Start­ing this off with ^^^ a dream come true. I’ve been self-publishing since May 2011, have TWELVE nov­els under my belt (includ­ing my pen name erot­ica) and have never got­ten this far. #77 in the Top 100 out of all Kin­dle books on Ama­zon. Thank you, thank you, thank you to every­one who not only bought Sins & Nee­dles but gave it a chance. And espe­cially those who loved it. It’s a per­sonal story to me and I’m extremely proud of it. And, I feel slightly smug to the cer­tain peo­ple who were sure this book wouldn’t sell (*cough* pub­lish­ers). Hell, you write what’s in your heart and you can’t go wrong!

Any­hoo, I thought I’d address some com­monly asked ques­tions I’ve noticed float­ing around.

1) What is the deal with the cliffhanger in Sins & Nee­dles? OMG HOW WILL I LIVE?? I’M GONNA CUT YOU KARINA HALLE!

EEEP! I don’t write them on pur­pose (though EIT fans may say oth­er­wise). I write the book the way it tells me it should be writ­ten. Some­times, it’s just where that story ends and usu­ally some­one gets some­thing wrapped up. If you’re Team Cam­den, you should be pretty happy…OR MAYBE NOT. Any­hoo, cliffhang­ers hap­pen and I will try my hard­est not to have one in Book Two, Shoot­ing Scars. But, you know, when you have a tril­ogy, it’s kind of hard NOT To have each book lead to the other…think about Lord of the Rings! At least you don’t have to wait a year like tra­di­tion­ally pub­lished books (AM I RITE?).…which brings me to ques­tion two…

2) When is On Every Street and Shoot­ing Scars com­ing out? April and July? I can’t wait that long!

You don’t have to. On Every Street (a pre­quel novella about Javier and Ellie back in the day) will be released in March and Shoot­ing Scars will now be released in May!

3) But what about EIT? Dex and Perry! We need more EIT books!

Come Alive (EIT #7) will be pushed back two weeks or so…so instead of a May 21st release it’ll be the first week of June. No big­gie! Plus you all get Dex (And With Mad­ness Comes the Light) on Valentine’s Day!

4) But what about the sequel to The Devil’s Metal?

Well, that’ not 100% up to me since the book was picked up by Diver­sion Books. But I can tell you Sage and Dawn’s story (oooh, sexy rock­star times in Europe…uh…with demons) will be writ­ten this year, and most likely pub­lished in the fall. Kind of  a per­fect book for Hal­loween, no?

5) I want to read Sins & Nee­dles but I have a Nook or Kobo…

Down­load your epub file from Smash­words! Super easy (they have an FAQ if you get stuck). Kobo and Nook can take weeks and weeks to get the books on their sys­tem, but Smash­words costs the same  - down­load HERE

6) I want Sins & Nee­dles paperbacks

Me too. They are com­ing, as soon as next week maybe, you’ll be able to buy from Amazon.

7) Will you sign them?

I’m ter­ri­ble at mail­ing books (as in get them in the mail, sign them, and then go to the post office), so prob­a­bly not. BUT I am try­ing to work some­thing out…they would be quite a lim­ited supply.

8) Sins & Nee­dles merch?

It’s com­ing, just need a few days to set things up…I’ve got to add the Twat­waf­fle hoodie/shirts to Red­bub­ble first, then I’ll think of some inter­est­ing S&N merch ideas…

9) I love the music in the book…do you have a playlist?

Yes, I am a huge music lover (music jour­nal­ist by trade…only rel­e­vant because I’m always try­ing to show the under­dog bands some love, like Guano Padano) and I always write to playlists. You can find mine HERE.

10) Ellie didn’t seem as good of a con artist as she said she was…meanwhile, Cam­den was always call­ing her by her full name. And Javier…what’s his deal?

Hmmm, funny how that can be some­times. And yes, Cam­den does use her name a lot…perhaps to remind her of who she truly is. And Javier? Well…you’ll see very soon…;)

Hey folks!

So, I released the book early. I’m a bit impa­tient, you see.

You can pur­chase it from Ama­zon HERE or Smash­words HERE for $2.99. Now, if you have a Nook or Kobo and don’t want to wait 2 weeks — a month for Barnes and Noble and Kobo to put the book up in their stores, please buy from Smash­words. You just pur­chase the epub copy and trans­fer the file to your read­ing device. The site has easy to use instructions.

