Since The Devil’s Metal will be released at the end of Sep­tem­ber (some­time between the 21st and the end of Octo­ber, see­ing how things go) and it’s now Sep­tem­ber 1st (seriously.…SERIOUSLY…how is it? Sum­mer? What? I can’t even…) I’ve decided to put lit­tle teasers and snip­pets up on the blog.

I also wanted to show you this cool Hybrid tank top — I love band merch! (espe­cially fake band merch).

So there’s that…writing about a fic­tional 70’s metal band gives me so many mer­chan­dise and give­away oppor­tu­ni­ties, it’s sick. I can tell you tons of awe­some stuff will be given out this month — right on!

If you need a refresh over what The Devil’s Metal is about, read the blurb on Good Reads here.

Teaser #1 (UNEDITED — MAY CHANGE PRIOR TO PUBLICATION):

Sage walked over to the table in two long strides and snatched up the bot­tle. He gave Chip a dis­ap­prov­ing squint before com­ing back to me.

He stepped up close, very close, so that his wide chest was inches away from mine and his tow­er­ing frame enveloped my whole view. I stood my ground, as tempted as I was to take a step backward.

Sage placed the bot­tle in my hand, our fin­gers touch­ing. It was just for a sec­ond, a brush as light as a feather, but it rat­tled my nerves. I strug­gled to keep my eyes glued to his.

He low­ered his voice. His breath smelled like beer and some­thing fresh, like the ocean.

“Is my band just what you expected? Is this what you’re going to write about?”

He was egging me on, dar­ing me.

“I’m not writ­ing any­thing tonight,” I told him. I put on a mask of false con­fi­dence and took a swig of whisky straight out of the bot­tle, match­ing the inten­sity of his gaze. “Tonight I’m just a fan.”

“Just a fan…” he mused, scratch­ing at his long side­burn, black hair against lightly bronzed skin. “Right. And then the next day? And the next day? Do you really want to doc­u­ment a band com­ing to its knees in its dying days? Is that what a fan wants to see?”

His voice was so low that he couldn’t have been heard over Jeff Beck on the eight-track and the drunken cries of debauch­ery in the back­ground. What exactly was he telling me?

I flapped my mouth help­lessly for a few sec­onds, try­ing to fig­ure out how to respond.

He leaned in even fur­ther, star­ing at my lips. I could see two strands of light grey at his tem­ple, the absolute way his eye color matched the sil­very under­side of a leaf.

“You’re all the same you know,” he con­tin­ued, almost whis­per­ing now. His eyes met mine, mes­mer­iz­ing orbs through his long curl­ing lashes. “You’re just like those girls over there. Just like those pricks out­side. You take and take and take and say you want to be a part of it all but why you’re really here is to wit­ness the fall. Be a part of his­tory. Say you saw it hap­pen. I know what it’s like, Dawn. In a few more years, no one would care.”

Half way through Sage’s speech I was struck by a few slurred words and when I stopped try­ing to make sense of what­ever the hell he was talk­ing about and saw his body sway slightly and how his green feline eyes were lightly glazed, I real­ized that the rumors of Sage being a drunk were at least partly true. Not that I was judg­ing; I was the one drink­ing Jame­son straight out of the bottle.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” I told him, finally tak­ing a step back. I had always dreamed about my first con­ver­sa­tion with Sage but I never imag­ined it would go like this; fully of hos­til­ity and drunken ram­blings, sur­rounded by half-naked, fucked-up people.

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

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

Then I get kicked in the fuck­ing gut.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ll keep you posted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Pho­tos by Cyn­thia Griffiths)

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

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

Have a great week everybody!

Hi every­one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But, I find myself unable to.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just don’t for­get about me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

DARKHOUSE — DEX POV — The first encounter

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

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

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

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

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

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

My pride would be the death of me one day.

THUD.

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

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

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

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

It was def­i­nitely a person.

I was def­i­nitely fucked.

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

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

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

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

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

I groaned and rolled over, feel­ing for the machine.

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

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

Then she made no noise at all.

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

I hoped she wasn’t a cop.

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

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

Shit, shit, shit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Was I being creepy?

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

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

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

She obeyed and lay back down.

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

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

I was def­i­nitely being creepy.

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

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

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

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

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

“Who are you?”

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

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

In the shad­ows I saw her cock her brow.

“I asked you first.”

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

Who­ever she was.

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

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

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

“Are you from West Coast Liv­ing or something?”

I let out a small laugh. “Fuck no.”

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

Who­ever she was.

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

Shit. Fuck. Shit.

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

But…wait…

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

She laughed, clearly not believ­ing me.

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you sure you saw something?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I couldn’t leave like this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thump.

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

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

“You sure you came alone?” I whispered.

She replied, “Are you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some­where around the same time I started writ­ing the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Series, I became a music jour­nal­ist. This meant gal­li­vant­ing around the world cov­er­ing fes­ti­vals, con­certs and inter­views for pub­li­ca­tions such as Con­se­quence of Sound and Mxdwn. I say gal­li­vant­ing because even though it was “work”, let’s face it, 90% of the job is hav­ing a fuck­ing great time (the other 10% is tran­scrib­ing inter­views — HELL). There was a lot of pho­tog­ra­phy involved, more than enough writ­ing, and oodles of hang­overs, sweat-soaked clothes, and great sto­ries. GREAT stories.

