, teeth pro­trud­ing. A long tongue slide out, crawl­ing with quiv­er­ing insects. It licked its absence of lips, curled del­i­cately along peel­ing skin. I heard noises deep inside my head, the buzzing of bees, painful wails, hor­rific chants that built up to immea­sur­able vol­umes. I felt hor­ror, a ter­ror so com­plete that I had one thought: I was going to die there on the stage. I was going to lose my soul.

I was going to Hell.

 

I’ve been feel­ing on top of the world lately. I’m writ­ing full-time, I’m mov­ing to a beau­ti­ful local island with a Mediter­ranean cli­mate (yeah, it exists in Canada!), my part­ner is leav­ing his thank­less job and tak­ing over a busi­ness. My books are sell­ing well, The Dex-Files con­tin­ues to win over read­ers (well, sort of…so many still on the Dex fence!). My agent is going to start pimp­ing EIT to pub­lish­ers come the fall. Things are good. I’m happy.

I’m just keep­ing my head down, deal­ing with the cover for Into the Hol­low, plus cool posters and graph­ics for The Devil’s Metal. I’m writ­ing it every day and think it’s really com­ing along. I love Dawn. I love the 1970’s. I love the music and the creepy aspect and I love Sage. I have my doubts, of course, as every writer does. Am I good enough? Will peo­ple want to read this? Why do I have to write things that aren’t straight-up com­mer­cial fare? Is this going to suck? You know, nor­mal doubts.

Then I get kicked in the fuck­ing gut.

A book comes out a month before mine is set to. It deals with pretty much the exact same thing as The Devil’s Metal. And it’s already #66 on Ama­zon kindle.

You guessed it, I’m talk­ing about The Mighty Storm by Saman­tha Towle.

So, with a bleed­ing heart, I look at the reviews to see how sim­i­lar the books sound and the results shat­ter me. Like, make me feel like jump­ing off a bridge. How fuck­ing rot­ten is my tim­ing. How am I com­pete with this book? Why would peo­ple want to read mine when they can read one that is highly-acclaimed? And seems to be almost the same! And how on earth am I going to stop read­ers from com­par­ing the two when I’m doing it myself?

Now, I know there are dif­fer­ences between the books. But the sim­i­lar­i­ties are there. Both are about a young female music jour­nal­ist who goes on the road with her favorite band and falls in love with the hot, tat­tooed bad-boy rock­star. There are shenani­gans with bad behav­ior and groupies. There’s angst. There’s sex. There’s music. Etc.

As I noted, there are dif­fer­ences. Mine is hor­ror. It’s set in 1974. I was/am a music jour­nal­ist and many of my own sto­ries have found their way into the book. In Storm, the two lovers were child­hood friends and sweet­hearts and are reunited. There’s another man in the mix. In Metal, Dawn is a fish out of water and Sage is one of her idols. There’s no other man. Mine’s not erot­ica, it’s horror/romance (I’d say para­nor­mal romance but that has strange con­no­ta­tions with it).

For all I know they are totally dif­fer­ent books. As a friend pointed out, you can’t com­pare Cujo and Old Yeller because they both have dogs with rabies. And I know that. I hear Towle did a fab­u­lous job with The Mighty Storm, mak­ing it the next Beau­ti­ful Dis­as­ter and I do intend to read it.…one day, when mine is all done so that I don’t get wrongly influenced.

But the prob­lem I am hav­ing — the one that makes me afraid to pub­lish this book — is the accu­sa­tions that I might get, the ones that say I’m jump­ing on this book’s band­wagon and that I’m copy­ing it.

Not true. Coin­ci­dence is a funny thing but I can say with utmost hon­esty that The Devil’s Metal came from my lit­tle whacked head.

