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Dex’s POV

This sum­mer I’ll be pub­lish­ing The Dex-Files — a col­lec­tion of sto­ries and scenes from the books from Declan “Dex” Foray’s point-of-view. Some will be of scenes that are from the books, like the Strip Club Scene in Dead Sky Morn­ing, oth­ers will be scenes that are totally new (like, what hap­pened to Dex after the end of Book #5 On Demon Wings?).

DO NOTE: The fol­low­ing excerpts and scene’s from this upcom­ing book are ONLY for peo­ple who have read the entire series.

DO NOT read The Dex-Files or the scenes below until you have read the whole series thus far (Books #1-#5). Though I will never give away every­thing in Dex’s head and a lot will remain a secret until the series is over, there are some insights into that strange head of his that should remain a “mys­tery”, at least for new readers.

One last thing:.……SPOILERS!!!

If you have read the series, then feel free to read on:

 

The Dex-Files: DARKHOUSE (#1)

The first meeting

The room smelled like shit. Shit, sea­weed and decades of decay. It was too bad Smell-O-Vision never went any­where, because the smell of the old light­house would have been just as ter­ri­fy­ing as the sight of it.

Speak­ing of, there wasn’t much to see here. Down­stairs was empty. This floor gave up noth­ing except doors that wouldn’t open and I was begin­ning to doubt Old Cap­tain Fish­sticks was actu­ally haunt­ing the place. Just because pansy-assed ghost hunt­ing shows were clam­or­ing to film the light­house, didn’t mean any­thing was actu­ally here. Had I been duped by the hype? No. Not me. That was impossible.

I stopped in the mid­dle of the room and sighed, the cam­era feel­ing extra heavy on my shoul­der.  A migraine tick­led my tem­ples and I pinched the bridge of my nose, hard. I hated feel­ing like a fuck-up fail­ure. I couldn’t go back to Jimmy empty-handed. I sup­pose I could, see­ing as the Nazi didn’t really know what I was up to, but it didn’t mat­ter. He’d sniff it off of me like some fuck­ing dog. He’d know I was down here, try­ing to find some­thing bet­ter for myself.

Then there was Jenn. She was worse. She said she was sad when I left the show, but I could see through those tears of her. I knew what they meant. She was secretly pleased I took off with the tail between my legs, like she won yet another bat­tle or some­thing. Three years with some­one and you get to know their tac­tics pretty well. You can see that smug smile beneath the “But I’ll miss you.” The one that says I’ll be noth­ing with­out her, that I’ll fail on my own.

I didn’t want Jenn to be right. But look­ing around this dis­gust­ing, dark relic with the kelp and the crash­ing waves out­side, waves that seemed to laugh at me, well, fuck, she prob­a­bly was­right. Again.

I chewed on my lip absently and looked above. I had more of this place to see. I wasn’t going to give up yet. After all, I was here. And even though the mon­sters were hid­den behind veils of pre­scrip­tion, I was still the same boy as I was back in New York. They still wanted me, even if I couldn’t see them.

My pride would be the death of me one day.

THUD.

A loud clat­ter sounded out from the floor below. It sounded hard, like some­thing had top­pled over from a great height.

I froze, feel­ing just a lit­tle spooked. I walked across the room and paused near the stair­case, wait­ing for more.

From down­stairs came a scur­ry­ing noise, like a very large rat was pok­ing around. I care­fully turned off the cam­era light and waited. My ears lis­tened hard, try­ing to fig­ure out just what the hell it was.  From what I remem­bered, ghosts didn’t usu­ally make much noise. They didn’t move around like they were try­ing to be quiet and fail­ing at it. Rats didn’t move like that either, espe­cially not on the West Coast.

I picked up another sound now. Foot­steps. Then a metal­lic jangling.

It was def­i­nitely a person.

I was def­i­nitely fucked.

I took in a deep breath and ignored all the pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios that waited for me below. What was the point in fig­ur­ing out who it was, or what was going to hap­pen? If I got out of there with­out them see­ing me, then wor­ry­ing was fruitless.

I made my way down the stairs, paus­ing every other step to keep track, until I reached the bot­tom floor. I could hear tiny gasps of ragged breath cou­pled with a whim­per­ing sound. I could see only dark­ness, except for weak light that spilled in through one of the rooms. There was a win­dow where there hadn’t been a win­dow before.

You need move your ass now, I thought to myself. But before I could do any­thing, I felt this…this…I don’t  know what the hell it was, like a mag­netic pull, like the air before a thun­der­storm. An energy rolled toward me like a freight train. It made me stop, stunned and still.

There was another whim­per, almost like a sigh, then feet slap­ping the damp ground.

Before I had chance to process that the foot­steps were com­ing toward me, some­thing col­lided straight into my chest. There was a scream, a girl­ish shriek (not my own), and I was shoved back­ward by some­thing small and solid. The ground smashed into my shoul­der, then my head, but it didn’t mat­ter. The CRASH of my cam­era was the most painful thing of all.

I groaned and rolled over, feel­ing for the machine.

Oh please, please, please, please, please, I thought in a panic. I can’t afford this, I can’t afford this!

I heard the other per­son, the beast that hit me, stir­ring and moan­ing, then they hit the ground again with a thump that sounded painful. Part of me didn’t give two shits about the ass­hole that might have ruined the most impor­tant thing in my life. The other part of me felt kind of bad, espe­cially when it became appar­ent that the ass­hole was some fuck­ing chick. She was mak­ing lit­tle ter­ri­fied squeaks.

Then she made no noise at all.

Moth­er­fucker. Now I had a bro­ken cam­era and some tres­pass­ing broad who was either dead or unconscious.

I hoped she wasn’t a cop.

My hand made con­tact with the cam­era, and from the ini­tial feel I was cop­ping, it didn’t seem like much dam­age was done to the out­side. My fin­gers instinc­tively found the light and switched it on. I let out a breath of relief as the dark­ness was vio­lently illuminated.

As was the girl, lying on the ground beside me. Her eyes were closed and she wasn’t moving.

Shit, shit, shit.

I got on my knees and placed my hand on her neck, feel­ing for a pulse. She stirred a lit­tle and moaned, which meant she was at least par­tially alive. Not dead. I hadn’t killed her. So I had that going for me.

I couldn’t see her prop­erly in the com­pet­ing dark­ness and blind­ing glare, but she seemed damn young. She was small, with a round face that glowed ghostly pale. A cam­era hung from her neck and onto the floor. With­out think­ing, I reached up and brushed a strand of black hair off of her fore­head. She was warm, almost fever­ish. Still not dead.

At my touched she moved a lit­tle and tried to open her eyes, rais­ing her arm up to block out the light.

“Don’t move,” I said, my voice com­ing out bro­ken and hoarse. The last thing I needed was for her to wreck her­self even fur­ther.  Just because she was alive, didn’t mean she was well.

She dropped her hand reluc­tantly and I took the light away from her face, plac­ing the cam­era down on the ground beside her head. It cre­ated crazy shad­ows along the planes of her face. Her pert nose turned into a beak. If I let my imag­i­na­tion run away with me, there were a mil­lion things she could have mor­phed into. I was lucky I hadn’t skipped my pills ear­lier, like I had been think­ing about doing.

I touched her face again, just to make sure she was still a per­son. She was. She was still soft, and warm, and alive.

Was I being creepy?

Her eyes flut­tered open and I could barely make out a shade of blue in them before panic tore them wider and she tried to jerk away.

I pressed her shoul­der down to the ground to keep her still.

“Seri­ously,” I told her. “You might be really hurt. Please don’t move.”

She obeyed and lay back down.

“I’m OK,” she said through dry lips. Her voice was light and scared. But she didn’t sound like she was in any trauma. Her eyes searched my face with­out really see­ing me.

I still had one hand on her shoul­der and the other on her face.

I was def­i­nitely being creepy.

I took my hands away and inched back a bit to give her space to breathe — and me space to run. She looked no older than 20, so she obvi­ously wasn’t a cop but she was here, in a place I had no right to be. I eyed the hall in the dark­ness, won­der­ing if get­ting out of the build­ing was going to be as hard as get­ting in. I hoped she wasn’t about to call for help. Or press charges.

She eased her­self up and looked war­ily around the dark­ness, her eyes focus­ing on the cam­era. I could see the wheels turn­ing behind those shad­owed eyes, won­der­ing what the fuck was going on.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. Even though she tech­ni­cally ran into me, I had to pla­cate things before they escalated.

“I was upstairs and I heard this crazy clat­ter from down here,” I explained, my voice speed­ing up as my heart raced. There was too much adren­a­line in my sys­tem and the med­ica­tion was screw­ing around with it. “And I thought maybe it was the cops or some­thing. I didn’t know what the fuck to do. I thought I could get out of the way I came in, but I saw you there, and then I saw the win­dow prob­a­bly at the same time you saw the win­dow and I’m…I’m so sorry if…well, you’re obvi­ously OK.”

There was a pause. She didn’t seem to buy any of that.

“Who are you?”

The mil­lion dol­lar ques­tion. What would my answer be today?

“That depends on who you are,” I said honestly.

In the shad­ows I saw her cock her brow.

“I asked you first.”

Why did I have to run into the most ques­tion­ing peo­ple? I exhaled and reached back into my pocket. My new busi­ness cards were printed just last week – she’d be the first per­son to have one.

Who­ever she was.

She took it from her hands, hes­i­tant, like I was hand­ing her poi­son. So sus­pi­cious.  Tsk, tsk.

I picked up the cam­era and aimed it at the card. It gleamed under the light. So did the chipped pol­ish on her gothy-looking fingernails.

She read it out loud and flipped it over, then looked up at me, some­how even more con­fused. The light lit up her face better.

“Are you from West Coast Liv­ing or something?”

I let out a small laugh. “Fuck no.”

I started to rock back on forth on my feet, need­ing an out­let for the energy that was rum­bling inside my bones.  She was a curi­ous lit­tle thing, but some­thing about her made me ner­vous. Wary. Like she could be even more dubi­ous than I was. Like she had a mil­lion secrets to tell and I would never hear any of them.

Who­ever she was.

“Well, Dex Foray, I have a feel­ing that what­ever you guys are doing here tonight, you’re doing so with­out the per­mis­sion of my uncle, who owns the lighthouse.”

Shit. Fuck. Shit.

Her uncle owned the light­house. I felt the routes in my brain rewire as they pre­pared for the extra adren­a­line, the gal­lop of my heart.

But…wait…

“There’s no one else here,” I said. “It’s just me.”

She laughed, clearly not believ­ing me.

“Look, I don’t care,” she said and there was just enough ease in her voice to make it true. “I’m not going to report you. I shouldn’t even be here myself. Just get your crew together or what­ever and get out of here before you do get in trouble.”

I stopped rock­ing. What the hell was she going on about? My crew?

“It’s just me,” I told her again. “Did you see some­one else here?”

She frowned but kept her gaze on mine. “Yes. I heard you upstairs, and I was going to go out the win­dow, but I saw the shadow of some­one pass by. Outside.”

A shud­der ran down my spine and roll of nau­sea waved through me. I skid a bit closer to her, my pants drag­ging on the damp ground.

“Are you sure you saw something?”

If she had seen some­thing, and it obvi­ously was not me, then I was hooped up the ass. Maybe she was too, but I just couldn’t get a proper read­ing on her. That weird energy slinked off of her in bursts and messed with my head a lit­tle bit.

“Yes, I saw some­one,” she said with a tinge of doubt. “Some­one walked past the win­dow, swear to God.”

I wasn’t sure if her God was one I could hold truth to.

“Where did you come from? Did any­one come with you?”

Like your uncle…or the cops…or your 250-pound MMA boyfriend.

She shook her head. I placed the light closer to her face, feel­ing like I needed to do a bit of inter­ro­gat­ing to get to the bot­tom of this. She winced at the glare.

“Sorry,” I mum­bled. “I…well, nevermind.”

“Nev­er­mind?” she spat out. Her eyes nar­rowed and not from the light. “You just broke into my uncle’s light­house. Don’t you tell me to nevermind.”

Whoa. All I was going to do was apol­o­gize again for doing exactly that. Well, fuck. For­get it. I was done. I was out of here.