Mean­while, here’s how the blog tour is going.…

FIVE STAR REVIEWS FROM:

Addicted to Heroines

Allur­ing Reads

Ginger-Read Reviews

Plus a PAPERBACK give­away at SUPAGURL BOOKS

So, we’re at the start of the Sins & Nee­dles blog tour here. I plan to do a big wrap up when the tour is over but thought this would be inter­est­ing (hence the title). It was posted on Megan from The Book Asylum’s blog (stop by and say hello!) but I thought I’d post it here as well. There’s also an excerpt of SEXY TIMEZ at the bot­tom

 

Ten Inter­est­ing Facts about Sins & Needles

Mean­while, Cam­den McQueen’s name is taken from two peo­ple on my Face­book. One has a son called Cam­den, a name I rather liked. The other is my friend Behn McQueen (and yes, I real­ize Camden’s son is also named Ben). Hi Behn! Thanks for your name! 

And, to make things come full cir­cle, I named Uncle Jim after a dog that I don’t have yet! Ha, my part­ner Scott and I are plan­ning to get a dog very soon and we decided a long time ago he would be called Jim.

2.       The idea for Sins & Nee­dles came in Sep­tem­ber 2012. On Dublin Street was fly­ing up the charts and peo­ple were drawn to Saman­tha Young’s writ­ing because it was a dark sexy and some­what per­sonal tale. I thought, I should write about the things that scare me, the issues that are dear to me and per­sonal. I came up with the title first, then played with that until I had the story of a Con Artist and a Tat­too Artist who were joined by their mis­ery in high school.

3.       Palm Val­ley is a fic­tional town, but I’ve roughly based it around Twenty-nine Palms out in California’s High Desert. My par­ents have a condo in Palm Springs, so the area is pretty much a sec­ond home to me. I love the desert and have found some­thing so ter­ri­bly roman­tic and angsty about it. It makes the per­fect book setting.

4.       Even though I planned to write Sins & Nee­dles in Sep­tem­ber, I didn’t really get it going until end of Decem­ber. Then a bunch of per­sonal crap hap­pened (plus I lost 5,000 words) and sud­denly I had three weeks to write, like 70,000 words. I did not leave the house. I barely bathed myself. I couldn’t even talk to peo­ple (just ask Scott). But I got it done. It helps that when I write, I actu­ally plot out the book like a screen­play, scene for scene, so I’m able to write faster know­ing exactly where I’m going.

5.       When I write Javier, I can’t help but see Javier Bardem’s char­ac­ter in Sky­fall. Doesn’t look a thing like him but man, do I love those bad guys who are totally mad yet charm­ing, the ones you really can’t pre­dict and you can’t help but be enthralled by. My Javier is a really inter­est­ing guy who you’ll see a whole lot more of when the pre­quel novella On Every Street comes out in the spring.

6.       I have scars, on both my legs. They aren’t as bad as Ellie’s because they just occur around my ankles (thank god for ankle boots) and their ori­gin isn’t as hor­ri­fy­ing. I had casts on my legs from pretty much the day I was born until I was six years old. I learned to walk in casts. It’s pre­vented me from enjoy­ing a lot of things in life and has cer­tainly made my life a liv­ing hell (much as it has made Ellie’s) and yes, a lot of those flash­back scenes did hap­pen to me. But as hard as things have been for me (it sad­dens me that I can’t wear very high heels), I’ve slowly come to terms with it (as I should, since I’m in my 30’s now). Doesn’t mean I have an easy go of things but because my dis­abil­ity has kept me from a lot of sports and activ­i­ties, it just meant I’d play by myself and cre­ate worlds in my head. I come from a line of writ­ers in my fam­ily, but my afflic­tion def­i­nitely helped shape me into the author that I am. My scars made me who I am and I’m OK with that, because I’m a bit awesome.

7.       This book really makes me want a new tat­too. I only have two, a num­ber ‘13’ behind my ear and the star sym­bol for the band Faith No More on the back of my neck. The 13^th was in honor of Dark­house, the first book I ever pub­lished, which I released on May 13^th 2011. I’d love to get a Sins & Nee­dles tat­too but I don’t know what yet. I have plans to get another EIT-inspired tattoo…something that Perry Palomino gets in an upcom­ing book. I want it before every­one else gets it lol (there’s boat load of peo­ple with “And With Mad­ness Comes the Light” tats!

8.       Speak­ing of tats…Sins & Nee­dles is part of the The Artists Tril­ogy – I called it that because Ellie is a con artist and Cam­den is a tat­too artist. It took me a while to real­ize that the acronym is TAT. How about them apples?