For one, I am a music jour­nal­ist and I, one day, sick of deal­ing with real-life groupies of another band, thought wouldn’t it be great to write a period piece that dealt with this stuff, but had a demonic, scary spin on it. I wanted to put my expe­ri­ences down but make it fun, sexy and enter­tain­ing. The Devil’s Metal came to me in sum­mer of 2009. I even tweeted about it and called it The Devil’s Death Metal, before a friend sug­gested that The Devil’s Metal would be better.

I wrote the book into the fourth Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror novel, Lying Sea­son. It’s a hol­lowed out book in Dex’s office that Perry finds.

I started talk­ing pub­licly about the book at the start of the sum­mer of 2012 and even talked about it in an inter­view here: http://www.maryse.net/behind-the-books-interviews/behind-the-books-interview-with-karina-halle-15-gift-gard-giveaway.html

“I’m just about to start a book called The Devil’s Metal, which I am hop­ing for a Sep­tem­ber release date. It’s a 2–3-book series, adult para­nor­mal romance. A lot of it is based or inspired by my work in the music indus­try. It’s set in the 1970’s and it’s: Almost Famous but with demons instead of groupies. I’m super freak­ing excited to start it.”

And August 2nd, I wrote the blurb for it here: http://experimentinterror.com/2012/08/07/the-devils-metal/

I know this all seems like a bit much, but I feel it’s best to nip this in the bud before read­ers, or god for­bid, the author accuse me of pla­gia­rism. Not that I think the author would because she seems like an awe­some and tal­ented lady who is soar­ing into best-sellers list, but speak­ing from expe­ri­ence, I know what it feels like when you see books that come out after yours that read a lit­tle too much the same (don’t get me started on a para­nor­mal YA book I saw about a light­house on the Ore­gon coast and a mys­te­ri­ous guy called Declan or “Dex” because that one did my head in). I’d hate for any author to feel that way.

So there you have it. This is my dilemma. I’ve spent most of my day grap­pling with whether I should still release the book or not. I still don’t know. I know if I do, I’m going to get some back­lash, even with this blog post. I know peo­ple will com­pare my wee lit­tle horror/70’s piece to a book that’s not only sell­ing well but get­ting 5-star reviews across the board. My book will be com­pared and it will not mea­sure up. It’s not what peo­ple want — it’s not straight-up romance and it’s not a tear­jerker. I have my work cut out for me and there’s a chance this book will flop…all because of bad, rot­ten timing.

Of course, it could flop because it flat out sucks but that’s some­thing I was wor­ried about anyway.

Sigh. I don’t know what to do. I might not pub­lish. I might post­pone it. Or I still might release it on Sep­tem­ber 21st and hope for the best. Plug my nose and take the leap.

I will keep writ­ing it though, because it’s a story I always wanted to tell. I just hope my muse is gen­tle with me and that every­thing hap­pens for a reason.

I’ll keep you posted.

 

I get a lot of ques­tions from peo­ple. A lot of com­ments. I wish I could address them all, but that takes up a lot of time and time is some­thing I need to write. I need buck­ets full of time. But I don’t like ignor­ing peo­ple either.

So I thought I’d answer some of the most com­mon ques­tions I’ve been get­ting right here, right now:

1. Why did you end On Demon Wings on a cliffhanger? Did you do that to entice peo­ple to read the next book? You’re a cruel bitch and I hate you.

- I know peo­ple are going to buy the next book. I did not end it on a cliffhanger for that rea­son. I ended it because to me that is where I had ALWAYS planned to end the story. Deduct points for that if you want, but to me that’s how that book was sup­posed to end. It fol­lowed the struc­ture I set out for it. The cli­max was the exor­cism scene. I’d be adding an extra cli­max in a sense if I were to add in the res­o­lu­tion of that cliffhanger. Could I have ended it right after the exor­cism scene? I guess. But that didn’t seem right to me either. Dis­agree with me all you want, but those were my reasons…NOT to sell more books. I’m pretty sure if I wrote a book about Perry and Dex shop­ping at Tar­get, that would sell.