With a grunt, I got to my feet and stretched up into the moon­light that was now creep­ing from the nearby win­dow.  It would be an easy escape. I picked up my foot to go, but I stopped.

I couldn’t leave like this.

She looked so help­less at my feet. And I did have man­ners somewhere.

I reached for her hand. She even­tu­ally took it, feel­ing all too tiny in mine, and I brought her to her feet. She stag­gered a bit, almost keel­ing over, her cam­era swing­ing, and all I could think about was maybe she fell a lot harder than I thought. Maybe she wasn’t really “all there” and we’d need an ambu­lance after all.

I put my hands on the sides of her arms and stepped closer to her, try­ing to keep her from fal­ter­ing. She was short as hell and that was say­ing a lot since I wasn’t very tall to begin with.

“You OK?” I asked, already know­ing she was the type who’d say she was fine even if her limbs were chopped off. I saw a flash of some­thing – hope? — in her eyes before she twisted us around and I was illu­mi­nated and her face was hid­den in the dark. I searched out her fea­tures but couldn’t get them. It was unnerv­ing to not see the round pale face and watch­ful eyes.

“Just a bit dizzy,” she said. The fact that she admit­ted that much didn’t sound very good. I began to think where the near­est hos­pi­tal was, whether I could get her there in the High­lander, if I would need to call her uncle first. Who would then slap me with some tres­pass­ing charges and a pos­si­ble assault charge, because men were dicks and no one would believe a girl could run into me, espe­cially not one pixie-sized.

“Good,” I said, try­ing to look into her eyes, try­ing to keep things light. I smiled, think­ing it might help my cause. “Promise not to sue?”

“I won’t. Can’t speak for my uncle, though.”

Damn it! Just where was he any­way? Why was she explor­ing a light­house in the dark with­out him?

“Why are you here?” I asked, more and more curi­ous about this lit­tle goth girl.

She dropped her gaze to the ground, even though I couldn’t see her anyway.

“We’re hav­ing a bon­fire at the beach,” she said. Her voice went higher, younger, and I got the dis­tinct impres­sion that she was feel­ing guilty about some­thing. “I got sick of hang­ing around teenagers and wanted to come here. My uncle never let me come here when I was younger. I didn’t tell any­one, I just left. I was hop­ing to film stuff.”

Hop­ing to film some stuff? As if she couldn’t get any more intrigu­ing. What kind of stuff, exactly. What had she heard about the lighthouse?

She let out a small gasp and started fid­dling with some­thing. Her cam­era. I picked up mine and shone the light on her and while she was squint­ing uncom­fort­ably at the glare, I took her­SLR in my hand and peered it over. Aside from scratches that were prob­a­bly there before, there was no damage.

“It’s fine,” I told her, try­ing to sound reas­sur­ing. “I thought you wrecked the shit out of mine when you ran into me.”

I pat­ted my cam­era which made the light bob against her face. She didn’t look very impressed. Who could blame her.

“You’re right,” I said, before she could. “Who cares? I prob­a­bly deserve to have this cam­era smashed.”

Even though it would put me back at square one. I couldn’t think about that.

Thump.

I froze. The sound had come from upstairs. Where I had just been. Where noth­ing else had been. Unless…

I looked at her, putting the light closer to her face. It was Bad Cop time again.

“You sure you came alone?” I whispered.

She replied, “Are you?”

I nod­ded. She didn’t. It then occurred to me that I had no clue what her damn name was. She never offered it up. I didn’t know any­thing about her.

This could have all been a trap. They might have known I was com­ing here. I don’t know how, but maybe they saw the High­lander from a dis­tance. Maybe tres­passers were a weekly occur­rence. Maybe they lured ghost-hunters here and then robbed them. Or raped them. I’d prob­a­bly let lit­tle miss doe eyes do the hon­ors, but I had no idea how strong her uncle was.

She dropped her eyes from mine and looked at the win­dow. The only easy way of escape.

But if she was think­ing of run­ning, that meant she was afraid. It meant she didn’t know who, or what, was upstairs.

And if they didn’t come with her…they were already here.

I leaned into her and smelled some­thing like a fresh breeze radi­at­ing from her neck.  It took me a moment to find my tongue, find the words to say, “Are you one hun­dred per­cent sure that no one else came with you here?”

I wanted to pull away for her response but that energy, that smell, kept my nose and mouth locked near her neck for just a few more seconds.


Who doesn’t like pie?

“Oh come on, just shoot the freak­ing zom­bie already!” Matt or Tony yelled at me. I couldn’t tell which one. They both looked the same and sounded the same – deafening.

I’d been play­ing video games with Perry’s cousins for the last hour while she checked her emails and we waited for night to fall. My zombie-hunting “skills” seemed just as use­less as my ghost-hunting skills and the noises and the graph­ics were fuck­ing up my equi­lib­rium. I mean, shit. After what went down in the car, run­ning into that psy­cho, Dame Edna lady again, I was sur­prised it took me this long to real­ize every­thing was doing my head in. I had enough.

“That’s it,” I said, throw­ing my con­troller down on the couch and get­ting up. “I’ve died for the last time.”

The twins made a noise in uni­son. It sounded like false dis­ap­point­ment. It was eerie.

Then they con­tin­ued play­ing like I had never even been there. Also eerie.

And nerdy.

I made my way over the kitchen and started to pull out my note­book from my overnight bag. It still smelled like apple pie here, the one that Perry man­aged to bake ear­lier.  What pos­sessed her to try bak­ing was beyond my cloudy brain. Just one more thing to scrib­ble down on my men­tal notepad head­lined PERRY and sorted:  things I needed to get to the bot­tom of.

It was good too. Not the best thing I’ve tasted in my life, but it was good con­sid­er­ing she ran­domly cooked it in her uncle’s place.  I couldn’t even remem­ber the last time I had home­made apple pie. Had I ever? The only time I could think of was the God awful Christ­mases with Jenn and her white-ass rich folks, and if I knew them, they prob­a­bly ordered those pies from some epi­curean pie cat­a­logue for old farts.

But the thing is, it wasn’t so much what it tasted like but what it smelled like. The damn pie smelled like home to me. But apple pie didn’t exist in my fucked-up youth, and if it had, it wasn’t at the hands of my mother. Per­haps a nanny had baked every now and then. I don’t know, I didn’t care to remem­ber that shit. That whole period was blocked out for very good reasons.

But the smell still stirred up mem­o­ries that never could have existed. It felt…like, warm. Good. Hon­est. How the hell did those things belong in my life?

I looked at Perry as she came into the kitchen and sat down at the table across from me. Her face was anx­ious, like she was hav­ing another bat­tle inside that head of hers. There was some­thing about her that stirred up the same feel­ings. Maybe this had noth­ing to do with apple pie at all. Maybe it’s that she made it, and when she handed over that first slice and met my eyes, I could see she made it for me. And no one had ever made me anything.

Nat­u­rally, I wasn’t about to tell her that. It was retarded, actu­ally, to even think this funny lit­tle girl thought of me more than some crazy mus­tached fucker in her uncle’s kitchen. She just met me. She didn’t know me. And if she thought she did, she was mis­tak­ing me for some­one else. Some­one who didn’t hide med­ica­tion in a hollowed-out book.

I kept my mouth shut and began to write an overview of the day. I still man­aged to watch her at the same time, watch her debat­ing whether to tell me some­thing or not. A glint of some­thing gleamed in her blue eyes. It was almost…hot. Was she think­ing some­thing naughty? I found myself shift­ing uncom­fort­ably in the chair.

“So,” she said, her voice high and self-conscious. “A local ghost hunter’s club in Salem was hop­ing I could come aboard their team and per­haps show them around the lighthouse.

The…fuck? I stopped writ­ing, try­ing to process what she was say­ing. Com­pe­ti­tion? Already? I knew I should have fuck­ing got her to sign a con­tract. I knew I was being a fuck­tard by just trust­ing that she’d stick with me and not go to some­one else with this fuck­ing access, some­one who actu­ally knew what they were doing. All that shit we said to each other in the car, all the things I said – that didn’t mean shit, did it? Fuck I was a fool.

I cleared my throat and tried to sound casual. “And?”

She shrugged. “I haven’t got­ten back to them.”

How con­sid­er­ate, I wanted to say but I shut my mouth. This was not the time to fly off the han­dle. I knew I wasn’t think­ing straight lately, espe­cially today, I knew I was pre­dis­posed to say shit I didn’t mean, hell, shit I didn’t even think. I couldn’t fuck every­thing up now, not when we were so close.

“Well, you can do what­ever you want to do,” I lied through my teeth. “You’re a free agent. We haven’t signed anything.”

Cuz I’m a dick-grabbing mon­key, that’s why.

My cell phone rang, pre­vent­ing me from say­ing any­thing else ridicu­lous. It was Jenn but I was grate­ful for any distraction.

“Hey babe,” I said.

“Dex?” Jenn’s voice sounded tinny through the poor recep­tion. “Sorry to bug you on your lit­tle adven­ture but Cyn­thia and Relece wanted to have a girl’s night out and…”

She droned on but I had quit lis­ten­ing and was watch­ing Perry again. Her nose twitched (how cute was that?) and a faint flush of red crept up her neck and onto the side of her face. She straight­ened up in her seat as soon as she noticed me look­ing but it didn’t stop the girl from look­ing like she’d rather be in a mil­lion other places than sit­ting here in front of me. I hoped she wasn’t seri­ously think­ing about that pussy ghost hunt­ing club. Who the fuck decides to form one of those?

“….and I know you won’t be home till late, but I won’t be there until prob­a­bly much later. Is that OK?”

“Yeah, that’s fine.”

“You sure?” Jenn asked and from her tone I knew she didn’t give a fuck if I said it wasn’t. She’d still go out, as she always did. I didn’t even know why she was call­ing to ask. Maybe she wanted to check up on me.

“Seri­ously, I don’t mind. Go do what­ever it is you girls do.”

After I told her I’d be home in the morn­ing now, I hung up the phone and decided to jump right back into it.

“OK, where were we?” I said out loud. What did we need to know for tonight?

“She doesn’t mind you stay­ing another night?” Perry asked.

I raised my brow. Odd ques­tion. Why did she care?

“No,” I said, not want­ing to talk about how pathetic our rela­tion­ship truly was. I let my gaze fall to the win­dow where the wind was shak­ing the trees loose. I breathed in and let that smell of home bring my heart rate down a notch.

“Do you have any­more pie?”

“There’s a slice or two I put back in the fridge…” she said, as if she wasn’t sure.

“Would you mind get­ting me a piece of pie?” I asked. I wanted to see if she’d do it. And if she’d hand it to me again with that look in her eyes. I needed that look right now. I sensed some changes inside, the wiring com­ing loose and need­ing a good cau­ter­iz­ing. My thoughts were get­ting lost.

She tried to look annoyed but she failed at it big time. Cuz she still got out of her chair and walked over to the fridge. She opened the door and had to bend over in front of me to get a bot­tle of milk. My God she had one hell of an ass.  Not too big that your dick would get lost but just big enough to get a good, meaty hold of and squeeze and smack and come until the cows came home.

I must have been pretty obvi­ous in my leer­ing. Wasn’t I try­ing to impress her, not creep her out?

“Were you star­ing at my ass?” she said. She sounded sur­prised but she was glar­ing at me, so I had no idea what the fuck she was think­ing. Did she like the idea? Was she going to tell her mafia uncle to pour cement in my shoes and chuck me out in the Pacific?

“Yes,” I told her. Why lie? I’d put on the cement shoes if I had to. I’ve done worse for a woman.

She made some exas­per­ated sound and shook her head. But she still came back with a piece of pie. She was beet red now and avoid­ing my eyes. Maybe she liked my atten­tion after all.

“Obvi­ously, I’ll need a nap­kin too,” I told her. Push­ing but­tons, push­ing buttons.

“Obvi­ously,” she mut­tered and she tossed one to me. I took it with all the grace of a dandy and folded it in my shirt pocket. I was a gen­tle­man over every­thing. An ass-appreciating gen­tle­man. We are the finest kind of man. I should open my own ass-appreciating gentleman’s club one day.

