If you and I have "met" before and you enjoyed a lighthearted adventure or a humorous cozy mystery, this story may come as an unsettling change.

I suppose that's my version of a trigger warning. 

I decided to participate in Nanowrimo on November 1, with zero idea of what I wanted to write about. After consulting a list of random story ideas that have popped into my head over the years I settled on one idea that had a dark Truman Show vibe. After that, I sat down and dropped my character into her father's old farm and waited to see what she would do.

At that point, I had no idea this would turn into the darkest thing (by far!) I've ever written. As my husband said, "even dark stuff sometimes has some lighthearted moments."

Not so much.

It's dark and bloody and twisted. There's drinking and abuse and suicide and murder and... did I mention blood? For all that, at the end of a frantic thirty days full of scaring myself so bad that I couldn't sleep with the lights off some nights, I was pretty happy with the creepy little hot mess I'd created.

Please go into it knowing that this was something like performance art for me. I wrote fast and furiously. Whatever popped into my mind went on the page and it was posted pretty much as it happened (until the end when I fell behind and had to hold off posting to save time). I'll come back and tidy it up--clean the grammar and typos and and fix any plot holes. But for now, here it is in all of it's glorious raw darkness.

Enjoy.

-EA Comiskey