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She used to work nights. She would come home after work and sit outside to decompress. The air was clean, sounds originated from nature, and no one asked her for anything.
More often than not, she would see a spider, but considering she was in their territory, she couldn't really complain.
There weren't many nights that she didn't see a spider. She started to believe they were secretly stalking her. They would wait until she got home from work, stretch their little legs, crawl out of their webs, into the darkness and set out to "visit" her.
She started commenting on social media about these encounters.
Months went by and the comments turned into rants. It became a running joke.
The rants turned into short stories. She wrote these long, elaborate stories of how the spider was out to get her and she was trying to escape its clutches. No matter how these stories played out, the spider always escaped. It didn't matter how hard she tried to beat it, she could never succeed in beating it. It escaped like a ninja.
She gave it a name- the spiderninja.
She knew she wanted to do something with all of these stories but wasn't sure how. She had to come up with a new way to introduce the world to the spiderninja, so she started writing new stories. Kid friendly stories because hers were far from being kid friendly.
It gained an official name, NIM, a personality and a new best friend.
There's so much more to Nim and the mission behind turning him from something scary into something hopefully kids would love, but that's for another time.
She currently lives in South Carolina with her husband and daughters.
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