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Love, in Spanish Cover Reveal & Excerpt!

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

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

LoveInSpanisheBook

LIS full coverRELEASE DATE: NOVEMBER 11, 2014

 

BLURB:

“She sat beside me on the bus – and she changed my whole life.” 

Suc­cess­ful, wealthy and absurdly hand­some – Span­ish ex-football player Mateo Casalles seemed like he had it all. A high-society wife, an adorable lit­tle girl, and flashy apart­ments in Madrid and Barcelona only sweet­ened the deal. But there was more to Mateo than met the eye – a life of uncer­tainty and regret that col­ored his black and white world. 

That was until Vera Miles came into his life like a shoot­ing star. Tat­tooed, wild and young, Vera seemed like Mateo’s polar oppo­site at first. But you can’t choose who you fall in love with and the two lost souls did every­thing they could to be together, all while suf­fer­ing the grave con­se­quences. 

Now with Mateo divorced and liv­ing in Madrid with Vera, there is a whole new set of chal­lenges and set­backs fac­ing the cou­ple and rock­ing the foun­da­tion of their star-crossed rela­tion­ship. 

Unfor­tu­nately for them, the brighter the star, the faster they burn. 

***Love, in Span­ish con­tains the first two chap­ters of Where Sea Meets Sky, a full-length Love, in Eng­lish spin­off star­ring Vera’s brother, Josh Miles, com­ing March 2015 from Atria Books***

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EXCERPT

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

 I turn in my chair and give Vera a curi­ous look. Yet another Eng­lish say­ing that I don’t know. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

 She gives me a soft but tired smile and sits down on the arm rest. I imme­di­ately wrap my arm around her waist and pull her down into my lap, where she comes to a rest with a gig­gle, her hair obscur­ing the imp­ish smile on her face. No mat­ter where she is, I can never stop touch­ing her and now more than ever I need her to relax, to feel safe, to know I’m going to get us out of this.

 “Explain,” I demand. “Or I will pun­ish you with kisses.”

 She raises her brow. “Fol­lowed by pun­ish­ment by penis?”

 I shrug. “That can be arranged. Now, tell me my Estrella.”

 She sighs and buries her lips into my neck. I can’t help the small moan that escapes from me, nor my hard­ness build­ing beneath her plump, round ass. I close my eyes and fight the urge to pick her up and take her to the bed­room, the only other way I know how to make her feel safe and sated, the only way I know how to escape.

 “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” she says against my throat, “is a say­ing. I don’t know where it’s from but it means, well, noth­ing is scarier than a pissed off bitch.” She pauses, suck­ing in her breath and I know she fears she’s said the wrong thing. “Sorry,” she quickly adds and I feel her body tense up beneath my fin­gers. “I didn’t mean that Isabel is a bitch.”

 She is still so skit­tish over her words, the way she blurts things out, but it’s one of the rea­sons why I love her. I cup the back of her head with my hand and let the soft­ness of her hair sink over me. “I know you didn’t,” I assure her. “And, well, she is being a bitch.”

 “Can you blame her though?” she asks, her voice ris­ing a pitch and when she pulls away from me, her eyes are wet. It breaks my heart. I’m get­ting tired of my heart break­ing and I know that this isn’t going to change any­time soon. Every day there is another weight on us, another crack appears.

 “No,” I tell her hon­estly. “I can­not blame her.”

 A silence lapses over us, heavy like a wool cloak. It does this some­times. What we’ve done, it coats us.

 Finally she clears her throat. “She’s going to hurt for a long time,” she says. “She’s going to be angry. This isn’t going away. I thought every­thing was behind us now, that she’d move on. You’ve been divorced for a year, if she’s still this mad a year out…”

 “She is mad because I am going back to Atletico,” I tell her. “She is mad because of the paparazzi, the way they are hound­ing us again. She is mad because she feels she is being made to look like a fool. If I had just stayed with my head down, she wouldn’t be doing this.”

 “But you can’t live your life in fear, Mateo,” she tells me.

