User blog comment:Gideoncrawle/Gilded Chris Acceptance Speech - First Author to have Two Noncompetition Stories Featured/@comment-1153194-20110307134716/@comment-1874924-20110308034925

Yes, the story's premise is that, about five years before the events of TDI, Courtney acquires a violin bearing an ancient curse and suffers a series of misfortunes as a result. (I mentioned this when I previewd CatVoD and LTDI in my 1000th Edit special, but that was a long time ago.) Anywho, the violin is haunted by the embittered spirit of a former owner, and the prologue explains how this came to pass. The core of the tale is a trio of incidents based on true stories, and a couple of chapters also expand on incidents in the canon TDI.