My name is Ian Danaher, and I'm a musician and writer about to graduate college. I grew up in southeast Michigan, a state recent license plates are calling a 'Water Winter Wonderland.' Being surrounded by so much freshwater and natural aquatic beauty, I always loved swimming as a kid—the smell of chlorine residue on my skin after a long pool day, the weight of a big wave crashing over my head at the beach, the laid back social air between people lazing around their own private stretch of a river. Something about removing layers of clothes to bathe in refreshingly cold water always felt spiritual to me, like shedding all the unnecessary parts of me that exist outside of my body. If this sounds anything like baptism, I regret to inform you I did not keep up with my Irish Catholicism after I was 'confirmed' as a teenager. I never had a very strong faith in and within church, but for this story I was inspired to dig deeper into the guilt which plagues so many Catholics and which partly fuels the stereotype that all Irish people are alcoholics (they're not, but she might be).

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Ciara is my departure from the banal, my excuse to go to the tropics. I figured she should be running from something—to impulsively book a flight to a place as remote as Montserrat, you would either need to be Irish, or a criminal, or both. A lot of people don't take the time to confront the guilt that weighs them down, and Ciara is no different. Just as I tend to sometimes escape from my own life—be it with a confluence of chemicals, a couple hours in a row wasted online, or by only caring about what others are doing—Ciara escapes from hers to this picturesque, 'godforsaken' island. Since I knew she would be bearing the burden of both our sins, I wanted Ciara to be likable and charismatic. It's exciting to me when she says something completely jaded or oblivious. It's fun to make a fool of someone else for a change, to imagine myself there on gorgeous Montserrat. I hope you enjoy it, too.