Don't you just love the beginning of a horror story? The promise of everything to come,

meeting all the characters and laying the groundwork and snuggling up to the hint of all the

horrors about to befall them. It's my favorite. And then I tend to get bored. Maybe not bored, just impatient. And here we are

about to land at the sticky middle of our cul-de-sac tale, and this is where I've struggled the most.

I mean, that's not true. The wrapping up of everything at the end was a bear, but the middle

and everything that comes after is tricky.

I've said it before this whole podcast, this whole mess was my attempt to learn to write, and I've gone and dragged all of you along with me.

This book was rejected more times than I care to admit, and we're about to hit the really

messy part.

But if you've been here for a while, you know that sometimes I'm able to skate by on

vibes. Let's just hope I can pull it off this time. In my defense, the middle of the story is

notoriously sticky, and the writing advice trick I took was to pull all my characters together,

throw a party for them, and see what happens. So, here we go. Chapter 36. I sit my wine as I watched Tom study the neighborhood

plan. His brow furrowed, he said, this was just at the library? It was in that local

collection I told you about. I wanted to see if I could find anything about the cul-de-sac,

and I found it

while I was sorting through everything. And you went out there with Lucky, he said, staring at the

black windows across the kitchen. It was incredibly creepy. None of them knew about the cemetery.

They all claimed they didn't know anything about it.' "'He looked back down at the plan.

"'I can't believe you actually went and found this.

"'I was about to defend myself, but he looked up and smiled at me.

"'Walking, talking Google.

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