Now It Is Official // Teaser Tuesday

            Now it is official--at 53,237 words Time Light is a NaNo winner.  The basic story is nearly done and should be finished by the end of this week.  There will be a process of editing and fleshing out certain portions and then I'll be ready to take the next steps.  I guess I'd better research my options.  I'm open to suggestions.

            Today in honor of my win, I'm going to do my NaNo twist to Teaser Tuesdays, which is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. I'll be offering a longer teaser than the meme calls for, but it's my party and I'll contrive if I want to.

            On the NaNo site there is a portion under my profile that tells about my novel .  One part of this section has a space to include an excerpt of the novel, which I am including in my post today.  However, before getting to the excerpt let me give you an idea of what has happened so far.

             John Proffitt has been out of work for about a year.  He has exhausted his resources and lost his car and his home.  To complicate matters, John has no precise memory of anything about his life.  His wife is on the verge of giving up on the marriage and leaving her husband. 

          When the story opens, John and his wife have been living in an old empty apartment building for a few weeks.   From the very first night, John has been wakened by shaking and sounds in his building and a light beam which shoots into space from the abandoned building across the street from where he lives.  While his wife is at work, he begins investigating these mysterious events and eventually becomes convinced that the abandoned building is a staging area for an impending alien invasion.

             In the following excerpt, after John has met Edward, a man in his neighborhood, who takes interest in the story and joins John in his investigations, the two of them finally find a way into the abandoned building through a tunnel leading from the apartment building.

              

Excerpt: Time Light

           They climbed the stairway. At the top, John very slowly cracked the door open. There was dim light from the sunlight filtering through the shuttered windows. His eyes scoured the surrounding area as he opened the door ever wider. Soon he was completely inside the first floor. He turned off his flashlight since he could see without it here. In the dim light he could see that there were a few closed darkened offices, but most of this floor was a wide open room. He could clearly see the metal wheels at each corner of the room. They all appeared to be identical to the ones they had seen in the basement. Their careful steps seemed to intrude upon a spectral stillness which hung over this place.


          Continuing on, they ascended the stairway to the next floor. Reaching the top of the stairs they were both awestruck by what they saw. The room was cavernous. The height extended to the roof of the building. Instead of the silver wheels they had seen in the other parts of the building, here there were towering pillars made of the same metal. The base of the pillars was like the wheels, but the cylinders that rose from them went to the ceiling. What appeared to be a retractable dome was in the center of the ceiling. Sunlight filtered through the boarded windows, but there was another more indefinite light that subtly filled the space amidst the four pillars. Something that looked like illuminated dust particles moved slowly in suspension in the center space of the vast room.


           When Edward seemed to start heading toward the center of the room John held his arm out to block his way. “We need to leave,” John felt an undefined sense of fear sweep over his entire body and a chill came over him.


           Edward pushed against John’s extended arm, but John persisted in keeping his friend from advancing any further. “Let’s get out of here now and go back,” then as an afterthought, “Please!”


           They turned away and departed with stealthy haste. John no longer felt a curiosity to look around any further. He only wanted to be gone. Edward acquiesced to John’s urgency, but tried to take in everything he could see as they made their escape. Once out of the apartment basement and in the lobby, John leaned against a wall and took slow even breaths. He realized that he was sweating and shaking from whatever he had experienced from what he had seen.



           So there's a little taste of Time Light.  I hope it makes you curious to read more.  Let me know if you have any thoughts about this excerpt or anything else in life.