The Winze Files, Volume Two: Beneath the Lake
Volume Two of The Winze Files, Beneath the Lake, is almost here.
The files are sent. The layout is locked. Printing is underway and being boxed up as I type (Thank you, Big Country Printers!). If everything stays on track, the book will be available this week, which still feels a little unreal to say out loud.
This volume moves deeper into Feverin, into the lake, and into the quiet systems people trust without ever looking too closely. It starts in a familiar place, the annual Labour Day Fishing Derby. Banners. Boats. Coffee. Kids with rods too big for their hands. The kind of event that looks harmless until you stand still long enough to notice what doesn’t quite line up.
This scene sets the tone for the entire book. Beneath the Lake isn’t about sudden monsters or loud disasters. It’s about systems that look friendly. Traditions that repeat. Places that ask very little from you, until one day they don’t. The lake is present from the first page. Not as a threat, not as a mystery to solve right away, but as something watchful. Something that remembers.
I’ve included an illustration here from this moment in the story. I like pairing these excerpts with images because that’s how the world arrives for me, in fragments, moods, shapes. Words and visuals work together to hold a feeling before it slips.
“The lake woke early.
By the time the first trucks rolled down to the launch, fog already clung to the water like it had made plans to stay. Coolers thudded onto docks. Thermoses hissed open. Someone laughed too loud, the sound skittering across the surface and coming back wrong.
Boats nudged each other in line, paint scuffed from years of the same ritual. The Fishing Derby always felt festive at first. Banners. Clipboards. Kids swinging rods too big for their arms. A sense that if you followed the rules and woke up early enough, you might be rewarded.
Ava Ridge stood near the weigh-in table, watching it all come together. The lake looked calm. It always did at this hour. Flat. Polite. Like it had agreed to behave for visitors.
She knew better.
The derby horn sounded.
Lines hit the water.
And something deep below the surface shifted, slow and patient, as if it had been waiting for the noise to begin.”
Hand drawn graphic novel page for The Winze Files, Volume 2, Beneath the Lake, by Caroline Anders
Writing The Winze Files, both Volume 1 & Volume 2, has been unexpectedly emotional.
Not because of the stories themselves, but because I’m writing from inside a town that’s changing in real time. You start to notice it quietly. A familiar building sells. A space goes dark. A path gets blocked. Things shift before there’s language for it.
It can be hard to watch places you love change shape. Especially when those changes come wrapped in tidy words that don’t quite match how it feels on the ground. Progress often sounds clean. Living through it rarely is.
These books come from that tension. From loving a place deeply while sensing it’s being pulled in directions you didn’t choose. From paying attention to what gets preserved, what gets erased, and what gets ignored because it’s inconvenient.
Thank you to everyone who’s followed this project, waited patiently, asked questions, and kept this story alive with me. Volume Two has been a long time coming, and I’m excited, nervous, frustrated and grateful in equal measure.
THE WINZE FILES, VOLUME 2: BENEATH THE LAKE IMAGE OF MOODY LAKE.
1st draft of The Winze Files, Volume 2: Beneath the Lake paired illustration
PRE-ORDER THE WINZE FILES, VOLUME 2: BENEATH THE LAKE HERE !!!!