I shoved the pie in my face (pie-appreciating gen­tle­man that I am) and noticed she wasn’t hav­ing any. To think of it, she hadn’t had any ear­lier either. That’s prob­a­bly why I thought she baked it for me…she cer­tainly didn’t bake the desert for herself.

Oh no, don’t tell me she’s one of those self-conscious girls who have absolutely no rea­son to be self-conscious. I eyed her full breasts and couldn’t fathom why she’d want to diet.

“You’re not hav­ing any­thing?” I asked, point­ing my fork at her in an accusatory fash­ion, hop­ing she’d prove me wrong.

“I don’t like pie,” was her stu­pid answer.

I laughed and a pie of pie shot out. “You don’t like pie? What kind of per­son doesn’t like pie?”

I poked her with the fork to make sure she was still real. “You can’t be trusted.”

She took a swipe at the fork, look­ing annoyed. “You’re the one with the fork.”

With­out think­ing, I reached over for her hand and opened it, soft and warm. I placed the fork in it and gen­tly closed her fin­gers over it.

“Now you have the fork,” I said softly and sat back in my chair. She stared down at the fork, think­ing. I stared down at the paper. Think­ing. Some­times you came across women who had every­thing going for them…looks, per­son­al­ity, smarts, and they had NO fuck­ing idea what they were worth. How amaz­ing and beau­ti­ful, they were, how they oozed sex and secrets. Then you had those women who knew they had what you wanted and used it. Repeat­edly. Just to get what they wanted. It was an unbal­anced universe.

Now I could see that Perry was the for­mer. She did look self-conscious and unsure of her­self at every turn. She was always pulling down her shirt or tug­ging up her jeans, or keep­ing her chin as far away from her neck as pos­si­ble. She’d cover up her breasts with heavy jack­ets and boxy shirts, like they were some­thing to be hid­den. The girl was fuck­ing nuts and for all the wrong rea­sons. It made me feel strangely helpless.

“I just want you to enjoy all the pies in life, Perry,” I said, gaz­ing at her, try­ing to get her shy eyes to meet mine. “That’s all.”

I won­dered if she’d let me try.

 

The Dex-Files: RED FOX (#2)

The Bar Scene

“Sex­u­ally frus­trated?” Perry asked, her voice strug­gling to be heard in the noisy bar.
I turned my head away from my beer bot­tle and looked at her in sur­prise. The girl must have been psy­chic, though I could see from the way her round eyes were slant­ing at the cor­ners that she might just be drunk.

I had to smile. “Yes.”

There was really no use in deny­ing it. Even with all the bull­shit going around and the feel­ing that my brain was split­ting in two, it was hav­ing to sleep next to her every night – and just sleep – that was fuck­ing me up the most. I looked down at the beer bot­tle label that was stick­ing to my fin­gers in moist chunks. Christ, I couldn’t be more obvious.

She didn’t appear put off. She rarely did. It was one of her annoy­ing super powers.

“Because your girl­friend isn’t here?”

“Sure.” That was part of it. But even if Jenn were here, God help us all, it still wouldn’t have got­ten rid of the con­stant boner adjustments.

I took a long gulp of my beer, hop­ing that she would get the hint and not pry any fur­ther. Perry didn’t seem to have con­trol over her lips half the time and not in a good way and it was only a mat­ter of time before I said some­thing really stu­pid. I didn’t trust myself with­out the meds.

I glanced up at Max­imus and Bird talk­ing across the table from us. I hated Max again. I didn’t know if it was being off the meds or whatthe­fuck­ever but his rock­a­billy bull­shit act was wear­ing thin. I didn’t like how he acted like he knew every­thing and I didn’t like the way he was try­ing to win Perry over. He would deny it, but I knew exactly what the fucker was try­ing to do to me. And Perry was too inno­cent, her self-esteem too rav­aged to pick up on it.

To cement my point, Dire Straits came on and after Perry pro­claimed her sud­den (and sur­pris­ing) love for the band, the douche­fucker stood up and asked her to dance like he was a Cajun Rhett Butler.

She agreed, tak­ing his hand with a look that was pretty close to glee, and he led her to the packed dance floor. I looked back at the beer just in case she wanted me to notice what was going on, notice them together. My fin­gers started pick­ing at the label again. I wouldn’t give them that satisfaction.

“You care about her a great deal,” Bird said in his ‘I’m an old man’ voice.

I shot him a look and resumed con­cen­tra­tion on the beer, tak­ing respite in the monot­o­nous move­ments. I didn’t say any­thing. There wasn’t any­thing to say. It was the truth, that’s all it was.

“It’s OK, Dex,” he con­tin­ued. “I would too. But you have to respect each other. You have to move slowly. You are both too much the same.”

“What does that mean?” I snapped at him. I felt bad, once again I wasn’t in con­trol of my emo­tions, but Bird’s face was impas­sive and gave noth­ing away.

“You know what it means,” he said and he left it at that. I did know what he meant. That’s what made the whole sit­u­a­tion harder.

We sat in silence for a bit, then he excused him­self to go to the bar, promis­ing to bring me a beer. I wanted to stick my fuck­ing head in a pitcher but I needed to take it easy. Drink­ing never really helped me in the way I thought it did. And those thoughts always came when I was three sheets to the wind.

I man­aged to avoid look­ing in Max’s and Perry’s direc­tion but that all went fuck­aloo whenU2 came on and Perry wasn’t back at her seat with fin­gers in her ears.

Instead she was still on the dance floor. Slow danc­ing. With gin­ger fuck­ing Elvis. They were danc­ing close, way too close. Her breasts were crammed up into his chest, he was hold­ing her like he was about to turn her over his knee and spank her six ways from Sunday.

And she was let­ting him. She looked like she was enjoy­ing the body pres­sure as much as he was. I could only imag­ine the way his chubby must have been grind­ing against her. Not that I wanted to imag­ine that. I shud­dered, feel­ing the curi­ous mix of dis­gust and envy carry through me. Feel­ings, fuck, I wasn’t used to this.

I was still mak­ing a dis­gusted face when Bird came back but to his credit he just handed me my beer and didn’t say any­thing. It was tak­ing all my willpower to peel my eyes away from the cou­ple and con­cen­trate on some­thing else.
This came in the form of Cheri and Amanda, two MILF’s who had been eye­ing me since I sat down. I’m sure they prob­a­bly went after any guy under 35 who didn’t clean his ears out with his car keys, but I decided to be flat­tered. I grinned at them and as expected they teetered over to me on tacky plas­tic heels, smiles broad, breaths rank.

I didn’t really hear a word they were say­ing, I was just try­ing to look hand­some and not breathe in through my nose. One of them, Cheri, maybe, took a lik­ing to Bird which he didn’t seem to mind. Bird didn’t strike me as some­one who had a wife wait­ing for him at home, though he could have cer­tainly done bet­ter than some old lush with wrin­kled cleav­age and brown-speckled teeth. I felt like throw­ing up in my mouth but I played up my viril­ity and asked Amanda, maybe, if she’d help choose songs from the juke­box with me.

We walked to the box through the sticky crowd and I kept Perry and Max in my periph­eral vision. On the out­side it looked like I was hav­ing fun, on the inside I was para­noid as fuck. I kept fear­ing that he’d grab her and take her away some­where dark and pri­vate. The thought of him touch­ing her, kiss­ing her, both­ered me to no end but Amanda was watch­ing me and look­ing con­fused at my expres­sion. I smiled at her again, all good vibes and good sex, and let her select some shitty songs first before I requested mine.

We had just got­ten back to the table (where Bird was try­ing to give Cheri a very politeGTFO) when Max and Perry finally removed them­selves from the floor. I wanted to make some cut­ting remark to him and cut him down a peg but there was a weird aura of ten­sion just steam­ing off. Some­thing had gone down between them and even though it soothed the spite in me, I was a bit con­cerned for Perry.

Appar­ently, so was Amanda. The minute she saw Perry’s sweet, wor­ried face she grabbed my arm, sink­ing her Pepto Bis­mol –col­ored talons into my skin.

“You’re danc­ing with me, sugar,” she com­manded. She was sur­pris­ingly strong for her size and her sun-raped arms had no prob­lem drag­ging me to my feet.

“Like I have a choice,” I said, try­ing not to laugh. This was one hun­gry cougar.

I gave Perry a quick wink as we went past and decided to give Amanda what she’d been wait­ing for: Some­one young. Some­one fun. I grabbed a cow­boy hat off of some ran­dom Joe Blow and gave “Croc­o­dile Rock” my best moves.
It had been a while since I was able to use some of my the­atre school skills, other than fuck­ing Michelle in the orches­tra pit and tak­ing hits between mono­logues. I knew it didn’t mat­ter if I screwed up or looked like a retard because that wasn’t the point, but I was sur­prised how eas­ily it came back to me. Again, all I could think about was how deep I felt the music, how deep I was feeling…everything. Though I was swing­ing Amanda around, my mind dwelled on what my med­ica­tion was hid­ing half the time. Besides the very obvious.

“You’re good,” Amanda said to me, hold­ing me close to her, try­ing to take back the con­trol. Peo­ple were clap­ping and watch­ing us with amuse­ment and she was bask­ing in the glow.

“It comes nat­u­rally. But so does being bad,” I said with a smirk.

“I can see that. Your wife must be pretty pissed.”

Wife? Oh right. Fuck­ity fuck. I didn’t need to eye the ring on my fin­ger to remem­ber the whole cha­rade. Not that the town of Red Fox gave two shits whether I was really mar­ried to Perry or pre­tend mar­ried, but it didn’t hurt to keep up appearances.

“She’s pretty under­stand­ing,” I said.

Amanda nod­ded. I noticed her ear­rings were clip-ons and dan­ger­ously close to slip­ping off. This was one sweaty, stanky ass bar.

“You’re the under­stand­ing one. Most men here would be all macho about it if their wife was danc­ing with another man. But I could see he wasn’t a threat at all.”

Oh really? I wanted to pry her for her cougarly wis­dom but I bit my lip instead. We danced some more and then we were inter­rupted by another woman. She said her name was Mary Sue (nat­u­rally) and she was years younger (pos­si­bly even under­age) with des­per­ate eyes that screamed at me, like danc­ing with Dex Foray was the most excite­ment she’d ever get. That made me really fuck­ing sad. How pathetic this town must be to find a fuckup like me as their sav­ior.
I danced with Mary Sue, going through the motions, think­ing about the fake wed­ding band on my ring fin­ger. When the song ended again and I could see more women approach­ing me (look, I get that I can look pretty hot, but no one should attract this many red­necks), I decided I had enough. I knew what song was next and I knew who I was danc­ing with. My wife.

I walked toward her, ignor­ing the women and focused on her face until her big blue eyes met mine. She looked so small and dainty sit­ting there among Max and Bird, drink­ing and try­ing to have fun even though a world of dan­ger whirled around her. I could see the strain on her face, I knew she was always hyper-aware of what lurked in the dark. I knew because Bird was right. We were too much the same.

I stopped in front of her and tipped my hat in the most awk­ward imi­ta­tion of a cow­boy.
“It’s our song,” I said to her over the piano notes of Billy Joel’s “She’s Always a Woman.” I held out my hand, hop­ing she’d take it.

Her eyes lit up and she took my hand. I quickly grasped it, cool and white between my fin­gers. I led her to the floor and put my arm around her, bring­ing her in hard and fast to my side. She was mine. For the sake of appear­ances, she was my wife, but she was mine any­way. She didn’t know it yet, but I did. It was wrong and it made no sense, but she belonged with me. No one else, not any­one else.

It was a shame that I was the one who belonged to some­one else. I won­dered if I’d ever have the strength to cor­rect that or if I’d pun­ish myself forever.

We started danc­ing slowly, side to side, and I put one hand behind her back, where it was hot and small, tempt­ingly close to her ass. The other held her hand. I kept her as close to me as pos­si­ble, but I didn’t want to impose like Max­imus did. Besides, the last thing Perry needed was to feel my hard-on on her hip, even though it was fuck­ing tempt­ing to let her know what she was doing to me. I enter­tained the idea that she might even like it. It was a high school dance all over again.

