I'm not making this up! Well, actually, I guess I am ...

I've been working on a novella forever, or at least since 2013, which is forever in Internet years, and most people haven't seen a single sentence of this phantom manuscript. Really, it does exist -- it's not just an excuse to get my introversion on. So, in part to get a fragment of this thing out into the world, and in part to prove that I'm neither insane nor posting on Facebook about writing and revising when I'm actually marathoning "Firefly" again, here's a little excerpt from the current iteration of the novella, currently called "Enlightenment: The Messy Birth of a New World."

"What do you wear when you're dressing to impress five guys at once?" Charlotte muttered, apparently asking her open closet for fashion advice. "Dammit!" She closed her closet door and looked around her room -- the hats hanging on the wall, her bass guitar, her Buddha/Jesus/Yoda shrine, the fez sitting on her bookshelf, the plastic tackle box full of makeup she never wore unless she was going out at night.

"Dammit," she whispered again, failing to find inspiration for her outfit for the night.

She got up and went over to her dresser, where a motley assortment of necklaces and earrings hung on a jewelry tree. Her eyes wandered to the spot on her mirror where she'd written "You're a hippie" in lipstick in case she ever forgot.

Finally, a gold coin necklace caught her eye.

"Yeah, belly dancer," she thought. "The guys always love a belly dancer."

It was Friday night, and Charlotte was dressing up for what promised to be a great evening at Triple Crown, the local live music hot spot. She was most excited about the headlining band, Moksha, the glam band whose guitarist and lead singer Charlotte had known since childhood. Charlotte had become a devoted supporter of the band -- not only did she love spending time with them, and they with her, but they were amazing musicians who put on a theatrical and energetic show. Besides, hanging out with a glam band is a great reason to wear the kind of outfit most people would only wear on Halloween. Charlotte often borrowed from the sparkle and jingle of her belly dance wardrobe for Moksha shows, figuring if the outfits were beautiful enough for her to wear when she danced at a belly dance show, they were beautiful enough for her to wear when she danced for Moksha in the front row.

As she assembled herself for the evening, Charlotte felt warmth percolating just under her skin. It wasn't the kind of excitement she had experienced in her years as a journalist, which often ranged from frustration to danger -- it was joy. She smiled at herself as she found a clip to hold back some of her long, vivid red hair. She knew part of her happiness was about getting to see the Moksha guys, but part of it was a warm fuzzy feeling about getting to see Baron Samedi, another local band she was friends with and loved so much that she sometimes felt like she was "cheating" on Moksha whenever she went to see Baron Samedi play.

"Thank you, God, for planting me in a small town full of wise and kind folk with guitars," she whispered, shifting her eyes heavenward, away from her mirror. She was ready to go.

As she traipsed out to her Honda, Charlotte noticed the world looked weird.

Full moon? She thought. No, it's the wrong time. She looked up to see if a streetlight that was always out had come on. No. But something beyond the streetlight, up in the sky, caught her eye -- a bluish-white light brighter than any star or planet she had ever seen in her four decades of looking at the night skies. It wasn't as big as the moon but was somehow just as bright.

            She said, "Whaaaaat?" but what she thought was, "Meteor?" In her mind, she flipped back through her day at work and didn't remember seeing any news stories about a meteor or comet about to graze the Earth, but she didn't know what else it could possibly be.

            Well, if I'm going to be taken out by an extraterrestrial catastrophe, I've got no problem with Baron Samedi and Moksha being my last memory of this world.