North Dark

Cold survival horror for your inbox.

After I finished grad school, I moved back to my hometown of Chicago to start my career while my girlfriend stayed behind to finish her final year of school. My first Chicago winter in many years hit pretty hard.

Within months of the move, my dog (more on him someday) was diagnosed with fatal kidney disease. I was cold, alone, trying to keep my dog alive by administering daily dialysis, and working very hard at a job I was very unsure I should have taken. 

During that winter, I wrote a dark adventure novella (think Call of the Wild smashed against The Road). A small press published it and the rights have since reverted to me. 

Now. I still think about that novella. I’m not really done with it and I know it’s not done with me. I have some hard copies left and they sit in a box in a closet but that’s a bad use of closet space and a piece of art for which I still feel great affinity. 

So, this is what I’ll try: Publishing it here. It’s twenty-one chapters. I’ll re-release it here. And what I won’t do is overthink this. So that’s the plan. 

The novella is titled North Dark. 

Here’s the premise:

Set in a lonesome and barbarous failed state, a gravely injured man travels by dogsled across a frozen wasteland in pursuit of the fugitive who destroyed his family.

Haunted by predators both physical and spectral, the musher’s journey takes him across a land long-lapsed into madness.

All the while, his enemy slides in and out of striking distance, always one step ahead, always one act of violence away.

I’m re-editing North Dark now and l’ll start publishing chapters here imminently. If you like them, please comment and share.

I enjoyed writing this small vicious book and it feels right to revisit it now to turn up its squalling volume.