 

I had to know. I stared into her eyes, lost in the storm, and started singing along with Joel. Softly, and at a dis­tance to start, then I leaned into her ear where it smelled like sun­shine and baby pow­der. I closed my eyes and sang, feel­ing my breath bound off of her ear in hot clouds. It was tak­ing all of my willpower to not take this fur­ther, to not wrap my lips around it and lick the lobe to see what it would taste like. See if I could make those eyes roll back and make her for­get every­thing that had hap­pened to her. I didn’t want to be Red Fox’s sav­ior, but I wanted to be hers.


Hold Fast

by

Hi every­one.

So I have a few updates for you, not all of them are pos­i­tive but it’s good to clear the air and be hon­est and open about things, espe­cially things that affect my writ­ing. I’ve always been some­one that over­shares with strangers, so this is noth­ing new, but I’ve veered away from being too per­sonal on this web­site. But, meh, now is a good a time as any.

I’m going on a bit of a social media break. Cur­rently, my day-job and my writ­ing job aren’t mesh­ing very well. Yes, I work 40 hours a week at an office, a posi­tion that has recently got­ten very high-stress.

I don’t han­dle stress well. Blame my genet­ics, blame men­tal issues, blame what­ever, but I don’t. There’s good stress, like when I’m writ­ing and I have a dead­line and it helps me get things DONE. And there’s bad stress where I panic and every­thing over­whelms me, I find myself  throw­ing dishes, cry­ing at work (no I’m not throw­ing dishes there), cry­ing in my dreams, feel­ing like there’s no way out.

This is silly because there is a way out and there is a beau­ti­ful rain­bow at the end of this tunnel.

How­ever, part of this rainbow’s real­ity depends on the amount of work I am able to do NOW and by work, I mean my real job. My writ­ing work. But how can I do that when I can’t seem to get out of the door every morn­ing with­out a panic attack? It’s a Catch-22. And it sucks.

When I wrote Dark­house, I was work­ing full-time. When I pub­lished Dark­house and became a cover-planning, editor-hiring, social media-guru, marketing-and-PR-powerhouse, and every­thing else that run­ning your own pub­lish­ing com­pany entails (remem­ber, I do this all myself…just me), I was NOT employed. Nor was I employed when I did the same with Red Fox, Dead Sky Morn­ing, The Ben­son and Lying Season.

Alas, I had to get employ­ment ear­lier this year and AT THAT TIME I was not sell­ing enough books to sur­vive on that. So, I thank­fully got a pretty nice day job.

Then came time to write On Demon Wings. Well, I did it in six weeks and I did it while work­ing full-time…but at a time when my day job wasn’t stress­ful or busy. And, yes, it was actu­ally HELL to get On Demon Wings out. You think it was just Perry going through hell in that book? It was me too.

I once said that it would be impos­si­ble for some­one to self-publish and hold a day job, and I think I was kind of right. Oh sure, lots and lots of peo­ple do it and do it well but I don’t think I am one of those peo­ple. I REALLY wish I was, believe me and if you are that sort, my hat is off to you. It’s one thing to try and write a book and hold down a job, it’s a dif­fer­ent ani­mal when you throw publisher/PR team/designer, etc into that mix. It is fuck­ing hard. I’m at that point where things are really tak­ing off and I need to focus on my real job, the one that makes me more money than my day job, the one that ful­fils me to no end: my writing.

But, I find myself unable to.

Like I said, there is a rain­bow but it’s going to be hell until I get there. I’m get­ting sup­port from coun­sel­lors, doc­tors who will hope­fully help me han­dle the stress in the interim. I’m get­ting sup­port from friends who are won­der­ful sound­ing boards. And hope­fully fans will be pretty under­stand­ing too about what I am about to do.…

Which is…dun dun dun. Take a vaca­tion from the inter­net. Not in total, but my pres­ence will be lim­ited. Aside from an amaz­ingly unique give­away cur­rently going on right now (more info at bot­tom), I won’t be doing any blog posts or tours or inter­views or give­aways or any­thing because I sim­ply can’t han­dle it. I KNOW this might hurt my stand­ing in the pub­lic eye, but honestly…I just can’t do it! I don’t know what else to say.

I’ll prob­a­bly be on Twit­ter less, my EIT Face­book page less…just less of me every­where. I’ll prob­a­bly read less reviews because neg­a­tive reviews and a neg­a­tive soul don’t go well together (or maybe they go TOO well together). I’ll just be…less.

This will be temporary…I can’t say how long…maybe two weeks, maybe till July? When I do come back though, I will have a sur­prise for EIT fans…so that’s some­thing. But I do need to just drop out of this world for a bit so I can screw my head on straight. I’m in full-on panic mode at the moment and when I panic, I make mis­takes. I don’t want to make mis­takes or lose my head at either of my jobs.

Also, some books are affected. Noth­ing Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror related but my adult con­tem­po­rary novel, Lost in Wan­der­lust is being pushed back until the late Fall. I just don’t have the time to fin­ish it right now. It sucks because I really NEED to prove that I can write other things than the EIT series but, thems the breaks.

ALSO ALSO paper­back ver­sions of my books will be gone — for a short while. Until now, I had been using Cre­ate­space for my paper­backs. Things went wrong with my On Demon Wings ver­sion, I com­plained, they didn’t fix it, I com­plained harder, they gave me an answer that didn’t make sense, I asked them to clar­ify, they cut and pasted the same answer as before, I sent them a screen­shot and asked them to explain what is going on, THEY CUT AND PASTED THE SAME ANSWER AS BEFORE, finally I told them to fuck off and that I am going to take all my books (which actu­ally do bring them money) off of their site and go to another POD printer (Light­en­ing Source) and…you guessed it…THEY CUT AND PASTED A PREVIOUS ANSWER.

FUCK YOU Cre­ate­Space. Your cus­tomer ser­vice is dis­gust­ing and you can’t even address that issue with­out a generic reply.

So.…the paper­backs won’t be avail­able for a while. But even­tu­ally I’ll find the time to move them over to Light­en­ing Source and get that all set up and when I do, I’ll let you know.

Also, if you’re want­ing a paper­back ver­sion, I sug­gest you buy from Ama­zon or Barnes and Noble right now while you can…I’ll be pulling them this week.

So this blog prob­a­bly won’t be get­ting updated much as well, and as such I will leave you with some tidbits:

- I did an inter­view with tal­ented + won­der­ful local author Lorna Suzuki (of the soon-to-be-a-motion-picture Imago Tril­ogy) HERE

- I did a musically-slanted inter­view with Emmy from Sin­fully Deli­cious Reads which was a lot of fun, and you can read it HERE

- Jes­sica at Hacka­roos Reviews is host­ing a cool give­away. I ordered those fucked up books from Cre­ate­space (the ODW with the funny mar­gins). While totally read­able, they look like crap inside and as such I have decided to give these defec­tive books away — com­plete with com­ments, scrib­bles, draw­ing, cut out pic­tures and what not, cour­tesy of me. Hey, I may even through in ran­dom pho­tographs of peo­ple you don’t know! Plus book­marks, EIT stick­ers. It’s all fun. Enter that give­away HERE (open only to North Amer­i­can res­i­dents — sorry, I can’t afford to ship out­side of that).

- There should be another inter­view with Sara Vallejo on her blog HERE this week

I think that’s all. Thanks for read­ing this. I feel bet­ter know­ing every­one is up to speed with what is going on in my life and hope­fully when I come back, I’ll be shin­ing brighter than ever.

Just don’t for­get about me.

And please, if you love EIT, keep spread­ing the word. I know you guys are and I really appre­ci­ate it — I feel your pas­sion and addic­tion, hell I hear it — but it all helps me get one step closer to my dream :)

The Dex-Files — a Darkhouse excerpt

by

So, the Dex-Files is com­ing out in August. That’s right. You heard me. Due to over­whelm­ing (and frankly, fright­en­ing) response, peo­ple really want their fill of Dex. From his crazy POV.

Well you’ve got it. Or, you will get it. There will be 3–5 scenes from each Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror book writ­ten exclu­sively from his POV. And some of those scenes will be Perry free. Mean­ing, you haven’t read it before. This is good stuff, people.

Any­way, I thought I’d give you a sam­ple of what the Dex-Files will con­tain. I’ll release one of this excerpts each month until the release date. The last POV scene I posted, Red Fox bar scene, will be fur­ther elab­o­rated in the com­pi­la­tion (I mean, we want Dex with the shovel AMIRITE?). Same goes for this scene here…

*if you have an aver­sion to curse words, I mean, come on…but don’t read further*

*also note this is unedited and may change prior to publication*

DARKHOUSE — DEX POV — The first encounter

The room smelled like shit. Shit, sea­weed and decades of decay. It was too bad Smell-O-Vision never went any­where, because the smell of the old light­house would have been just as ter­ri­fy­ing as the sight of it.

Speak­ing of, there wasn’t much to see here. Down­stairs was empty. This floor gave up noth­ing except doors that wouldn’t open and I was begin­ning to doubt Old Cap­tain Fish­sticks was actu­ally haunt­ing the place. Just because pansy-assed ghost hunt­ing shows were clam­or­ing to film the light­house, didn’t mean any­thing was actu­ally here. Had I been duped by the hype? No. Not me. That was impossible.

I stopped in the mid­dle of the room and sighed, the cam­era feel­ing extra heavy on my shoul­der.  A migraine tick­led my tem­ples and I pinched the bridge of my nose, hard. I hated feel­ing like a fuck-up fail­ure. I couldn’t go back to Jimmy empty-handed. I sup­pose I could, see­ing as the Nazi didn’t really know what I was up to, but it didn’t mat­ter. He’d sniff it off of me like some fuck­ing dog. He’d know I was down here, try­ing to find some­thing bet­ter for myself.

Then there was Jenn. She was worse. She said she was sad when I left the show, but I could see through those tears of her. I knew what they meant. She was secretly pleased I took off with the tail between my legs, like she won yet another bat­tle or some­thing. Three years with some­one and you get to know their tac­tics pretty well. You can see that smug smile beneath the “But I’ll miss you.” The one that says I’ll be noth­ing with­out her, that I’ll fail on my own.

I didn’t want Jenn to be right. But look­ing around this dis­gust­ing, dark relic with the kelp and the crash­ing waves out­side, waves that seemed to laugh at me, well, fuck, she prob­a­bly was right. Again.

I chewed on my lip absently and looked above. I had more of this place to see. I wasn’t going to give up yet. After all, I was here. And even though the mon­sters were hid­den behind veils of pre­scrip­tion, I was still the same boy as I was back in New York. They still wanted me, even if I couldn’t see them.

My pride would be the death of me one day.

THUD.

A loud clat­ter sounded out from the floor below. It sounded hard, like some­thing had top­pled over from a great height.

I froze, feel­ing just a lit­tle spooked. I walked across the room and paused near the stair­case, wait­ing for more.

From down­stairs came a scur­ry­ing noise, like a very large rat was pok­ing around. I care­fully turned off the cam­era light and waited. My ears lis­tened hard, try­ing to fig­ure out just what the hell it was.  From what I remem­bered, ghosts didn’t usu­ally make much noise. They didn’t move around like they were try­ing to be quiet and fail­ing at it. Rats didn’t move like that either, espe­cially not on the West Coast.

I picked up another sound now. Foot­steps. Then a metal­lic jangling.

It was def­i­nitely a person.

I was def­i­nitely fucked.

I took in a deep breath and ignored all the pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios that waited for me below. What was the point in fig­ur­ing out who it was, or what was going to hap­pen? If I got out of there with­out them see­ing me, then wor­ry­ing was fruitless.

I made my way down the stairs, paus­ing every other step to keep track, until I reached the bot­tom floor. I could hear tiny gasps of ragged breath cou­pled with a whim­per­ing sound. I could see only dark­ness, except for weak light that spilled in through one of the rooms. There was a win­dow where there hadn’t been a win­dow before.

You need move your ass now, I thought to myself. But before I could do any­thing, I felt this…this…I don’t  know what the hell it was, like a mag­netic pull, like the air before a thun­der­storm. An energy rolled toward me like a freight train. It made me stop, stunned and still.

There was another whim­per, almost like a sigh, then feet slap­ping the damp ground.

