Mist – a thriller novel by Danita Cahill
Mist is free November 17-19, 2012 as a KDP Select free promotion.
Like all fiction writers, I have an over-active imagination.
And that fantasy world doesn't leave my head when I'm sleeping, oh no. It often grows all night into a huge, hairy, chaotic world with a freaky mind all of its own.
I've had night visions gone wild since I can remember – bad guys chasing me with handguns, me flapping my arms to stay aloft, just above the rooftops but not quite out of reach of their wicked, grasping hands.
The initial idea for Mist came from a nightmare. It wasn't bad guys with guns chasing me that night though, it was red-eyed dogs hunting me along a fog-shrouded coastline.
About the same time as that nightmare hit, I had a baby. Six months later my mom died.
The combination of the three events – nightmare, birth, and the death of a loved one – was the catalyst for Mist. Thrown together and stirred, these three unrelated ingredients became the plotline, the setting and the main characters.
Evil, red-eyed dogs are the antagonists. The setting is the Oregon coast, where I grew up. The female leading character, Dianne Harris is a younger, hipper version of my mom. And although I gave birth to a baby boy, I gave the character Dianne a three-month-old daughter to keep safe.
Add all the elements together and the concept seemed perfect for a thriller/mystery. The question or mystery in the story: What is happening to the citizens of this Oregon coastal town? They keep vanishing without leaving a trace behind.
Dianne's old flame, detective Kevin McCoffey is on the case. With the help of the town's fortuneteller and the ghost of Dianne's dead grandmother, Kevin and Dianne work together to try and keep Dianne's baby safe and solve the riddle of the mysterious disappearances.