That said, Book 6 will NOT end on a cliffhanger. So, breathe easy!

2. Why didn’t you write about the “blah blah” scene in The Dex-Files? Why wasn’t it longer?

- The Dex-Files was never intended to be a full-length novel and it was never intended to pro­vide every answer or every­one of his view­points to all scenes in the books. Some­times you have to trust that the author knows what they are doing. I don’t believe in lay­ing all the cards out for you guys to see. Dex needs to still be a mys­tery. There still needs to be top­ics and issues for future books. And, really, if you must know how Dex would react, what his thoughts would be dur­ing a cer­tain scene, just think about it. There were enough tid­bits in The Dex-Files and On Demon Wings for peo­ple to draw their own con­clu­sions (lol,  I hope).

3. When is Into The Hol­low com­ing out? Can you release it today?

- Octo­ber 23rd and no. The book has not been writ­ten (aside from the first few chap­ters). Also, I’m in no rush. The sooner I release books, the sooner the series is over…and who wants that? That thought gives me major sad face.

4. Can’t you write more than eight books, then?

- Don’t you hate a series that goes on and on when they should have ended a long time ago? Yeah, I don’t want that to hap­pen to EIT. I want to go out while peo­ple still love it. But, remem­ber, that tril­ogy in a few years

5. Why isn’t this a movie?

- I don’t know. I’m a writer, not a film­maker. If we’re lucky, my agent will sell the film/TV rights to the series. And if we are really lucky, it’ll go beyond being an “option” and actu­ally get made! *fin­gers crossed*

6. Is Max­imus Dex’s brother?

- Lol. Whut? How does that work? Sure, they can both be doucheca­noes but no, Dex has a brother called Michael. You will see him in Book 8. He’s a real, breath­ing, nor­mal dude.

7. What is up with Max­imus anyway?

- Many things.

8. Why is Dex so horny?

- He’s a dude. Maybe a more sex­ual, fucked up dude, but still a dude. Dudes get bon­ers around pretty girls they like/love. Dudes think about sex. Dudes have sex (and yes, from an early age). Or maybe I just tend to hang around horny dudes.

9. What’s with strong Dex in Bailout?

- Read Old Blood.

10. Why can’t I buy (insert book here:______) for NOOK? I can’t find it at Barnes and Noble.

- Because B&N are doucheca­noes, remem­ber? They take a long time to upload my books to their site, some­times over a month. HOWEVER you can always buy an epub Nook com­pat­i­ble Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror book at Smash­words — this site pub­lishes instan­ta­neously, it’s just as cheap as B&N and if you fol­low the instruc­tions, easy to use! I rec­om­mend them. https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/khalle

Ahhh, any other news while I have you here? Well, on Sep­tem­ber 23rd I’ve got 30 days of Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror com­ing. That means 30 days of cool posts, awe­some give­aways, inter­views, excerpts, etc. So stay tuned for that!

Awe­some pod­cast for Dark­house at Books for Bitchez: http://booksforbitches.tumblr.com/

Hmmm, oh! The Dex-Files made the Gal­l­ey­Cat Weekly Best Sell­ers List this week. Not long ago, Old Blood was kick­ing ass up there for 5 weeks in a row. NOW IT’S DEX’S TURN (we came in at #2 out of all fic­tion books in the Smash­words store).http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/self-published-bestsellers-list-for-august-20-2012_b56292

Here’s a great review from the AWESOME For­ever Young Adult for Old Blood and Dex Files: http://foreveryoungadult.com/2012/08/21/a-good-companion-novel-is-like-a-good-sidecar/

HOLY FUCK check out this AMAZEBALLS DRAWING OF PERRY IN ON DEMON WINGS by the Fab­u­lous Leabharlann

http://leabharlann.deviantart.com/art/On-Demon-Wings-Perry-322424268

And once again, much love to the read­ers who have been send­ing me kind emails, com­ments and mes­sages and who are tire­lessly pimp­ing out the books to their friends, neigh­bours, dogs. YOU guys rock my world and help me live my dreams, so THANK YOU.