Before I had chance to process that the foot­steps were com­ing toward me, some­thing col­lided straight into my chest. There was a scream, a girl­ish shriek (not my own), and I was shoved back­ward by some­thing small and solid. The ground smashed into my shoul­der, then my head, but it didn’t mat­ter. The CRASH of my cam­era was the most painful thing of all.

I groaned and rolled over, feel­ing for the machine.

Oh please, please, please, please, please, I thought in a panic. I can’t afford this, I can’t afford this!

I heard the other per­son, the beast that hit me, stir­ring and moan­ing, then they hit the ground again with a thump that sounded painful. Part of me didn’t give two shits about the ass­hole that might have ruined the most impor­tant thing in my life. The other part of me felt kind of bad, espe­cially when it became appar­ent that the ass­hole was some fuck­ing chick. She was mak­ing lit­tle ter­ri­fied squeaks.

Then she made no noise at all.

Moth­er­fucker. Now I had a bro­ken cam­era and some tres­pass­ing broad who was either dead or unconscious.

I hoped she wasn’t a cop.

My hand made con­tact with the cam­era, and from the ini­tial feel I was cop­ping, it didn’t seem like much dam­age was done to the out­side. My fin­gers instinc­tively found the light and switched it on. I let out a breath of relief as the dark­ness was vio­lently illuminated.

As was the girl, lying on the ground beside me. Her eyes were closed and she wasn’t moving.

Shit, shit, shit.

I got on my knees and placed my hand on her neck, feel­ing for a pulse. She stirred a lit­tle and moaned, which meant she was at least par­tially alive. Not dead. I hadn’t killed her. So I had that going for me.

I couldn’t see her prop­erly in the com­pet­ing dark­ness and blind­ing glare, but she seemed damn young. She was small, with a round face that glowed ghostly pale. A cam­era hung from her neck and onto the floor. With­out think­ing, I reached up and brushed a strand of black hair off of her fore­head. She was warm, almost fever­ish. Still not dead.

At my touched she moved a lit­tle and tried to open her eyes, rais­ing her arm up to block out the light.

“Don’t move,” I said, my voice com­ing out bro­ken and hoarse. The last thing I needed was for her to wreck her­self even fur­ther.  Just because she was alive, didn’t mean she was well.

She dropped her hand reluc­tantly and I took the light away from her face, plac­ing the cam­era down on the ground beside her head. It cre­ated crazy shad­ows along the planes of her face. Her pert nose turned into a beak. If I let my imag­i­na­tion run away with me, there were a mil­lion things she could have mor­phed into. I was lucky I hadn’t skipped my pills ear­lier, like I had been think­ing about doing.

I touched her face again, just to make sure she was still a per­son. She was. She was still soft, and warm, and alive.

Was I being creepy?

Her eyes flut­tered open and I could barely make out a shade of blue in them before panic tore them wider and she tried to jerk away.

I pressed her shoul­der down to the ground to keep her still.

“Seri­ously,” I told her. “You might be really hurt. Please don’t move.”

She obeyed and lay back down.

“I’m OK,” she said through dry lips. Her voice was light and scared. But she didn’t sound like she was in any trauma. Her eyes searched my face with­out really see­ing me.

I still had one hand on her shoul­der and the other on her face.

I was def­i­nitely being creepy.

I took my hands away and inched back a bit to give her space to breathe — and me space to run. She looked no older than 20, so she obvi­ously wasn’t a cop but she was here, in a place I had no right to be. I eyed the hall in the dark­ness, won­der­ing if get­ting out of the build­ing was going to be as hard as get­ting in. I hoped she wasn’t about to call for help. Or press charges.

She eased her­self up and looked war­ily around the dark­ness, her eyes focus­ing on the cam­era. I could see the wheels turn­ing behind those shad­owed eyes, won­der­ing what the fuck was going on.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. Even though she tech­ni­cally ran into me, I had to pla­cate things before they escalated.

“I was upstairs and I heard this crazy clat­ter from down here,” I explained, my voice speed­ing up as my heart raced. There was too much adren­a­line in my sys­tem and the med­ica­tion was screw­ing around with it. “And I thought maybe it was the cops or some­thing. I didn’t know what the fuck to do. I thought I could get out of the way I came in, but I saw you there, and then I saw the win­dow prob­a­bly at the same time you saw the win­dow and I’m…I’m so sorry if…well, you’re obvi­ously OK.”

There was a pause. She didn’t seem to buy any of that.

“Who are you?”

The mil­lion dol­lar ques­tion. What would my answer be today?

“That depends on who you are,” I said honestly.

In the shad­ows I saw her cock her brow.

“I asked you first.”

Why did I have to run into the most ques­tion­ing peo­ple? I exhaled and reached back into my pocket. My new busi­ness cards were printed just last week – she’d be the first per­son to have one.

Who­ever she was.

She took it from her hands, hes­i­tant, like I was hand­ing her poi­son. So sus­pi­cious.  Tsk, tsk.

I picked up the cam­era and aimed it at the card. It gleamed under the light. So did the chipped pol­ish on her gothy-looking fingernails.

She read it out loud and flipped it over, then looked up at me, some­how even more con­fused. The light lit up her face better.

“Are you from West Coast Liv­ing or something?”

I let out a small laugh. “Fuck no.”

I started to rock back on forth on my feet, need­ing an out­let for the energy that was rum­bling inside my bones.  She was a curi­ous lit­tle thing, but some­thing about her made me ner­vous. Wary. Like she could be even more dubi­ous than I was. Like she had a mil­lion secrets to tell and I would never hear any of them.

Who­ever she was.

“Well, Dex Foray, I have a feel­ing that what­ever you guys are doing here tonight, you’re doing so with­out the per­mis­sion of my uncle, who owns the lighthouse.”

Shit. Fuck. Shit.

Her uncle owned the light­house. I felt the routes in my brain rewire as they pre­pared for the extra adren­a­line, the gal­lop of my heart.

But…wait…

“There’s no one else here,” I said. “It’s just me.”

She laughed, clearly not believ­ing me.

“Look, I don’t care,” she said and there was just enough ease in her voice to make it true. “I’m not going to report you. I shouldn’t even be here myself. Just get your crew together or what­ever and get out of here before you do get in trouble.”

I stopped rock­ing. What the hell was she going on about? My crew?

“It’s just me,” I told her again. “Did you see some­one else here?”

She frowned but kept her gaze on mine. “Yes. I heard you upstairs, and I was going to go out the win­dow, but I saw the shadow of some­one pass by. Outside.”

A shud­der ran down my spine and roll of nau­sea waved through me. I skid a bit closer to her, my pants drag­ging on the damp ground.

“Are you sure you saw something?”

If she had seen some­thing, and it obvi­ously was not me, then I was hooped up the ass. Maybe she was too, but I just couldn’t get a proper read­ing on her. That weird energy slinked off of her in bursts and messed with my head a lit­tle bit.

“Yes, I saw some­one,” she said with a tinge of doubt. “Some­one walked past the win­dow, swear to God.”

I wasn’t sure if her God was one I could hold truth to.

“Where did you come from? Did any­one come with you?”

Like your uncle…or the cops…or your 250-pound MMA boyfriend.

She shook her head. I placed the light closer to her face, feel­ing like I needed to do a bit of inter­ro­gat­ing to get to the bot­tom of this. She winced at the glare.

“Sorry,” I mum­bled. “I…well, nevermind.”

“Nev­er­mind?” she spat out. Her eyes nar­rowed and not from the light. “You just broke into my uncle’s light­house. Don’t you tell me to nevermind.”

Whoa. All I was going to do was apol­o­gize again for doing exactly that. Well, fuck. For­get it. I was done. I was out of here.

With a grunt, I got to my feet and stretched up into the moon­light that was now creep­ing from the nearby win­dow.  It would be an easy escape. I picked up my foot to go, but I stopped.

I couldn’t leave like this.

She looked so help­less at my feet. And I did have man­ners somewhere.

I reached for her hand. She even­tu­ally took it, feel­ing all too tiny in mine, and I brought her to her feet. She stag­gered a bit, almost keel­ing over, her cam­era swing­ing, and all I could think about was maybe she fell a lot harder than I thought. Maybe she wasn’t really “all there” and we’d need an ambu­lance after all.

I put my hands on the sides of her arms and stepped closer to her, try­ing to keep her from fal­ter­ing. She was short as hell and that was say­ing a lot since I wasn’t very tall to begin with.

“You OK?” I asked, already know­ing she was the type who’d say she was fine even if her limbs were chopped off. I saw a flash of some­thing – hope? — in her eyes before she twisted us around and I was illu­mi­nated and her face was hid­den in the dark. I searched out her fea­tures but couldn’t get them. It was unnerv­ing to not see the round pale face and watch­ful eyes.

“Just a bit dizzy,” she said. The fact that she admit­ted that much didn’t sound very good. I began to think where the near­est hos­pi­tal was, whether I could get her there in the High­lander, if I would need to call her uncle first. Who would then slap me with some tres­pass­ing charges and a pos­si­ble assault charge, because men were dicks and no one would believe a girl could run into me, espe­cially not one pixie-sized.

“Good,” I said, try­ing to look into her eyes, try­ing to keep things light. I smiled, think­ing it might help my cause. “Promise not to sue?”

“I won’t. Can’t speak for my uncle, though.”

Damn it! Just where was he any­way? Why was she explor­ing a light­house in the dark with­out him?

“Why are you here?” I asked, more and more curi­ous about this lit­tle goth girl.

She dropped her gaze to the ground, even though I couldn’t see her anyway.

“We’re hav­ing a bon­fire at the beach,” she said. Her voice went higher, younger, and I got the dis­tinct impres­sion that she was feel­ing guilty about some­thing. “I got sick of hang­ing around teenagers and wanted to come here. My uncle never let me come here when I was younger. I didn’t tell any­one, I just left. I was hop­ing to film stuff.”

Hop­ing to film some stuff? As if she couldn’t get any more intrigu­ing. What kind of stuff, exactly. What had she heard about the lighthouse?

She let out a small gasp and started fid­dling with some­thing. Her cam­era. I picked up mine and shone the light on her and while she was squint­ing uncom­fort­ably at the glare, I took her SLR in my hand and peered it over. Aside from scratches that were prob­a­bly there before, there was no damage.

“It’s fine,” I told her, try­ing to sound reas­sur­ing. “I thought you wrecked the shit out of mine when you ran into me.”

I pat­ted my cam­era which made the light bob against her face. She didn’t look very impressed. Who could blame her.

“You’re right,” I said, before she could. “Who cares? I prob­a­bly deserve to have this cam­era smashed.”

Even though it would put me back at square one. I couldn’t think about that.

Thump.

I froze. The sound had come from upstairs. Where I had just been. Where noth­ing else had been. Unless…

I looked at her, putting the light closer to her face. It was Bad Cop time again.

“You sure you came alone?” I whispered.

She replied, “Are you?”

I nod­ded. She didn’t. It then occurred to me that I had no clue what her damn name was. She never offered it up. I didn’t know any­thing about her.

This could have all been a trap. They might have known I was com­ing here. I don’t know how, but maybe they saw the High­lander from a dis­tance. Maybe tres­passers were a weekly occur­rence. Maybe they lured ghost-hunters here and then robbed them. Or raped them. I’d prob­a­bly let lit­tle miss doe eyes do the hon­ors, but I had no idea how strong her uncle was.

She dropped her eyes from mine and looked at the win­dow. The only easy way of escape.

But if she was think­ing of run­ning, that meant she was afraid. It meant she didn’t know who, or what, was upstairs.

And if they didn’t come with her…they were already here.

I leaned into her and smelled some­thing like a fresh breeze radi­at­ing from her neck.  It took me a moment to find my tongue, find the words to say, “Are you one hun­dred per­cent sure that no one else came with you here?”

I wanted to pull away for her response but that energy, that smell, kept my nose and mouth locked near her neck for just a few more seconds.

 

 

Red Fox from Dex’s POV, Rebecca’s letter – a blog tour wrap-up

by

I had quite the suc­cess­ful blog tour last week for On Demon Wings. In case you missed it, I’ve com­piled some of the blog posts that I wrote for the var­i­ous par­tic­i­pat­ing blogs.
Let’s start first with Rebecca’s let­ter to Perry (writ­ten after Lying Sea­son) – as seen on Good Choice Reading

Dear Perry,

I know this email prob­a­bly won’t reach you. Me, Dex, Emily, Jimmy – we’ve all tried to get in touch with you the last few weeks but to no avail. I fig­ured you’ve blocked us as spam or per­haps closed your email account all together, but I wanted to try, one last time.

