First, let’s get the bad news out of the way.

I know I said Shoot­ing Scars was com­ing out in July, but it just got pushed back to August 20th. Why? Grand Cen­tral Publishing’s team felt they could do me and the book bet­ter jus­tice this way and donate more man­power to pub­lic­ity. It’s a pretty good rea­son that I think will ben­e­fit every­one in the end.

They know that you, the read­ers, will be dis­ap­pointed by this news and they want to appease you (and me!). I will be work­ing with GCP’s pub­lic­ity depart­ment to come up with some treats for you — maybe along the lines of post­ing the first chap­ter to soften that Sins cliffhanger blow? Maybe giv­ing away THREE Cam­den bracelets in this blog post? Well, that’s not a maybe…I’m going to per­son­ally do it, so keep read­ing to enter.

So there you go. August 20th is the offi­cial release date of Shoot­ing Scars (will be on Nook as well as Ama­zon and all the major e-retailers at the same time).

Book #3 Bold Tricks (work­ing title) is being released on Octo­ber 15th. Hey, just a two-month wait!

Sins & Nee­dles and On Every Street will both be taken over by the pub­lish­ers next month in early June. This ALSO means that On Every Street will finally be avail­able on Nook at that time.

Once again, I’m sorry to dis­ap­point you with this push­back but there’s obvi­ously very lit­tle that I can do about it. The pub­lish­ers said they’d try to get it pub­lished in July but some­times things don’t work out and they are try­ing to get things to work in my favor.

So, please, keep that in mind. It actu­ally hurts my soul to see read­ers being upset with me over this or upset in gen­eral. Your sup­port for me and my new pub­lish­ers is MUCH appreciated.

Mean­while, here’s the NEW cover for Sins & Needles.

Yup! It’s pretty much the same, except white font and my name is ridicu­lously big. So happy they kept the cover, I love it!

Have you missed all the teasers I’ve posted about Shoot­ing Scars so far? Take a look:

Back to the first “I want to make you happy” give­away. Three Cam­den bracelets here. I just got them today and am really happy with them!

The win­ners will receive one of these as well as a signed sur­prise goody! To enter, just leave a com­ment below and on May 14th (the date I hand in Shoot­ing Scars to my edi­tor!) and I’ll pick three win­ners. Open internationally!

If you ever write a book (or get said book pub­lished), you really ought to do some­thing to cel­e­brate the occa­sion. Me? I got a tattoo.

I’m not much of a tat­too per­son, but last year, while in Fin­land, I got a tat­too of my favourite band on the back of my neck. It’s brought me noth­ing but amaz­ing luck, espe­cially with regards to my music jour­nal­ist career. I thought it was the only tat­too I’d ever get.

Until I men­tioned the Dark­house pub­li­ca­tion date to my friend Helen. She pointed out that many peo­ple get Fri­day the 13th tat­toos. Sud­denly, that’s all I wanted. A tat­too to com­mem­o­rate the pub­li­ca­tion of my first novel and the start of some­thing amazing.

So, yes­ter­day, I got the lit­tle 13 behind the ear. For some rea­son, it barely hurt, took less than 10 min­utes, and is really dis­crete. I love it, though. I think it’s going to bring me, and my books, noth­ing but good luck.

Also, now when my hair is up, I look pretty hard­core

 

 

Ashes to Ashes (com­ing Dec 11th)

Unedited

 

Chap­ter One

 

It’s been two months since I first told Dex Foray that I loved him. Two months since we’ve lived together, as an actual cou­ple, in his Seat­tle apart­ment. And two months since Rebecca Sims joined us as our wel­comed third wheel in the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror show. It goes with­out say­ing that they’ve been the best two months of my life.

But, like most things, it hasn’t been per­fect. My rela­tion­ship with my fam­ily is now awk­ward as all hell—I mean more so than it used to be, and that says a lot. I’ll talk to my mom and dad maybe every two weeks, and it’s just one of those please shoot me in the head kind of moments where you’re grasp­ing for shit to say and your mouth is mov­ing and sud­denly you’re talk­ing about the weather or the lat­est celebrity scan­dal or things you can’t even remem­ber just to keep the con­ver­sa­tion going, just so it doesn’t lag and you don’t have to address the giant flam­ing pink rollerblad­ing ele­phant in the room.

