While I find inspiration in real life, the actual stories are, thankfully, works of fiction - which, given the considerable turmoil in my character's lives, is probably a good thing!

Toward the end of their relationship she'd told him once, "I wish I could give you what you're looking for, but I don't know what it is. There's a part of you that you keep closed off from everyone, including me. Its as if I'm not the one you're really with. Your mind is on someone else." He tried to deny it, but she didn't believe him. "I'm a woman - I know these things. When you look at me sometimes, I know you're seeing someone else. Its like you keep waiting for her to pop out of thin air to take you away from all this.

The mist starts to form as we stand close to one another. It is a distant fog that rises from the horizon, and I find that I grow fearful as it approaches. It slowly creeps in, enveloping the world around us, fencing us in as if to prevent escape. Like a rolling cloud, it blankets everything, closing, until there is nothing left but the two of us.

I'd like to marry you, if you think that would be okay.

As a writer, I will tell you that darkness is so easy to make interesting. It is so easy because you're allowed to do anything you want.

His voice, even now, follows me everywhere on this longest of rides, this thing called life.

Who am I? And how, I wonder, will this story end?