 I smile at her and brush her sun­set hair from her face. “And nei­ther can you.”

 She set­tles back against my body, sinks, con­forms, melds. She is sec­ond skin. She is a part of myself I can’t bear to sep­a­rate from. I pray I never have to. I pray we can sur­vive what­ever is com­ing our way.

 And I can feel it com­ing, that ten­sion, that storm rolling in the weeks and days.

 I pick her up in my arms and for all her pil­lowy curves, she weighs noth­ing more than a feather. I take her down the hall to the bed­room, throw her on the bed. She glows in the after­noon sun that streams in through our win­dow and it isn’t long before we are both naked and I am climb­ing over her, pin­ning her arms above her head and drink­ing in her body like the most beau­ti­ful, deca­dent wine.

 I will devour her until all of this is gone.

 I will con­sume her until we are all that’s left.

 I push inside her and let my hunger take over.

It all started with Love, in English

He’s thirty-eight. I’m

twenty-three.He speaks Spanish.

I speak Eng­lish.He lives in Spain.

I live in Canada.

He dresses in

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

He’s mar­ried and

has a five-year old daughter.

I’m sin­gle and

can’t com­mit to any­one or anything.

Until now. Because

when they say you can’t choose who you fall in love with, boy ain’t that the

f*#king truth.

***

To a restless

dreamer like Vera Miles, it sounded like the expe­ri­ence of a life­time. Instead

of spend­ing her sum­mer intern­ing for her astron­omy major, she would fly to

Spain where she’d spend a few weeks teach­ing con­ver­sa­tional Eng­lish to

busi­ness­men and women, all while enjoy­ing free room and board at an isolated

resort. But while Vera expected to get a tan, meet new peo­ple and stuff herself

with wine and paella, she never expected to fall in love.

Mateo Casalles is

unlike any­one Vera has ever known, let alone any­one she’s usu­ally attracted to.

While Vera is a pierced and tat­ted free spirit with a love for music and

free­dom, Mateo is a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man from Madrid, all sharp suits and

cocky Latino charm. Yet, as the weeks go on, the two grow increas­ingly close

and their rela­tion­ship changes from purely pla­tonic to something…more.

Some­thing that

makes Vera feel alive for the first time.

Some­thing that can

never, ever be.

Or so she thinks

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I’m not an asshole, I swear

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am not an ass­hole. I swear.

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

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

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

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

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

I’m excited!

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

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

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

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

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

Pub­lish­ing houses are slooooooow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I hope you trust me.

<3

 

 

And With Madness Comes the Light — teaser

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

You ready? Here we go:

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

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

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

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

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

I needed a bet­ter saying.

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

I smirked at her. “These fucks? No.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

The Cliffhanger Myth

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

;)

One day this dirty stool pigeon will fly…

by

Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror. Have you seen the 60’s film with the won­der­ful Glenn Ford? Have you heard Henry Mancini’s snazzy sound­track which was later cov­ered by one of my favorite bands of all time, Fantomas?

Well, at least here you get a snip­pet of it. This is the cred­its of the film with Fan­tomas play­ing the track on top. Fan­tomas is made up of a bunch of my most favorite people…Mike Pat­ton, Dave Lom­bardo, Buzz Osborne and Trevor Dunn. Each of those musi­cians are geniuses in their own right. And Dave, who has read Dark­house and Red Fox by the way (he says it was fucked up — I’ll take that as a com­pli­ment from Mr. Slayer), thought it was pretty cool that the series was named after a Fan­tomas song…that cov­ered a Blake Edwards song. Lol.

I do have a habit of nam­ing books after songs. I named Red Fox after a Tom­a­hawk song (about skin­walk­ers), and that in itself is funny because when I gave Dave the book he imme­di­ately started singing Tom­a­hawk. Exactly what I was going for.

Later on too, I ended up inter­view­ing John Stanier, who drums for Tom­a­hawk (and the fero­cious Bat­tles, and ex-Helmet) who also thought it was pretty cool that I named a book after one of his songs.