I’m not writ­ing this on behalf of any­body. No one knows I’m doing this or say­ing this to you. Every­one has just sort of given up and moved on (well, not every­one). But I just had to write you and tell you a few things. These might hurt to read, if you ever do read them, but it’s just the truth.

I really like you, Perry. A lot. Dex has told me that you don’t have too many female friends, that you’re always wor­ried about being rejected or let go, like peo­ple don’t have your back. I was like that once too, so I under­stand. In fact, before I met Emily, I was a lit­tle too aloof. This Eng­lish charm of mine? I cer­tainly used it to my advan­tage on more than one occa­sion. To be alone was to be safe. To not let any­one into my heart was to be smart. I was cool as Pimms cup cucumber.

Then I met Emily and it all went out the win­dow. Never mind the fact that she would even­tu­ally become my lover, then my girl­friend. At first she was a friend and that was the first step. Even let­ting her in on that level was scary, but I’m oh so glad I did because the risk was worth it.

I think I could use a friend like you Perry and you could use a friend like me. I could be that friend to you. Of course we won’t tran­si­tion into lovers (I like blondes, and, you’re not a les­bian), but I think we could learn to trust each other and have some fun.

My first course of duty as your friend would be to write you as I am writ­ing you now. And tell you about what you left behind.

I know you’re hurt by what Dex did. I would be dev­as­tated. But I know how you feel, Perry. I know how you feel about him. I know you love him. But he doesn’t. He’s just a man who got in way too deep and scared him­self half to death. He hurt you badly and he hurt him­self too. In all the years I’ve known Dex, he’s never been as happy as he is with you. That’s all I saw dur­ing that week you were in Seat­tle. I know you were too para­noid about Jenn, but I saw it. His eyes light up when he’s with you, when he talks about you. I could go on, but what’s the point. I don’t think any of this would make you feel any less hurt or humil­i­ated. Peo­ple make mis­takes. I’m sure you’ve made a few. I know I have. And Dex, all he seems to do is make mis­takes. Some­times by acci­dent and most of the time on pur­pose. Most of the time to pun­ish him­self, because of the demons in his past. He never meant to hurt you – and I think he thought he couldn’t hurt you. You seemed too eager to keep your emo­tions at bay and he in turn did the same.

You’re both just supremely fucked up. Sorry! But again, it’s the truth and that’s what friends tell each other. The two of you together have so much poten­tial – for great­ness and for dis­as­ter. But it’s up to you, together, to decide what that’s going to be. You can trust some­one first and then let them in. Or you can let them in and trust them later. But you’ll never be hon­est until you can do both of those things. And I really, truly hope you can. Because you both deserve to be happy, and, ide­ally, with each other.

Take care,

Your friend Rebecca Sims

Then there is the pop­u­lar bar scene from Red Fox, writ­ten from Dex’s POV – as seen on What the Cat Read

Red Fox — Dex

“Sex­u­ally frus­trated?” Perry asked, her voice strug­gling to be heard in the noisy bar.
I turned my head away from my beer bot­tle and looked at her in sur­prise. The girl must have been psy­chic, though I could see from the way her round eyes were slant­ing at the cor­ners that she might just be drunk.

I had to smile. “Yes.”

There was really no use in deny­ing it. Even with all the bull­shit going around and the feel­ing that my brain was split­ting in two, it was hav­ing to sleep next to her every night – and just sleep – that was fuck­ing me up the most. I looked down at the beer bot­tle label that was stick­ing to my fin­gers in moist chunks. Christ, I couldn’t be more obvious.

She didn’t appear put off. She rarely did. It was one of her annoy­ing super powers.

“Because your girl­friend isn’t here?”

“Sure.” That was part of it. But even if Jenn were here, God help us all, it still wouldn’t have got­ten rid of the con­stant boner adjustments.

I took a long gulp of my beer, hop­ing that she would get the hint and not pry any fur­ther. Perry didn’t seem to have con­trol over her lips half the time and not in a good way and it was only a mat­ter of time before I said some­thing really stu­pid. I didn’t trust myself with­out the meds.

I glanced up at Max­imus and Bird talk­ing across the table from us. I hated Max again. I didn’t know if it was being off the meds or whatthe­fuck­ever but his rock­a­billy bull­shit act was wear­ing thin. I didn’t like how he acted like he knew every­thing and I didn’t like the way he was try­ing to win Perry over. He would deny it, but I knew exactly what the fucker was try­ing to do to me. And Perry was too inno­cent, her self-esteem too rav­aged to pick up on it.

To cement my point, Dire Straits came on and after Perry pro­claimed her sud­den (and sur­pris­ing) love for the band, the douche­fucker stood up and asked her to dance like he was a Cajun Rhett Butler.

She agreed, tak­ing his hand with a look that was pretty close to glee, and he led her to the packed dance floor. I looked back at the beer just in case she wanted me to notice what was going on, notice them together. My fin­gers started pick­ing at the label again. I wouldn’t give them that satisfaction.

“You care about her a great deal,” Bird said in his ‘I’m an old man’ voice.

I shot him a look and resumed con­cen­tra­tion on the beer, tak­ing respite in the monot­o­nous move­ments. I didn’t say any­thing. There wasn’t any­thing to say. It was the truth, that’s all it was.

“It’s OK, Dex,” he con­tin­ued. “I would too. But you have to respect each other. You have to move slowly. You are both too much the same.”

“What does that mean?” I snapped at him. I felt bad, once again I wasn’t in con­trol of my emo­tions, but Bird’s face was impas­sive and gave noth­ing away.

“You know what it means,” he said and he left it at that. I did know what he meant. That’s what made the whole sit­u­a­tion harder.

We sat in silence for a bit, then he excused him­self to go to the bar, promis­ing to bring me a beer. I wanted to stick my fuck­ing head in a pitcher but I needed to take it easy. Drink­ing never really helped me in the way I thought it did. And those thoughts always came when I was three sheets to the wind.

I man­aged to avoid look­ing in Max’s and Perry’s direc­tion but that all went fuck­aloo when U2 came on and Perry wasn’t back at her seat with fin­gers in her ears.

Instead she was still on the dance floor. Slow danc­ing. With gin­ger fuck­ing Elvis. They were danc­ing close, way too close. Her breasts were crammed up into his chest, he was hold­ing her like he was about to turn her over his knee and spank her six ways from Sunday.

And she was let­ting him. She looked like she was enjoy­ing the body pres­sure as much as he was. I could only imag­ine the way his chubby must have been grind­ing against her. Not that I wanted to imag­ine that. I shud­dered, feel­ing the curi­ous mix of dis­gust and envy carry through me. Feel­ings, fuck, I wasn’t used to this.

I was still mak­ing a dis­gusted face when Bird came back but to his credit he just handed me my beer and didn’t say any­thing. It was tak­ing all my willpower to peel my eyes away from the cou­ple and con­cen­trate on some­thing else.
This came in the form of Cheri and Amanda, two MILF’s who had been eye­ing me since I sat down. I’m sure they prob­a­bly went after any guy under 35 who didn’t clean his ears out with his car keys, but I decided to be flat­tered. I grinned at them and as expected they teetered over to me on tacky plas­tic heels, smiles broad, breaths rank.

I didn’t really hear a word they were say­ing, I was just try­ing to look hand­some and not breathe in through my nose. One of them, Cheri, maybe, took a lik­ing to Bird which he didn’t seem to mind. Bird didn’t strike me as some­one who had a wife wait­ing for him at home, though he could have cer­tainly done bet­ter than some old lush with wrin­kled cleav­age and brown-speckled teeth. I felt like throw­ing up in my mouth but I played up my viril­ity and asked Amanda, maybe, if she’d help choose songs from the juke­box with me.

We walked to the box through the sticky crowd and I kept Perry and Max in my periph­eral vision. On the out­side it looked like I was hav­ing fun, on the inside I was para­noid as fuck. I kept fear­ing that he’d grab her and take her away some­where dark and pri­vate. The thought of him touch­ing her, kiss­ing her, both­ered me to no end but Amanda was watch­ing me and look­ing con­fused at my expres­sion. I smiled at her again, all good vibes and good sex, and let her select some shitty songs first before I requested mine.

We had just got­ten back to the table (where Bird was try­ing to give Cheri a very polite GTFO) when Max and Perry finally removed them­selves from the floor. I wanted to make some cut­ting remark to him and cut him down a peg but there was a weird aura of ten­sion just steam­ing off. Some­thing had gone down between them and even though it soothed the spite in me, I was a bit con­cerned for Perry.

Appar­ently, so was Amanda. The minute she saw Perry’s sweet, wor­ried face she grabbed my arm, sink­ing her Pepto Bis­mol –col­ored talons into my skin.

“You’re danc­ing with me, sugar,” she com­manded. She was sur­pris­ingly strong for her size and her sun-raped arms had no prob­lem drag­ging me to my feet.

“Like I have a choice,” I said, try­ing not to laugh. This was one hun­gry cougar.

I gave Perry a quick wink as we went past and decided to give Amanda what she’d been wait­ing for: Some­one young. Some­one fun. I grabbed a cow­boy hat off of some ran­dom Joe Blow and gave “Croc­o­dile Rock” my best moves.
It had been a while since I was able to use some of my the­atre school skills, other than fuck­ing Michelle in the orches­tra pit and tak­ing hits between mono­logues. I knew it didn’t mat­ter if I screwed up or looked like a retard because that wasn’t the point, but I was sur­prised how eas­ily it came back to me. Again, all I could think about was how deep I felt the music, how deep I was feeling…everything. Though I was swing­ing Amanda around, my mind dwelled on what my med­ica­tion was hid­ing half the time. Besides the very obvious.

“You’re good,” Amanda said to me, hold­ing me close to her, try­ing to take back the con­trol. Peo­ple were clap­ping and watch­ing us with amuse­ment and she was bask­ing in the glow.

“It comes nat­u­rally. But so does being bad,” I said with a smirk.

“I can see that. Your wife must be pretty pissed.”

Wife? Oh right. Fuck­ity fuck. I didn’t need to eye the ring on my fin­ger to remem­ber the whole cha­rade. Not that the town of Red Fox gave two shits whether I was really mar­ried to Perry or pre­tend mar­ried, but it didn’t hurt to keep up appearances.

“She’s pretty under­stand­ing,” I said.

Amanda nod­ded. I noticed her ear­rings were clip-ons and dan­ger­ously close to slip­ping off. This was one sweaty, stanky ass bar.

“You’re the under­stand­ing one. Most men here would be all macho about it if their wife was danc­ing with another man. But I could see he wasn’t a threat at all.”

Oh really? I wanted to pry her for her cougarly wis­dom but I bit my lip instead. We danced some more and then we were inter­rupted by another woman. She said her name was Mary Sue (nat­u­rally) and she was years younger (pos­si­bly even under­age) with des­per­ate eyes that screamed at me, like danc­ing with Dex Foray was the most excite­ment she’d ever get. That made me really fuck­ing sad. How pathetic this town must be to find a fuckup like me as their sav­ior.
I danced with Mary Sue, going through the motions, think­ing about the fake wed­ding band on my ring fin­ger. When the song ended again and I could see more women approach­ing me (look, I get that I can look pretty hot, but no one should attract this many red­necks), I decided I had enough. I knew what song was next and I knew who I was danc­ing with. My wife.

I walked toward her, ignor­ing the women and focused on her face until her big blue eyes met mine. She looked so small and dainty sit­ting there among Max and Bird, drink­ing and try­ing to have fun even though a world of dan­ger whirled around her. I could see the strain on her face, I knew she was always hyper-aware of what lurked in the dark. I knew because Bird was right. We were too much the same.

I stopped in front of her and tipped my hat in the most awk­ward imi­ta­tion of a cow­boy.
“It’s our song,” I said to her over the piano notes of Billy Joel’s “She’s Always a Woman.” I held out my hand, hop­ing she’d take it.