9.       The next book in the series Shoot­ing Scars, should be released in the sum­mer (I don’t like to keep peo­ple wait­ing longer than six months, plus there’s On Every Street’s release before that). It’s told in the dual POV of Ellie and Cam­den. Very excited about this!

10.   In the book, I fea­ture music from a band called Guano Padano. I fell in love with their music a few years ago and decided I’d love to write a book where the music was fea­tured. Ta da! Here’s a Youtube clip for you to get an idea of how per­fect a sound­track it makes for Sins & Needles.

EXCERPT FROM SINS & NEEDLES

I turned the lawn chair around so that the high back was block­ing his view of me. Then, after a quick look around at his neigh­bors and see­ing only dark­ness from their win­dows, I shim­mied out of my jeans. Unfor­tu­nately, I was drunk and had for­got­ten to take off my boots first. I fell over side­ways onto the grass.

“What are you doing over there?” I heard Cam­den yell and the sound of metal tongs being placed on a rung.

“Stay back! I’m fine!” I yelled, hop­ing my voice wasn’t loud enough to alert the neighbors.

I thanked my lucky stars that my com­bat boots had a zip­per and quickly unzipped them. Lying on my back, with my leg bent up to my head, I pulled off the jeans and tossed them to the way­side. Then I got on my knees and started to look for my ugly Peg pants. Where the hell did they go?

“Look­ing for these?” Cam­den asked from behind me.

Swal­low­ing my pride, I turned around on my knees and looked up. Cam­den was hold­ing the pants in one hand. He dropped them beside him and then walked over to me. He held out his hand.

“Come on,” he said gen­tly, a shad­owed inten­sity in his eyes.

I shook my head quickly. “No. I’m just in my underwear.”

“I can see that,” he said. “Let me help you up.”

My heart thumped loudly in my ears and I looked away from his face and straight ahead at his legs. “I don’t want you to see.”

Sud­denly he was down on his knees and though there were a few inches between us, he was closer than he’d ever been. “I don’t care, Ellie,” he said determinedly.

I kept shak­ing my head, unable to form words, unable to tell him how I was feel­ing. I just wanted him to go away and leave me alone, let me get dressed in peace. I wanted to run. I wanted the dark­ness to swal­low me whole.

“You know how I feel about your scars. They only make you more beau­ti­ful,” he whis­pered, now stroking the side of my face. His eyes were search­ing mine, beg­ging me to open but the fear was so big and so damn real.

“You’ve never seen my scars.” My voice was barely audi­ble, even in my own head.

“No, I haven’t. But I’ve seen what they’ve made you.”

His nose nudged the side of mine and maybe because I’d been think­ing about it ever since Safe­way, or maybe because I was buy­ing some time, I leaned in and kissed him. This wasn’t the ten­der kiss of ear­lier. I had no wine bot­tles held above my head. This kiss was soft for a moment, then hur­ried. His lips sucked gen­tly on mine, his tongue rav­ish­ing my mouth like he couldn’t stop him­self. I was sud­denly insa­tiable, each kiss reach­ing down into my core, mak­ing me want all of him, every part. A mil­lion thoughts flew past my head and then there was noth­ing at all. There wasn’t even Cam­den and Ellie. There was just this hot, pri­mal, cru­cial need for each other.

Before I could stop him, or at least pre­tend to stop him, he was push­ing me back until I was falling onto the grass. I reluc­tantly slid my knees out to the side, my legs com­ing into full view; my scars vis­i­ble in the dark. He didn’t notice, didn’t care. He kept kiss­ing me pas­sion­ately, so hot, so sweet, as one of his hands dis­ap­peared into the back of my hair, cup­ping my head. He laid me on the ground, the hard grass tick­ling the sides of my ears, and that was the last time he was gen­tle. He strad­dled me and pulled my tank top over my head and tossed it aside. Then he leaned back and ripped off his own shirt. As if I wasn’t breath­ing hard enough already, squirm­ing beneath his form, he looked bet­ter than I could have imag­ined. Here was the new Cam­den McQueen, shirt­less, a tower of defined mus­cle and gor­geous, darkly dan­ger­ous tattoos.