Yeah … about that giant flam­ing pink rollerblad­ing ele­phant. That would be that I left my parent’s house, where I had spent most of my twenty-three years, and decided to move in with my part­ner.  Dex. The guy that my par­ents absolutely hated because I had an ill-timed fling with him back when he had a girl­friend (no judg­ing), and he turned into a dick right after I slept with him (please no judg­ing), and I ended up mis­car­ry­ing his baby (okay, the judg­ing is inevitable). I’m not say­ing any of that lightly because it pretty much ruined the fab­ric of my being and intro­duced demonic pos­ses­sion into my life expe­ri­ences, but I mean, you can kind of under­stand why my par­ents think Dex Foray is pub­lic enemy num­ber one.

Obvi­ously, they don’t approve of my new life. I can tell that from the things they aren’t say­ing and the ques­tions they aren’t ask­ing. They don’t even won­der when or if I’m com­ing home; it’s just such a non-issue that it’s become an issue. At least for me. I want them to care. I want them to say some­thing, even if it’s just to scream at me.

The only per­son that I talk to truth­fully on a daily basis (even if it’s just mainly through texts) is my younger sis­ter Ada. She’s happy for me, happy that things are going well with Dex (even though she often starts the con­ver­sa­tion with, “You guys still together? Yes? Okay cool,”) but she doesn’t pull back from telling me how badly she wants me to come back home, even just for a visit.

The thing is, I’m totally scared. One part of me wants to go back, to try and smooth things over and make things right. Maybe if they see Dex again, months later and in a bet­ter con­text, they’ll learn to like him. To see the things I see. To see how well he treats me. And I want to see Ada and hug her and make her feel like she doesn’t have to face my par­ents alone. But the other half of me thinks it could be a mistake—that they’d never open up to him, and I’d regret even try­ing to make amends. I could make things worse.

I needed a sign.

“Ouch, Jesus,” I swore at the stab­bing pain at my wrist. I glared up at the burly, bearded tat­too artist who was glar­ing back at me.

“Try not to flinch,” he said gruffly, his gloved hand hov­er­ing over my bared wrist.

“You’re almost done, honey,” Rebecca said in her sooth­ing British accent, pat­ting my other hand. “Few more min­utes. Looks fab.”

I sighed and tried to relax my body. Now that I wasn’t day­dream­ing, every­thing was very real. I was with Rebecca, lying on my back in a Seat­tle tat­too par­lor, get­ting some ink on my wrist. My first tat­too, and though it didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would, it was still extremely uncom­fort­able. It prob­a­bly didn’t help that it was on one of the more sen­si­tive areas. I was just lucky I decided to go with one color of ink—blue—instead of get­ting it filled in.

Oh yeah, I was get­ting a tat­too of an anchor. Cliché, I know, but I got it for Dex. After all, he had a tat­too inspired by me on his shoul­der, and I fig­ured it was only fair. And, you know, he was my anchor. When he’d given me the anchor silly band back on D’Arcy Island, that stu­pid lit­tle ges­ture meant so much to me. Then, when I’d ripped it off after, well, the “inci­dent,” I’d missed that sym­bol. Through all the ups and downs we’d gone through, in the end, he was still my rock. And an anchor was a hell of a lot sex­ier than get­ting a big ass boul­der tat­ted on you.

“He’s going to be so sur­prised,” Rebecca said as the tat­too machine resumed its buzzing.

I ground my teeth together against the vibrat­ing prick­les. “Uh huh. I hope so.”

I asked Rebecca to accom­pany me here so I wouldn’t have to go through it alone. I wanted it to be a sur­prise for Dex, so I just told him we were going out and doing girly things. I know his dirty mind was prob­a­bly imag­in­ing us head­ing to some Inter­na­tional Pillow-Fighting Con­ven­tion, and a tat­too par­lor was the last place he’d think of. I wasn’t really the tat­too type—my inter­ests in life were so waver­ing and fleet­ing, but my love for Dex was as per­ma­nent as ink. I wanted him to know that.