Her eyes lit up and she took my hand. I quickly grasped it, cool and white between my fin­gers. I led her to the floor and put my arm around her, bring­ing her in hard and fast to my side. She was mine. For the sake of appear­ances, she was my wife, but she was mine any­way. She didn’t know it yet, but I did. It was wrong and it made no sense, but she belonged with me. No one else, not any­one else.

It was a shame that I was the one who belonged to some­one else. I won­dered if I’d ever have the strength to cor­rect that or if I’d pun­ish myself forever.

We started danc­ing slowly, side to side, and I put one hand behind her back, where it was hot and small, tempt­ingly close to her ass. The other held her hand. I kept her as close to me as pos­si­ble, but I didn’t want to impose like Max­imus did. Besides, the last thing Perry needed was to feel my hard-on on her hip, even though it was fuck­ing tempt­ing to let her know what she was doing to me. I enter­tained the idea that she might even like it. It was a high school dance all over again.

I had to know. I stared into her eyes, lost in the storm, and started singing along with Joel. Softly, and at a dis­tance to start, then I leaned into her ear where it smelled like sun­shine and baby pow­der. I closed my eyes and sang, feel­ing my breath bound off of her ear in hot clouds. It was tak­ing all of my willpower to not take this fur­ther, to not wrap my lips around it and lick the lobe to see what it would taste like. See if I could make those eyes roll back and make her for­get every­thing that had hap­pened to her. I didn’t want to be Red Fox’s sav­ior, but I wanted to be hers.

NOTE: I was sur­prised at how fun and easy it was to get inside Dex’s head – and boy, do you guys love it! It looks like I’ll be releas­ing a com­pi­la­tion of scenes from all the books from his POV, most likely in August or Sep­tem­ber. And yes, the strip club scene from Dead Sky Morn­ing will be in it (you perverts!)

Here are some more posts too:
– A blog from Ada Palomino

– An inter­view with everyone’s favorite, Jenn

– Dex and why you should watch EIT

– And Perry’s thoughts on love and ghosts

Thanks to See­ing Night Reviews for host­ing the won­der­ful tour!

At Wit’s End — A Screenplay

by

Before I wrote nov­els, I was busy writ­ing screen­plays. I started in 2000 and worked steadily on them until about 2007. I have writ­ten around eight com­pleted full-length scripts and one short, most of which will never be shown to any­one because they suck oh so badly.

One of the scripts I spent a long time on was At Wit’s End. It attracted the atten­tion of a local pro­ducer and I signed an option for it (this was back in 2001 and noth­ing ever came of it). The script become a Write Movies con­test final­ist, and was selected to be per­formed by Final Draught (let me tell you, there is NOTHING more ter­ri­fy­ing than see­ing a bunch of actors per­form your script in front of an audi­ence — thank God it took place at a bar where I was able to drink myself silly).

The script has lost its sheen in my eyes over the years but I’m still quite fond of it in some ways. I can def­i­nitely see how far I’ve grown as a writer. I know screen­plays are hella dif­fer­ent from nov­els but the process is still the same. I still plot my books as I would a movie as the out­line helps me move along.

I also noticed how influ­enced by film noir and Alfred Hitch­cock I was at the time. The script really does have that sub­tle, clas­sic movie feel and I’m aston­ished at how vile a vil­lain I created.

Any­way, I thought I would put the script up here for free in PDF form for you to read.

Here’s the log­line: “An emotionally-ravaged actress must face her deep­est fears when she believes her new home is haunted by her deceased mother-in-law.”

Here’s the blurb: “After the death of her mother-in-law, Sierra Hayes and her psy­chol­o­gist hus­band leave their lives in 1950’s New York City behind and move into their newly inher­ited man­sion in the sleepy ham­let of Wit’s End.

But the move isn’t an easy one. Iso­lated from her friends and Broad­way career, Sierra finds her­self drawn deeper into the mys­tery of her new home. Find­ing her bed cov­ered by hun­dreds of cru­ci­fixes, bath­tubs full of blood and towns­folk with some­thing to hide, are all some of the ter­rors that Sierra can’t explain. Not to men­tion her dead mother-in-law whom she sees loom­ing in the woods behind the house, a woman who ter­ri­fied Sierra even in life.

As the weeks go by and Sierra’s grasp on real­ity begins to fade, it’s up to her to get to the bot­tom of her increas­ing mad­ness. But with a hus­band whose inten­tions are meant to do more harm than good and a house that has more men­ace than any­thing in Ami­tyville, it may cost her more than just her sanity.

“At Wit’s End” is an intel­li­gent, richly imag­ined work of old-fashioned mys­tery, with sub­tle scares and a uni­ver­sal story at heart. The hero­ine is smart, dam­aged and must rise above her demons to over­come the most ter­ri­fy­ing antag­o­nist of all…her mother-in-law.”

And here’s At Wit’s End. If you find your­self bored and want­ing some­thing to read, it’ll be here.

 

 

Cover reveal: On Demon Wings

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Ta-da! The shiny, sparkly, ethe­real cover of Exper­i­ment in Terror’s Book #5 - On Demon Wings (pub­lished May 13th 2012). (click on image to view larger)

 

I sup­pose it loses some of its magic if I tell you how I made it…but…I’m going to any­way. I’m pretty ter­ri­ble at keep­ing secrets.

First of all, I wanted some­thing that rep­re­sent­ing demon pos­ses­sion, because that’s really what the book is about. And what’s your first thought when you think of demon possession?

PEA SOUP! Thank you, Linda Blair.

OK, aside from pea soup vomit and bloody crosses (egad!) you think of levitation.

So I wanted my poor lil’ Perry Palomino to be lev­i­tat­ing. Only, how to do this?

First I chose a roy­alty free, free to use stock photo. I wanted some­thing pretty yet creepy, like this for­est.
Then I tweaked the photo myself with pho­to­shop to cre­ate this aqua green/blue colour I really wanted.
Then I super­im­posed some creepy stuff into the image (if you look for it, you can see it).
Then I took my friend, put her in a white dress of mine, made her bend over awk­wardly on her couch till we got just the right, believ­able posi­tion.
Then I took pho­tos, cut her out, inserted her in the pic­ture, threw in some font and sent it to my artist Bret Tay­lor, telling him I wanted the cover to look like this, but bet­ter, obvi­ously.
He went ahead, did his thing. I asked for MORE SPARKLES AND FIREFLIES cuz you can never have too many.
AND VOILA.

Per­son­ally, I think it’s the best book cover in the series :)

Winner winner chicken dinner!

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First the bad news: Casablanca didn’t make it into the com­pe­ti­tion *sob* — we did feel the love though! Over 700 votes which is amaz­ing and awe­some, so thank you all for your help. I’m proud to have worked on such a film and I thought we did an awe­some job. But alas, Clas­sic Films are over­looked these days (hence why two ver­sions of the Matrix made the com­pe­ti­tion) espe­cially by the pop music pub­lic. Not an easy sell!

No wor­ries though, because I was glad to help out and get some expo­sure for my hard­work­ing friends. And also, we have a win­ner of the The Ben­son Paperback!

And that is…ANDY!! Con­grat­u­la­tions Andy :) I’ll be in con­tact with you shortly.

I also decided to put forth a sec­ond prize, a signed copy of Lying Sea­son, and that book goes to Kristi Perry (love your last name, btw ;)

Thanks every­one for play­ing! Con­tests are fun :)

OH RIGHT — and while I have your atten­tion, check out For­ever Young Adult’s review of LYING SEASON! Once again, Perry and Dex break the SWOON-O-METER (if that’s a thing!)

WIN A “RARE” SIGNED COPY — three days only!

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Hi folks!

My friends and I made a short film and entered it in a con­test. The basis is that you have to accu­rately recre­ate a film in 60 sec­onds. Then you have to get lots of peo­ple to like it. If the judges like what you’ve done on both accounts, you win the con­test — $10,000.

I did makeup/hair and wardrobe on the film, which enti­tles me to a chunk of change from the pot. It was a load of fun, and though hair isn’t my exper­tise (I didn’t go to school for makeup though…12 years ago), I think we made a great film.

What would be even greater though, is if we won. You all know I need the help, and that amount would mean On Demon Wings might come out ear­lier (after all, I need to cash to pay my edi­tor — and he’s already doing me a huge favor).

That sounds like bribery though, doesn’t it? Mwha­haha. Seri­ously though, if I could get YOU my dear read­ers and fans and looky-loos to “like” the film, I’ll give you some­thing in return.

A signed copy of The Ben­son — IN PAPERBACK.

Do you know who has copies of The Ben­son in paper­back? NO ONE. Not even ME! For realz. I only made this as an E-version, so I’m going to print just one of them. It’s going to be cus­tomized. It’s going to have the first two pages of On Demon Wings at the back of it. That’s right…I’m includ­ing an excerpt from Book #5…something that won’t see the pub­lic eye until at least May.

I will ship this puppy any­where in the world. And I will throw in a signed Dark­house book­mark as well!

And then when you receive the book, take a pic­ture of you with it and I’ll post it here and on the EIT Face­book page :)

So how do you enter to win this? SO SIMPLE.

Click on the link to the con­test page and our Casablanca film: http://vancouver.virginradio.ca/FFF2012/View.aspx?PostID=45564

Click “like” below the video — no need to sign up or any­thing like that. Two clicks, two seconds.

Then come back and tell me you entered. Either email me (see con­tact page) or leave a com­ment here or leave one on the EIT FB fan page. But you MUST tell me you liked it, oth­er­wise there is no way I will know. I’ll be watch­ing the num­bers too, so I’ll know if you’ve actu­ally voted (not that I’m not trust­ing y’all ;)

You can gain an extra entry too by “lik­ing” our Face­book Fan Page for Casablanca too or fol­low­ing @strutyourfunny on Twitter.

Did you already “like” the Casablanca video before I announced this? Just help me out with a per­sua­sive RT on Twit­ter and you’re entered too! (again, lemme know about it).

All right. That’s the con­test. It’s a con­test within a con­test. INCEPTION CONTEST. And some lucky EIT reader is going to be very, very happy. I’ll be doing the draw on Feb 5th and will announce it HERE and on the EIT FB page!

Good luck and thank you!

If you’ve placed a win­ning bid or clicked the Buy It Now but­ton in a list­ing, you’ve com­mit­ted to pur­chas­ing that item. If you don’t pay for it, even if you’ve changed your mind, you vio­late the unpaid item pol­icy. Here are some examples:

It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times

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Well, it’s the last day of Jan­u­ary. All I can say to that is THANK THE LORD. Because, I don’t know about you, but 2012 so far has kicked my ass, worse than it’s ever been kicked before. And I’m 30…there’s been a lot of ass-kicking in my life (and I have a rather large ass).

This month has been espe­cially try­ing. Los­ing my job, plus other finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties have led to me being over­come by worry and strife. I haven’t even been able to write, all I can think about is try­ing to keep the roof I have over my head. My days have turned into long cover let­ter writ­ing ses­sions, apply­ing for every job I can think of. But it’s not easy — as most of the unem­ployed world knows. My overqual­i­fi­ca­tions mean that I’m turned away by sim­ple jobs like being a cashier. I’m sim­ply not good enough for anyone.

I’ve been hit by fam­ily prob­lems as well as other nasty issues that chip away at your heart and leave you reel­ing. Through all of this trauma and trou­ble though, I have learned a few things about myself. I learned I have hid­den resolves of strength and deter­mi­na­tion I never knew I had. I learned it’s OK to lean on your friends and loved ones and to ask for help and sup­port. As one friend pointed out, most peo­ple really do want to help you. I’ve also learned that I am a per­son worth respect. Every­one has self-worth and I’ve learned it’s OK to stand up for your­self and say “you know what, I’m worth it” (sounds like a L’Oreal ad).

All of that said though, this month has been excel­lent in one major way: my books.

Thanks to my tire­less invest­ment in self-promotion, mar­ket­ing and PR, I’ve sold more in Jan­u­ary than I have…well, ever.