Behold, geeky pho­tos of myself geek­ing out over peo­ple I admire (except Jes­sica Simp­son and that girl from Gos­sip Girl who I think looks like Ada Palomino…cuz I no haz admire for dem).

Some of my high­lights include being back­stage with Faith No More in Fin­land, hang­ing out on the Slayer tour bus in Seat­tle, swoon­ing dur­ing Mondo Cane in Poland, Inter­view­ing Chris Cor­nell, catch­ing an inti­mate Queens of the Stone Age show in Seat­tle, hav­ing drinks with two of the biggest man­agers in the indus­try (and lis­ten­ing to them blab­ber about every­one you could imag­ine), fan­girling over Jerry Cantrell, annoy­ing Danny Devito, hav­ing cof­fee with Liz Phair, being able to have a one-on-one convo with Mike Pat­ton for 30 mins, almost get­ting in a fight in the Slayer mosh­pit, ran­domly hang­ing out with James Mur­phuy after LCD Soundsys­tem, being on stage at FNM a few times, going for din­ner with Dub Trio, watch­ing Brian Pohsen fangirl(boy) over Rob Zom­bie (after I did the same), get­ting John Stanier to sign my copy of Red Fox, and then him ask­ing me to sign his, dis­cov­er­ing that most musi­cians are actu­ally the coolest peo­ple ever…

But noth­ing com­pares to the great­est moment of my life.…

baha­ha­ha­haha. oh MAN. JUST LOOK AT MY FACE. I hate weddings.

Any­way, if you’re inter­ested in read­ing some of my (other) writ­ten work, you can find oodles of it here: http://consequenceofsound.net/author/khalle/

Hope­fully I’ll find the time to do more of it in the future

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

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

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

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

Thanks every­one for play­ing! Con­tests are fun

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

Hi folks!

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

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

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

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

A signed copy of The Ben­son — IN PAPERBACK.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good luck and thank you!

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

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

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

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

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

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

these are the sales this month (Jan)

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

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

And this was the high­est rank­ing for Darkhouse:

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

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

Thank you!

The rela­tion­ship between an author and a reviewer is one of the most sym­bi­otic ones in the arts today. This is becom­ing more preva­lent with the rise of the book blog­ging career path and the increase in the publisher’s use of social media. With­out one another, they sim­ply can­not exist. Review­ers rely on pub­lish­ers and authors to sup­ply them with “work” — books to read and review. Authors and pub­lish­ers need book review­ers to spread the word and gain publicity.

Some­times, though, things get out of whack and the whole sys­tem is turned on its head. This usu­ally comes from some­thing I call “a case of the meanies.”

I was talk­ing with an author recently. Like many authors, she writes book reviews, as well as her own nov­els. After leav­ing a less than favor­able review for one book, she was sud­denly expe­ri­enc­ing “rat­ings retal­i­a­tion”. The author whose book she cri­tiqued attacked her book in return, get­ting her friends to leave one-star reviews on GoodReads.

In another, more high pro­file case, a well-known debut author with a major pub­lisher, slan­dered (quite nas­tily, I might add) a cer­tain reviewer who had left a crit­i­cal, neg­a­tive review.  I mean, really? Over a bad review? Then, of course, there is that nutjob author who went crazy because of a bad review, attract­ing hun­dreds to the com­ment sec­tion. It went viral in a mat­ter of hours, doing a lot of dam­age to self-publishers every­where (we aren’t all like that, we swear!) and to herself.

This isn’t to say that all review­ers are blame­less. I do think you CAN go too far with a scathing review, par­tic­u­larly if it turns slan­der­ous and starts attack­ing the author, rather than the work. I think review­ers who pride them­selves on being catty, should prob­a­bly take a few sec­onds and think about the dam­age they are poten­tially inflict­ing and to whom. Does Cas­san­dra Clare care if you call her writ­ing shitty? Prob­a­bly not. But would a self-published, or debut small press indie writer? They might. You want to pro­vide crit­i­cism for them. You don’t want to take away their will to live.

And authors…I think a lot of authors need tougher skin. My nov­els aren’t always well-received — I accept that because it’s the nature of art. It’s sub­jec­tive. And I rec­og­nize that my char­ac­ters are DEFINITELY not for every­one. But you take the neg­a­tive reviews with a grain of salt. Maybe lis­ten if they have some­thing con­struc­tive to say, oth­er­wise, brush it off and con­cen­trate on the good reviews. It can sting but it’s not hard to do. The worst thing you could ever do as a writer is to A) get mad at the reviewer or B) retal­i­ate against them. Don’t com­ment (other than to say “Sorry you didn’t like it, thanks for giv­ing it a try!”), don’t argue, don’t take your issue pub­licly… and for heaven’s sake, don’t try and exact some kind of revenge on the reviewer. Just let it go, let the bal­ance between reviewer and author go back to nor­mal and enjoy the work­ing order of things. We aren’t ene­mies, we are here to help each other and share our love of the writ­ten word.

And here’s some­thing totally unre­lated and creepy now… the offi­cial trailer for the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Book #3, DEAD SKY MORNING (to read more about how I made the trailer and to enter a fan­tas­tic give­away, visit The Book­ish Babes).