I am very proud of this game. This is the biggest one I have made to date. It is a visual novel done in Ren’Py with two different endings.

This game took me months to do, but a lot of the delays had nothing to do with coding.

Visual novels and games are nothing new, but using AI and fusing it with true crime are. AI allows creatives to be able to have full control of their work without being stymied by delays or creative differences, but this game is based the my true crime podcast True Crime, Wrong Story, meaning the bulk of the work is mine, and the bulk of the busywork is Perplexity’s.

I don’t have respect for the AI Doomers: they are the ones who drive cars or take public transport in lieu of the horse and buggy, eat frozen meals they reheat in microwaves instead of make their own from scratch on a wood stove, and plop their backsides on Ikea furniture instead of having hand-crafted wooden furniture. They use accounting software instead of do their taxes with a pen and paper…and then throw temper tantrums that technology advanced in places they deluded themselves into thinking they were special. Social media reinforced narcissism, and AI is the great humbler.

I am a creative: an author and artist, thank you very much, and I have no problems using AI to do things that were once out of my reach.

Cassie Lark is my creation and she is based on me, and my stint as working as a television true crime researcher on A Time to Kill, except that she is based on twentysomething me. The way she thinks, speaks, and behaves is me.

At home or at work.

Right down to the hoodies and black turtlenecks.

I had 21 books published by traditional publishers, but when eBooks became a thing, I had over a hundred short stories, novellas, magazines, and books published under my own imprint A Dangerous Woman Story Studio. When “web logs” hit the scene, I had my own news outfit called Chaser News.

So I have always embraced technology even as I still wrote traditional books.

But I have also pretty much been a one-woman outfit.

Cassie in this story has a researcher and an Executive Producer.

You may be surprised to know there are three other Cassie Lark mysteries: much shorter, and all HTML-based games. I have bigger plans for Cassie and she returns in Season 3 for a new game. I am also working on a mystery game not connected to True Crime, Wrong Story.

Stay tuned!