Artificial Tears

Author's note

Dear reader,

First of all I would like to thank you for reading until the end.

I hope it was worth it for you and that you enjoyed the story.

Originally I had started writing this story in November of 2023 during NaNoWriMo (For those that don't know, it's an online event in which participants try to write a story of 50 000 words in one month).

I had heard about it for the first time, the month prior, from a family friend.

I had always wanted to write a book from beginning to end, but was never able to (I find it difficult to finish one). So I was really happy when on the last day of November I put down the last few words and ended on 50 011!

This was of course my first draft and editing had yet to begin, a process that took longer than I expected, but still had a lot of fun with.

In March of 2024 I finally finished as far as chapter 22 and decided to slowly start publishing my story online.

Before NaNoWriMo I actually already had some ideas for Artificial Tears, but if I had continued with those it would have probably ended up as another short horror story and a very different one at that.

My first idea was that a humanoid android would get abducted by an unsuspecting kidnapper that had no clue that he had just taken a machine instead of a real person.

Neither Liam or Edith would have been the protagonists, but instead an older person who would get strange footage on their tablet which they didn't really understand. Getting like videos filled with gore in them.

A possible other protagonist would be a co-worker of the android who also doesn't know.

But I thought it would be much more interesting to have the machine be the protagonist for the book and in order to look at the cases from a different angle I needed a detective working on it to become the secondary protagonist. So that is how Liam came to be.

In order to have him partake more into the story I decided that it would be fun if he knew the killer personally.

Through months of continued editing I suddenly came up with the idea for the Lost Footage chapters, I hope you enjoyed them😊.

My plan was to have them do some extra world building and to add an extra creep-factor to the story.

I'm quite happy how the story turned out, especially the protagonist-switch.

Since this is my first ever book I'm very open to feedback (good or bad), so that I might write a better book next time.

Also if you happen to have any questions, please ask them, I would love to answer them.

Also if you happen to have a favorite character, please let me know! Mine is System, I loved writing them, especially since they were a bit of a bully and I love writing nightmares.

Now I want to thank you again for reading.

I've already decided that I want to write another book (or books, so many ideas!) and hope to see you there.

Kind regards,

Ardenla