OK…back to writ­ing. I hope to have some Devil’s Metal excerpts soon

Ah, the day is upon us my friends. Today, instead of get­ting up at 7 AM to get ready for work, I had the choice of sleep­ing in…after all, this is the first day of being self-employed. The first day of being a full-time writer.

Ahh, lucky you, you say. And yes, I know I’m lucky. Lucky that I have such a loyal and slightly rabid fan­base, lucky that I’ve not given up when the going got tough, lucky that I had sup­port from my fam­ily and friends. I’m lucky that I can do what I love for a living.

Does this mean it’s an easy life from now on? HELL NO. As any free­lancer will tell you, once you take away the “secu­rity” of a “nor­mal” job, every dol­lar com­ing in and dol­lar going out has more mean­ing. As in, OH MY GOD WHAT IF I NEVER SELL ANOTHER BOOK I’LL DIE AND BE HOMELESS.

Of course, if we lis­tened to these valid fears, no one would ever take the leap. So here I am, leap­ing off the cliff and build­ing my wings on the way down. It’s going to be a chal­leng­ing and ter­ri­fy­ing jour­ney at times but you know me — I love being scared.

This is a time to develop solid writ­ing habits, to put my nose to the key­board and grind words out. I have more free­dom now but that free­dom is teth­ered to my writ­ing, some­thing that will always have to come first. This will prob­a­bly result in many people’s fallen and con­fused faces when I tell them I can’t go to their party because I need to write or I can’t go on a trip because I need to go through edits, or I can’t go for din­ner because I’m upload­ing to Kin­dle. Most peo­ple will prob­a­bly think I can do what­ever I want, and while I can, it doesn’t mean I should.

This morn­ing I had the free­dom and choice to sleep in. My first day of self-employment, I’m my own boss, right?

Right. But I’m a bitch of a boss.

So instead of wak­ing up at 7AM for work like I would have done on a week­day, I woke up at 5AM to write.

That’s right. First day as a full-time writer and I’m up at 5AM. Hope­fully this kind of behav­iour will get me a raise in the long run

In other news, well actu­ally the same news, I AM writ­ing. This month has been crunch month for The Devil’s Metal. It’s a whole new ball­game and it’s not easy. Writ­ing EIT is sec­ond nature to me. Five books and three novel­las and I can spew about Perry and Dex in my sleep.

But start­ing a whole new book with whole new char­ac­ters, plot and world (not to men­tion time period) is some­thing entirely dif­fer­ent. This is keep-you-on-your –toes, chal­leng­ing stuff. You’re wor­ried about pac­ing, you’re wor­ried about keep­ing the time period authen­tic, you’re wor­ried that peo­ple won’t love your char­ac­ters as much as they love your tried-and-tested char­ac­ters. You worry you will suck. Balls. BIG BALLS.

All I can do, how­ever, is keep going. I will try to keep those voices at bay and I will try my best. This isn’t Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror and it’s not try­ing to be (THOUGH EIT fans will notice one sim­i­lar thread/item in The Devil’s Metal hee hee). This is strictly adult. It’s the 1970’s. It’s rock and roll. It’s about per­sonal demons and real demons. It’s about two peo­ple com­ing together in a very unlikely way. And know­ing me, this isn’t main­stream, insta-luv fare. Oh, there are plenty of sexy times and romance, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not stan­dard. That’s all I can really say.

Although I’ll also say, man, get­ting up at 5AM is a bitch.

I have a new book com­ing out soon.

Per­haps add it to your TBR list, mmmk?

GoodReads

It’s the sum­mer of 1974 and 21-year old Dawn Emer­son has only three things she wants to do: com­pete one last time in the Ellens­burg Rodeo, win back her ex-boyfriend Ryan, and become the best damn music jour­nal­ist at Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity. But all her plans are left in the dust when she’s con­tacted by Creem mag­a­zine to go on the road with one of her favorite groups, the up-and-coming metal band, Hybrid.