These are my sales of the books last month (Dec)

these are the sales this month (Jan)

As you can see, I’m finally bring­ing in some money for my efforts — but it’s an ongo­ing game. It doesn’t mean the sales will con­tinue. It doesn’t mean I’m mak­ing all that much (Dark­house costs buy­ers 99 cents — I only get 30 cents out of it — plus 2454 of those 3424 books were free down­loads). And the pay­ment is extremely spo­radic. But it’s a great relief to know that nine months of con­stant tweet­ing, face­book­ing, blog­ging, net­work­ing, writ­ing, yap­ping, annoy­ing peo­ple, whatever…it’s finally start­ing to get some­where. And peo­ple every­where are lov­ing the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Series. I think that’s the best part of all… I get to share some­thing I cre­ated, some­thing I love, with other people.

Speak­ing of, one of the most excit­ing times this month, was watch­ing all four books reach the Ama­zon Best Sell­ers list…at once!

And this was the high­est rank­ing for Darkhouse:

I know this is peanuts com­pared to the really suc­cess­ful authors, but I’m tak­ing a moment to pat myself on the back. The work is not over, but I am grate­ful and thank­ful for this mile­stone in my life.

In other news, the blurb (for now) and pub­li­ca­tion for Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror, Book #5 is out now, check it out at Good Reads here and please add it to your books: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13442031-on-demon-wings

Thank you!

Review Roundup

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Lots of new reviews in for the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Series in the last week or so, let’s take a look shall we? First up, Dark­house reviews:

From Attack the Stacks:

First of all, if you have any pre­con­ceived notions about self-published books being infe­rior you should put them aside and read Dark­house. Karina Halle can flat-out write a good story.

So what did I love so much about Dark­house?  Well, it cer­tainly played into my addic­tion to those ridicu­lous tv ghost hunt­ing shows. Shame­ful and ridicu­lous, yes, they are. But I watch them any­way. All of them. Even the one hosted by the dude­bro with the hair and the too-tight t-shirts care­fully cho­sen to show off his tribal-tatted biceps. Don’t judge me.

Also, Halle’s writ­ing is very vivid. She sets really detailed scenes. I’ve never been to the Pacific North­west but I could pic­ture it clearly in my mind, from the waves break­ing on the shore to the foggy water to the rick­ety old light­house. Many of these scenes she sets so well are CREEPY as hell. Total night­mare stuff, which I was read­ing alone in the dark and that turned out to be not such a good idea. I found myself get­ting gen­uinely wigged out, which is pretty rare. Over­all the book flows so easily…I love, love, love books with short para­graphs (at least, the ebook had short para­graphs, not sure if the paper­back is for­mat­ted dif­fer­ently). There is just some­thing so pleas­ing about that for­mat to me, it just makes for really easy reading.

I also loved that Perry is a flawed hero­ine. She’s not a beauty queen to begin with, and she’s car­ry­ing around a few extra lbs. on top of that. She dresses like she never quite got over the grunge era. She’s stuck in a dead end job that is suck­ing the life out of her, but she can’t afford to lose. There’s no men­tion of how gor­geous she is, how charm­ing, or how every­one just loves her. Peo­ple are wary of her, even her own fam­ily. She’s weird and she’s aver­age and she’s a breath of fresh air when it seems like every book you pick up these days has an ethe­re­ally beau­ti­ful main char­ac­ter. Look, I don’t have any­thing against beau­ti­ful peo­ple – truly – but it’s nice that us aver­age folk get a kick­ass hero­ine to relate to every now and again instead of being rel­e­gated to a side­kick or a fren­emy. I was less in love with Dex, but I think that was inten­tional. The dude is just kind of dif­fi­cult to like at this point in the series. I sus­pect his background/attitude will be explored more in the next book.

Wanna know some­thing ter­ri­ble and kind of gross? I actu­ally snuck off to the bath­room at work a few times because I couldn’t stop read­ing this. I can’t remem­ber the last time I did that. At this point my co-workers prob­a­bly think I have either the world’s worst intesti­nal issues or a seri­ous drug prob­lem. To say that I’m look­ing for­ward to read­ing the rest of the series would be putting it mildly. Seri­ously, I can’t believe the ebook is only $.99 on Ama­zon. Don’t even think twice about buy­ing it.

Bonus points for the MST3K shout out!

4.5/5 stars!

From Tales of the Inner Book Fanatic:

There’s no hid­den secret about me lov­ing ghost sto­ries and the whole ghost hunt­ing busi­ness — I love it no mat­ter what book it is. For Karina Halle’s book, DARKHOUSE, the first book in the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror series, despite it being a self-published book (which I only read on a casual basis), I thor­oughly enjoyed it.

DARKHOUSE was a great intro­duc­tion to a series, with a very inter­est­ing sto­ry­line and a vari­ety of intrigu­ing char­ac­ters. Espe­cially Perry, the main hero­ine. I absolutely loved Perry from her snarky humour all the way down to her inse­cu­ri­ties of her life. She was a great char­ac­ter whom a lot of read­ers could sym­pa­thize with. But like in any com­mon para­nor­mal story there’s a love inter­est and in this case it’s Declan “Dex” Foray who is the gor­geous and sexy kind. There are many qual­i­ties to describe dear old Dex but I can def­i­nitely say he’s an enigma. He can be annoy­ing at first but then he can imme­di­ately switch straight back to damn right lov­able … but I just wanted Perry to hug and kiss him, and also attack him with a few punches. Well, he’s just that kind of guy that you get frus­trated with but I still loved him for all he’s worth.

Now as for the sto­ry­line itself, it pretty much had every­thing you want in a story. You had a good fair share of hor­ror writ­ten at its best, an enjoy­able set of char­ac­ters, an addic­tive plot where you wanted to know more and more about what’s going to hap­pen next … like I said, you have every­thing you could pos­si­bly want. While I’m still left with many unan­swered ques­tions regard­ing why Perry can see things oth­ers can’t or even what exactly Perry is run­ning from (from her past), that did not dis­tract me away from the sto­ry­line and I’m def­i­nitely inter­ested in what’s going to hap­pen next in Perry’s adven­tures espe­cially with Dex.

Over­all for a self-published novel (which can be just as good as a pub­lished one), I thought Karina Halle did a fab­u­lous job in enter­tain­ing her read­ers. It may not be ‘strictly-speaking’ your young adult novel as it’s focus­ing on a 22-year-old girl, but I think read­ers with a pas­sion of hor­ror will enjoy this book immensely!

4/5 stars

From The Book Hook-Up:

My Review: Well, I need to get this off my chest imme­di­ately.  I didn’t find Dark­house par­tic­u­larly scary, even though the title warned me that I might.  Although, I must admit that I’m not eas­ily fright­ened.  I did, how­ever, find it a page turner…mostly because I liked the main char­ac­ter Perry Palomino (great name!) and wanted to make sure she was OK through all of her adven­tures.  Now, don’t get me wrong,  Ms. Halle did cre­ate a spooky set­ting and the things that went bump in the night were def­i­nitely creepy, but I don’t want you to be turned off by this book just because you think you’ll be too scared to read it!  If you’re eas­ily spooked, then just read it in the day­light and you should be just fine!

The story is writ­ten in the first per­son so we live it through Perry’s thoughts and visions of the world.  She is a char­ac­ter that has had some rough patches in her life.  As a teenager, feel­ing “dif­fer­ent” from oth­ers she had a few mis­ad­ven­tures.  But now, she’s try­ing to get her life back on track.  And, even though she doesn’t really like her job and feels like she’s con­stantly com­pet­ing with her teenage sis­ter who can do no wrong, she’s grown stronger and wants to move on from the per­son she was.  Over­all, she’s fairly easy to relate to.  Perry spends an awful lot of time “in her own head” think­ing things through and imag­in­ing all man­ner of situations…and one of the top­ics that’s fore­most in her mind is Dex.  Declan “Dex” Foray is older, more worldly than Perry.  He’s sexy and confident…and most likely, bipo­lar.  That makes him unpre­dictable, irri­tat­ing and totally mes­mer­iz­ing.  Just like Perry, I found myself intrigued by this man who only reveals what he has to…no more, no less.  There were moments where I simul­ta­ne­ously wanted her to kiss him…and punch his lights out.  This makes for a very com­plex relationship.

They’re thrown together by coin­ci­dence when they meet at her uncle’s aban­doned light­house and from that point on their lives are inter­twined and their adven­ture begins.   Dex pro­poses they work together to cre­ate a new ghost hunt­ing show and they return to the light­house where the real mys­tery and “spook­i­ness” begins.  This book focuses more on the char­ac­ters than the super­nat­ural and sets up what I know will be a very inter­est­ing series.  The pace was a bit slow in the begin­ning but that changed after the first few chap­ters.  As with many self-published books, you will find a few gram­mat­i­cal issues and some incor­rect word choices but it is min­i­mal and does not dis­tract from the story.  Over­all Ms. Halle cre­ates a solid foun­da­tion for the remain­der of the series with char­ac­ters that are unique and sit­u­a­tions that pro­vide enough unan­swered ques­tions to keep you want­ing more.

And next up, LYING SEASON, From See­ing Night Reviews:

REVIEW:
Okay so my first reac­tion to fin­ish­ing this book was a long pause and then scream­ing “OH MY GOD!” Yep that was my ini­tial reac­tion then I calmly put the book down and took a long breath, this was such a killer good fourth book in the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Series.  Karina Halle really knows how to make me want to pull my hair out and frighten me at the same time with her ghost story.

Perry and Dex are back! But this time around Perry is get­ting her­self into a dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion. The duo’s next haunted expe­di­tion is tak­ing place in Seat­tle where Dex lives and his so called “per­fect” girl­friend wants Perry to stay with them while she works with Dex on the show.  But not only does Perry have to deal with their cutesy and argu­men­ta­tive rela­tion­ship, she also has to deal with her own rela­tion­ship with Dex and it’s com­pli­cated. Then of course there’s the ghost and this one is a scary one and she’s from Dex’s past and pop­ping up every­where. What really doesn’t help the sit­u­a­tion is that they’re a shoot­ing the next show in a men­tal insti­tute, where every­thing seems to go wrong.

Pretty much each time Dex and Perry go to shoot a new episode it gets more insane, scarier and dan­ger­ous. I really feel bad for Perry most of the time because of course she gets the worst of it.  The men­tal insti­tute is prob­a­bly in my mind one of the scari­est place that any­one would go to and hunt for ghost. What they find there is every­thing and more of what they were look­ing for and it’s going to put them in major dan­ger. Along with a com­pe­ti­tion ghost hunt­ing show it really made for one awe­some hor­ror ride.

Perry I have to say is one hell of a girl, she deals with the ups and downs of every­one around her. Her par­ents are prob­a­bly the worst par­ents ever, I don’t like them at all but her sis­ter is great and really sup­port­ing her the most. Then she has to deal with Jenn, the annoy­ingly per­fect girl­friend of Dex, who is really not per­fect. I felt for Perry, she held it together pretty well and really stuck up for her­self and opened up a lot more this time around. Dex doesn’t really make it easy for her to keep her emo­tions in when he really cares for her too.

The ghost are freak­ing scary, I swear as a fan of the tele­vi­sion show ghost hunters I love this kind of stuff. But actu­ally being there and hear­ing or even see­ing ghost and the ones as creepy as in Lying Sea­son I would be cry­ing a lot. Lets just stay make sure your read­ing this one with the light on.

Over­all I can’t get enough of this series, Lying Sea­son hands down was fan­tas­tic. Yes, there are some gram­mar errors but they really didn’t bother me because I love this series.  The rela­tion­ship with Dex and Perry just threw my heart around; I really love these two guys. They are both strug­gling in their own past lives but I’m pulling for them. The end­ing in this was insane and I was not pre­pared, so get pre­pared! I highly rec­om­mend this book!

RECOMMENDATION:
This is a mature young adult / adult story with very scary sit­u­a­tions and fan­tas­tic mys­tery. I highly rec­om­mend this to fans of hor­ror and para­nor­mal enthusiast.

5/5 stars

There’s also been a heap of reviews on GoodReads as well from read­ers like you — no mat­ter the rat­ing, I’m always appre­cia­tive of peo­ple who not only take the time (and money) to read my books, but who go beyond and leave a review. Each one is help­ful in their own way and it’s a great way for new read­ers to gain objec­tive insight into the nov­els. So thank you to every­one who has reviewed the series in one way or another!