There was a phoenix ris­ing from the ashes along the swoop of mus­cle along his hip­bones, a tiger/dragon hybrid fly­ing up the side of his stom­ach, scrip­ture peek­ing out of the top of his box­ers. I’d seen only glimpses of them before, and now they glowed before me, lit by the hun­dreds of warm lights in his gar­den. He was like a liv­ing, breath­ing paint­ing on an all-male canvas.

 

While you’re here, check out this AMAZEBALLS review from blogger-extraordinaire (and fel­low Canuck) Giselle at the rock­ing Xpresso Reads — “Dark, gritty and sexy as hell” — 5 big stars. READ IT. BASK IN HER INFECTIOUS ENTHUSIASM. She RARELY gives 5 stars, so this review means a lot (glad you loved it Giselle!!)

There’s another review at Read­ing Books Like a Boss where the book is reviewed LIKE A BOSS — read HERE.

AND OF COURSE if you have ANY inter­est in music what­so­ever, you’ll LOVE the playlist and musi­cal inspi­ra­tions for Sins & Nee­dles on Read­ing in Winter’s blog. READ HERE. DO IT.

Not much to say about it at the moment, but I just signed a deal with Diver­sion Books for The Devil’s Metal. I’m not sure when the takeover will hap­pen, but when it does, The Devil’s Metal will be pub­lished by a rep­utable pub­lish­ing house — and I can offi­cially call myself a pub­lished author! (with­out hav­ing to put the whole “indie” and “self” in front of it).

Seri­ously, I love being an indie and I will ALWAYS be pub­lish­ing some of my work in this for­mat. I like the con­trol and the steady pay­check. I like being my own boss.

But some­times I hate being my own boss (see recent post on edit­ing my books: http://experimentinterror.com/so-you-found-a-typo/). And I hate it when peo­ple say “Oh you’re an author?” “Yes, I’ve writ­ten a few books.” “Self-published?” “Uh, yes.” “Oh…that kind of author. Not a real one.” (YES I’ve had that con­ver­sa­tion a few times).

Now I can say “NO, I’VE GOT A PUBLISHING DEAL WITH DIVERSION BOOKS FROM NYC, BITCH.”

I can’t wait for the next per­son to ask… heh heh

What does this mean for you? I’m not sure. The book will still be avail­able at all the online out­lets, maybe at a higher price of $2.99. The cover will stay the same (yay). The awe­some inside will still stay the same. And there should be a sequel out (The Devil’s Reprise) some­time this year (no idea about the details of that, however).

HOWEVER because Diver­sion Books is an e-book only pub­lisher, paper­backs of the book will soon be pulled. SO if you always wanted a paper­back ver­sion — par­tic­u­larly if you wanted me to sign one at Boston, RT, SFINE — get one NOW! I’ve ordered a bunch in so I’ll have a few to have as spe­cial give­aways but otherwise…do it now! It will be a collector’s item soon.

You can pur­chase paper­backs HERE while sup­plies last!

Mean­while, I’m also look­ing to ink a deal with Diver­sion Books for my upcom­ing book Lost in Wan­der­lust. THIS IS VERY EXCITING. I hope to have more info on that soon

And in other news, I’ve been post­ing Sins & Nee­dles teasers at my other web­site: http://khalle.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/sins-needles-teaser-1/

And yeah. That’s it. Back to my writ­ing cave. I’m get­ting good feed­back on this book, so I’m VERY happy about that. And I’m enjoy­ing writ­ing it. Always a good sign!

Things have been very busy/crazy in Karina Halle’s world these days (she’s taken a vaca­tion from the inter­net and has taken to talk­ing in the third person).

How­ever, it has come to my atten­tion that a few peo­ple are con­fused about all my upcom­ing releases. You see, I use GoodReads for all my books and that is THE best place for you to get an idea of what books I’m writ­ing and when they are being released (plus it has all their blurbs and covers).

Visit my author profile/links to my books BY CLICKING HERE

For those who don’t give a fuck about GoodReads (awww), I’ll put a lit­tle thing here for you. Note that all release dates are ten­ta­tive as shit hap­pens some­times, but as of Jan­u­ary 7th 2013, they go as follows:

Karina Halle’s 2013 Book Releases

Jan­u­ary 29th — Sins & Nee­dles (The Artists Tril­ogy #1)

Feb­ru­ary 14th — And With Mad­ness Comes the Light (Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Novella #6.5)

March — Lost in Wanderlust

April — On Every Street (The Artists Tril­ogy #0.5)

May 21st — Come Alive (Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror #7)

June — TBA

July — TBA

August — Lit­tle Fif­teen (Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror #7.5)