“Okay, you’re done,” the man said, lift­ing away the nee­dle, the room grow­ing tem­porar­ily quiet with­out the con­stant buzz.

“For real?”

He grunted in response and motioned for me to sit up. I slowly did so and stared at my left wrist. It wasn’t bleed­ing like I thought it would be since I’d felt him peri­od­i­cally dab­bing it with cloth as he worked. The tat­too was shiny and raised, the skin around it red, but it looked beau­ti­ful. Sim­ple but beau­ti­ful. And I sud­denly felt infi­nitely cooler.

I looked up at Rebecca for her approval as the artist started wrap­ping it in black plas­tic. Her matte red lips were stretched into a smile, her eyes sparkling with delight. In fact, she looked bor­der­line ecsta­tic which I found almost odd.

“He’s going to love it,” she said. “Really, really. It’s going to mean so much to him.”

I smiled. “Good.”

It’s not that Dex didn’t know how I felt about him. After what hap­pened to us in New Orleans, and how he’d almost died right before my eyes and I almost lost him in so many ways, I’d had ver­bal diar­rhea of the lovey-dovey kind. But for some rea­son, at times I could tell it was hard for Dex to believe me. When I told him I loved him, he had a knack for turn­ing it into a joke, like, “You say that to all the boys,” and while he played it off in his cheeky way, I could tell it came from some­where. I hoped the tat­too would ease that for him.

Like I said, they’d been the best two months of my life, but things weren’t per­fect. It’s hard to truly appre­ci­ate things when some­where in the back of your mind you’re wait­ing for the other shoe to drop.

I swung my legs off the table, admir­ing even the black plas­tic around my wrist. That, com­bined with my new twelve-hole for­est green Doc Martens and my leather jacket that was too hot for the sur­pris­ingly warm May weather, I felt bet­ter than I had in weeks. See, along with the whole imped­ing feel­ing of doom that I couldn’t shake (and I had no idea what it was about either), I’d gained some weight after mov­ing in with Dex. I could blame his diet all I wanted, but the fact was he ate fairly well and still went to the gym every day, so there goes that excuse. I knew they were “happy pounds,” like the in-love equiv­a­lent of the fresh­man fif­teen, but it still had me a bit bummed out. Dex loved me the way I was, but I still felt like I had to be some­thing he could show off, some­thing like his ex-girlfriend Jenn. I’d lost the shape I worked hard for over Christ­mas, and I always had that fear one day he’d real­ize I wasn’t good enough for him.

“Come on,” Rebecca said, tug­ging on my arm toward the cash reg­is­ter. “Let’s get you home to your man.” She clicked her way over to the counter in her sky-high red heels, her small ass sashay­ing in her pen­cil skirt. Rebecca was the oppo­site of me. Since she and Emily broke up, she’d been doing noth­ing but los­ing weight, some­thing she didn’t need to begin with.

It didn’t help that when we had our last meet­ing with Jimmy Kwan at Shownet over Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror, he brought up the fact that Rebecca should be in front of the cam­era. He wasn’t try­ing to boot me off, so he said, but that two hot girls were bet­ter than one. Luck­ily Rebecca refused, say­ing she was only good as a pro­duc­tion man­ager and that her days of host­ing ended when Wine Babes did. And even though Rebecca was his good friend, Dex agreed. I prob­a­bly would have hit him if he didn’t.

Ever since we’d come back from New Orleans, we’d done about five shows together as a “three­some.” It wasn’t until the fourth show—investigating the haunted town of St. Augus­tine in Florida—that we really found our rhythm and clicked. Though film­ing hadn’t changed much, Dex and I had to adjust to a more reg­i­mented sched­ule, run­ning on Rebecca’s time now and not our own. I had to admit it helped—we never wasted too much time in one space, and we were always in the most oppor­tune areas, but there was a learn­ing curve all the same. We had to stop being “Perry and Dex” and remem­ber that Rebecca was count­ing on us as well. Then there was the fact that Rebecca wasn’t, well, she wasn’t like us. She rarely saw any­thing super­nat­ural, and I know it started to bug her too when Dex and I would be freak­ing out or talk­ing to ghosts, and she’d be star­ing at noth­ing. By the fifth episode, a haunted library in Eureka, Rebecca decided she’d only be around the actual film­ing when we needed a hand—otherwise she’d be some­where else and leave the ghosts to us.