I got him to sign my copy of Red Fox and he got me to sign his :)

Any­way, music is pretty impor­tant to me obvi­ously (I’m a jour­nal­ist and fan girl all rolled into one)…and it’s some­thing that will be dis­cussed more in an upcom­ing interview/post with blog­ger Emmy Reads. Oh and The Devil’s Metal. That books is like…totally up my alley. And yours too, I hope.

So, where was I?

Oh yes, the cover for The Dex-Files! VOILA!!

And I’m proud to say it was all done by moi :) (click for larger image)

You can also add the book (com­ing out August 13th) to your Good Reads TBR pile HERE.

Oh and what else…hmmm. Oh…how about the pro­logue for THE DEX-FILES????!

Pro­logue

I was six years old when I got my first taste of hell.

I woke up to a hor­ri­ble howl­ing noise, like a dog caught in the throes of deep emo­tional pain, agony that went beyond the phys­i­cal. It was chill­ing. Ter­ri­fy­ing. Like, make your balls shrivel up into pricks of ice sort of ter­ror. It quickly plucked away what­ever igno­rance my sleep had thrust on me and slapped me in my young face. This wasn’t a dream. This was as real as all hell. There was a mon­ster in my house, the kind that preyed on lit­tle boys, but it wasn’t under my bed or in my closet. It was next door. Or, as it seemed to be, the floor below, scratch­ing and howl­ing its way from the kitchen.

It was my mother. And from the sounds of glass break­ing and fur­ni­ture scuf­fling, my dad had found her. The howl­ing inter­mixed with his boom­ing voice, his threats, his pathetic cries that betrayed the col­lected man he was always try­ing to be. It sounded ugly. It always sounded ugly but tonight I was espe­cially scared. When a vicious cry was fol­lowed by the sound of some­one being shoved into a wall, I’m not ashamed to say I promptly wet myself. Piss­ing your pants seemed the only thing to do when the mon­ster was loose and I made a silent, naïve prayer to the man upstairs, pray­ing that it was my mother who was thrown against the wall. I’m cal­lous, maybe. I’ve been called worse. But if it were my father, and he was out cold, she’d come look­ing for me next.

I thought about pulling the cov­ers over my head and hid­ing from it all like a cow­ard, but that never worked. I would pre­tend all I could that my blan­ket was my invis­i­ble cloak and it would shel­ter me from every­thing bad in the world but I learned at a very young age that there was no such thing as shel­ter. Maybe I would have been safer if I didn’t care. Maybe indif­fer­ence could have been my pro­tec­tor. But I still loved — and feared — my par­ents. That love is what scared me. It gave them the upper hand. They sure as fuck didn’t love me.

I heard a shuf­fling from out­side my door, slow and light. It was only Michael, though it rat­tled my wee body to think things were bad enough that he got out of bed. Michael was just three years older but he might have well been another decade. He was the golden boy, the child of light. I was the runt, the child of dark. I feared. Michael didn’t.

I quickly jumped out of bed and scur­ried across to the door, pur­posely miss­ing the part of the floor that I knew squeaked. I turned the knob silently and saw Michael’s shadow just down the hall, head­ing toward the stairs. Half of him was lit up by a dying night light.

He stopped as soon as he heard me and though I could barely see it, I could feel the look. It said go back to bed, you’ll get us in trou­ble. Only I could get us in trou­ble just by being awake. I still don’t know why my mother had it in for me. Some­times I think she saw a lot of her­self in me, even at such an age. That’s a fuck­ing ter­ri­fy­ing thought. I’d be lying if that, and other things, didn’t keep me up at night.

That look though from Michael, that was the most I’d ever seen him scared. It felt good, self­ishly good, to know he wasn’t inhu­man, that he feared things too. Maybe not the way I did, but hell if I hadn’t been won­der­ing if my brother was born with­out a soul. Now I knew he was just older and bet­ter at hid­ing it than me.