At first the assign­ment reads like a dream come true. Not only will Dawn land some much-needed cred­i­bil­ity as a female music jour­nal­ist, but she’ll finally get to expe­ri­ence life from the other side of the stage, and maybe crack the drunken, enig­matic code that is gui­tarist Sage Knightly. Instead, Dawn finds her­self on an aging tour bus filled with ego-maniacs, band pol­i­tics and a whole lot of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. When mon­sters start show­ing up in dress­ing rooms and some of Sage’s groupies become increas­ingly strange and dan­ger­ous, Dawn dis­cov­ers the band is not only going places – they’re going straight to Hell.

And Dawn has a back­stage pass.

***

The Devil’s Metal is the first book in a two-part New Adult Horror/Paranormal Romance and very (very!) loosely based on the author’s exploits as a music jour­nal­ist. Hell comes in dif­fer­ent forms

Strong words, I know. How­ever, I must express how extremely dis­pleased I am with the com­pany as a writer and a poten­tial cus­tomer (cuz I could have Nook for all they know).

It’s been well over a month since On Demon Wings has been released. There is no sign of it on Barnes and Noble’s web­site. The way it is done for self-pubbers like myself is that I upload the books to Smash­words and they make it avail­able in their pre­mium cat­a­log. This goes for iTunes, Kobo, and other venues.

Well, On Demon Wings has been avail­able for a month now and The Ben­son has been up for a cou­ple of weeks (Red Fox will be there in about two weeks).

Both On Demon Wings AND The Ben­son are avail­able now on Kobo (here and here respec­tively and FREEEE), pos­si­bly iTunes, and of course through Smash­words. But Barnes and Noble, for what­ever rea­son because they never get back to me, has been refus­ing to put the books on their site. After all, I have the books in the pre­mium cat­a­log and it’s up to them to make them avail­able for Nook.

And they haven’t. Well, don’t you just suck B&N?

So I can only apol­o­gize on their behalf. I would upload the books through Barnes & Noble’s PubIt pro­gram HOWEVER it is not open to Cana­di­ans. Grrrrrr. Way to lose out on even more busi­ness, you douchecanoes.

Any­hoo, that’s that. If you’re a Nook user, you can get the books through Smash­words (you’ll need to save the epub file to your com­puter, hook up your Nook via USB and trans­fer them over…it’s really a rather minor incon­ve­nience). Oth­er­wise you can com­plain to Barnes & Noble…and I hope you have bet­ter luck with it than I have!

ON THE PLUS SIDE On Demon Wings (and your help) put me on this list for Best-Selling Self-published books along with Amanda Hock­ing and Kris­ten Ashley…woo hoo!!! Check it out here via GalleyCat.

In other news, I attended Bret Tay­lor (artist, friend, JD swiller, EIT cover artist)‘s art show — Metal Flake Remix — over the week­end. It was a lot fun, live art plus friends, drinks, more art…and we did an impromptu give­away for sev­eral copies of Dark­house. Yay! Fun stuff.

(Pho­tos by Cyn­thia Griffiths)

I think we are going to team up in the fall and have a joint art show/book release party for Into the Hol­low (EIT #6). We’ll make posters out of the book cov­ers and sign them, have lots of EIT merch for sale, have Perry and Dex tak­ing your coats, it’s going to be pretty awe­some. I’ll make the event pub­lic too, if any local looky loos want to say hello

Finally, my friend Can­dice (who makes amaz­ing cakes, who I will have make me an awe­some EIT cake for le party) and I were inter­viewed for an arti­cle in the news­pa­per about social media and work (me being an author, Can­dice being a cake­maker). You can take a look at that arti­cle HERE.

Have a great week everybody!