“I won­der where we’re film­ing next,” Rebecca com­mented as we walked down the street to her car.

I shot her an odd look, won­der­ing if she’d heard my thoughts. I still had this ten­dency to project my thoughts and lately I’d been pick­ing up on other people’s. It usu­ally hap­pened with Dex, though on occa­sion I’d find it in some ran­dom per­son. But Rebecca had never been on the receiv­ing end of Perry telepa­thy. At least not yet.

“Did you hear what I was think­ing?” I asked.

She smiled. “No, and believe me, the day I hear you, you’ll know. It’s just we both know that Dex is hav­ing that meet­ing with Jimmy today. I’m assum­ing it won’t be about me being a host since I nearly ripped him a bloody new one. Hope­fully it will be another assign­ment.” She unlocked the door to her hatch­back and I got in in the pas­sen­ger seat. “I mean, it’s been three weeks since we returned from Cal­i­for­nia and I know the library episode wasn’t a com­plete disaster.”

I nod­ded as she took us out of the Queen Anne dis­trict and headed back to down­town Seat­tle. I rubbed the plas­tic over my tat­too, want­ing to peek at it again but hav­ing to restrain myself. “I know. It’s like I know there are tons of para­nor­mal hot spots all over the country—more now than ever, accord­ing to websites.”

She brought out a cig­a­rette and rolled down the win­dow before light­ing it. “I sent a bunch of sug­ges­tions to Jimmy too, but I think after Florida, he wants to keep us closer to home.”

“Because he’s cheap.”

She exhaled a cloud of blue smoke. “I guess hav­ing a spon­sor didn’t really help.”

“At least it’s pay­ing for your salary. We didn’t have that before.”

She gave me a shy glance. “So you’re say­ing you don’t totally resent me for being on the show with you?”

I looked at her incred­u­lously. “What? No! What makes you say that?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I feel like the third wheel sometimes.”

“You are the third wheel,” I said. She gave me a half smile and I quickly con­tin­ued. “Mean­ing, you’re the wheel. You steer us, you keep us going in the right direc­tion. Yeah, it’s dif­fer­ent for me and Dex, but some­times I think it’s because our rela­tion­ship has changed too. Every­thing is dif­fer­ent from the way it used to be and that’s not a bad thing. Thanks to you, the shows are tighter and we’re not wast­ing as much money, and Jimmy doesn’t yell at us as much. The shows look bet­ter too—just hav­ing you around to put up a sec­ond light or what­ever. Seri­ously, Becs, you’re awe­some. You’re the rea­son Dex and I can still do this. You’re a lifesaver.”

“Well, you’re way more fun to work with than Jenn,” she said. “Though that’s a given.”

Some­times I’d for­got­ten that Dex started out at Shownet by being the cam­era­man for Wine Babes, film­ing Jenn and Rebecca as they talked about pair­ing cer­tain wines with McShit from McDon­alds. That’s how he hooked up with that bitch to start with. I tried to shrug off the ques­tions, want­ing to ask Rebecca what they were like when film­ing together ver­sus the way Dex and I are. I was under the impres­sion that they were off hump­ing like bun­nies every time they worked together, and though Dex and I weren’t that dif­fer­ent, I think he was slightly more pro­fes­sional around me. Which was good…right?

I rubbed my lips together, keep­ing my mouth shut, and sat back as Rebecca put Lana Del Ray on her stereo. I let the music rush over me and fid­geted in antic­i­pa­tion of Dex’s reac­tion to my tat­too. I really hoped he wasn’t going to think it was too much. Sure, we’d been together for two months as an actual cou­ple, but things were still so fresh and new for us in so many ways.