I opened my mouth to say some­thing but he placed his fin­ger to his lips. We lis­tened. The wail­ing had stopped. There was no more noise.

The fresh piss felt cold against my legs and I was sud­denly, acutely embar­rassed of what I had done. It’s damn funny how Michael had that effect on me.

Even fun­nier was how I remem­ber reach­ing out for his hand, look­ing for some sort of pathetic com­fort in my blood rel­a­tive, my Mikey. He jumped as if my very touch star­tled him or scathed his skin. Yet he let me hold his hand, even though it was tiny and clammy and I grasped him hard, until bone rubbed against bone. I never felt as grate­ful to my brother as I did at that moment, for not let­ting go. Yeah the ass­wipe would let go later. Fuck, he’d order up my own exe­cu­tion if he could (don’t think he wouldn’t try). But at that moment, I wasn’t alone.

We made our way down the stairs, hold­ing hands. You’d think it would be less scary with­out the yelling and the damn woman howls, but the silence was hazed with sus­pense and unheard threats, and for­get the smell of urine ema­nat­ing from me, I was this close to shit­ting myself.

When we reached the floor we heard a very slight tin­kling of glass. We both froze and Michael’s grip on mine inten­si­fied. Just for a sec­ond. But it was enough.

The sound was fol­lowed by a groan. Then a flop­ping sound of body and skin against shiny tiled floors. This wasn’t good. This was very, very bad.

I wanted to turn and run. I think I may have tried. But Michael held me there and we both watched as a dark fig­ure came crawl­ing out of the door to the kitchen. She moved on the floor like a drunk snake. That’s what she was, after all. A fuck­ing drunk snake out to eat us alive.

She didn’t get far. Her arms were out­stretched and reach­ing for us but she got two feet before she gave up and passed out. She smelt like wine and evil. Like sweat and sad­ness. Of all the feel­ings that hit me at that moment, I felt…bad. Look­ing back, I pitied her.

Michael and I stood there, star­ing dumbly at our uncon­scious mother. Michael’s eyes were hard in the dark­ness, tiny pin­pricks in the black. I won­der, did he feel hate toward her? Did he still love her? Did he feel loved? Or was he con­fused as I was, for­ever mix­ing up love and hate and fear and females. I’ll never know. I don’t think I even care.

The spell of shock wore off when we heard another sound from the kitchen. My father was stir­ring. My first instinct was to run and hide. I feared him in a dif­fer­ent way. That I’d get a spank­ing for wet­ting my pjs. That I’d be told I was noth­ing but a fuck up (not so much in those words, I was six after all, but I got the gist. I’m no dummy). But he didn’t notice in the dark­ness. He appeared in the door­way, stand­ing over my mother, with an expres­sion of hope­less­ness and utter dis­dain on his face. This is what I get, it said.

Instead he said, “You boys are get­ting a nanny. We can’t live like this.”

Same dif­fer­ence, I suppose.

My name is Dex Foray and I’m a hyp­ocrite. Proud of it, too. I call my mother a mon­ster but I’m the one who took her last name. Maybe because unlike my dad, she never left me. There’s some­thing to be said for stick­ing around…even if it kills you.

I’m a hyp­ocrite because I can’t stand weak­ness in oth­ers, even though I’m born of weak­ness myself. I dish it out and then laugh when they try and dish it back. Like I’m above it. And some­times I think I am.

I’m a hyp­ocrite because I hunt ghosts and I’ve pre­tended all this time that the ghosts haven’t been hunt­ing me.

And I’m a hyp­ocrite because I judge peo­ple. I judge the fuck out of every­one I meet, from their music tastes, to their jobs to their lifestyle choices. I judge them but fuck them if they dare judge me. They think they under­stand this mon­ster in me, the mon­ster in all of us. But they don’t.

They don’t know where I’ve come from.

They don’t know my side of the story.

But now you do.

 

And now I’ll leave you with some Dave Lombardo…Enjoy!

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.


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!