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

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

KH: What attracted you to Sins & Needles?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

KH: Favorite sex scene in the book?

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

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

SL: Ellie– hurt
Cam­den– loyal
Javier– deceitful

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am not an ass­hole. I swear.

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

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

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

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

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

I’m excited!

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

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

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

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

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

Pub­lish­ing houses are slooooooow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I hope you trust me.

<3

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Book #8 — Ashes…

Book #9 — …To Ashes.

Or Book #8 — Ashes to Ashes

Book #9 — Dust to Dust

I kind of like that.  Stay tuned!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amanda says:

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

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

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

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

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

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

5 stars!

Kara says:

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

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

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

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

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

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

So the book is cur­rently in my editor’s hands, and to my sur­prise, she’s lov­ing it! (hey, she can be a very picky, hard-assed reader lol — I love you Kara! But I bite my nails when I wait for your opin­ion! LOL)

Been hear­ing back from my beta read­ers too and so far, they love it! Some quotes below that I’ve taken from some emails:

Kass says: Sage. SIGH. New fic­tion love inter­est haha.

I can’t get over how much I loved this book. The char­ac­ters we so.well.done.

The sex scenes were AMAZING. Pretty hot, every­thing I want in a sex scene. Def­i­nitely made me squirm. You sure do know how to write those!

I hope other EIT fans give it a chance. It’s bril­liant

A def­i­nite 5-star book. LOVED it

Emmy says: Damn. I love your crazy, bril­liant mind. I LOVE THE END! Those last 2 chap­ters.. FANTASTIC. *shouty caps necessary*

The sex scene was some­thing else. Not very sweet at all but they were horny and I can only image some­one like Sage tak­ing the reigns for the first show down. The cock tease part was hella hot!

I LOVE LOVE LOVE how strong Dawn was.

This was 5 stars for sure.  Loved it.

And they are both HUGE EIT fans, so their praise means a lot to me. I gotta say, it’s really, really hard to write your first non-EIT book (I can only imag­ine the pres­sure on JK Rowl­ing for the Casual Vacancy). There’s a lot of pres­sure to write some­thing great, dis­tinc­tive and addic­tive. Some­thing that EIT fans will enjoy but will also attract new fans. I hope I’ve done this here, but regard­less, I had a load of fun.

NOW — The Devi’s Metal teaser #4 (unedited — may change prior to publication)

It hap­pened in the blink of an eye. He lunged across the gap and pushed me down onto the bed by my shoul­ders, his incred­i­ble weight on my body, hips crush­ing into my hips. He pinned my arms above my head. His face was inches from mine, lips curled angrily, wired eyes search­ing my widened ones.

“You say that so eas­ily,” he growled near my lips. “A rough few days. Is that what you think this is? Just a rough few days?”

“N-no,” I said squirm­ing beneath him. I didn’t fear Sage. But I feared men when they had too much to drink.

“I thought you were dif­fer­ent, Dawn. The only one on this tour left with a heart and soul.” His eyes flared with indignation.

“I am dif­fer­ent,” I protested, so con­scious of the prox­im­ity of his mouth to mine. I stopped squirm­ing and let his hands hold my arms to the bed. If he wanted to feel pow­er­ful, I was going to let him. But I was going to get what I wanted too.

“You have no idea what I’ve been through,” he told me. His demeanor soft­ened and his grip on my wrists loos­ened. He still kept his face as close as pos­si­ble, whether to intim­i­date or tease, I wasn’t sure. I did know I wasn’t about to back down.

“I have some idea,” I whis­pered, my eyes vol­ley­ing with his. “But I’d like it if you could tell me the rest.”

“Are you here to make me feel? Is that part of the plan?” he sneered delicately.

I blinked at him. Feel? Feel what?

 

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

And yeah, Black Sab­bath rules.

 

But first some infor­ma­tion for the newcomers:

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

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

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

And Dawn has a back­stage pass.

Teaser (UNEDITED — may change prior to publication):

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

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

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

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

I was going to Hell.