The author of Beach Dreams (2008), Trish Perry lives in Northern Virginia with her hilarious teenaged son. She discovered her love of writing while earning a degree in Psychology. She switched career paths in 1997 and never looked back. Her debut novel, The Guy I’m Not Dating, placed second in the 2007 FHL Inspirational Readers’ Choice Contest, and her second novel, Too Good to Be True, is a current finalist in the 2008 FHL IRCC. 

This month let’s see if real life is too strange for a sci-fi novel, shall we? Our setting is Naro-Fominsk, near Moscow. Our heroine—Anichka Yakushkin (not her real name, but isn’t that fun to say?)—is home, expecting a visit from her new boyfriend, Boris.

Boris Batinov—not the cartoon character, but what a ribbing he’s taken throughout life—met Anichka at the Kievskaya subway station, Moscow. They met by accident. Or did they?

Anichka does find it odd that she, president of the small, but surprisingly active, Naro-Fominsk UFO Sightings Society would be romantically pursued by Boris, the recently disgraced head of extraterrestrial research and development at the Russian Federal Space Agency. But he seems quite enamored of her, especially fond of her beet and raspberry aspic. And she totally digs his crisp white lab coat.

Okay, so the last two paragraphs were total fiction, but let’s get back to poor, unsuspecting Anichka at home. That part’s entirely real. Except her name. And anything about Boris.

While Anichka polishes her toenails and soaks her beets, the air is still. Perhaps too still. In the span of a single second, Anichka paints her pinky toe and is shaken to her core by the end of the world. Or so it sounds. In a rumbling blast of plaster, wood, and shingles, something bursts through Anichka’s roof, tearing a three-foot hole and missing Anichka by a hair.

Is this the result of Boris’s latest attempt to communicate with

alien life? Has he somehow pulled Anichka into his fringe-science experiments? Or is this a failed attempt at landing a three-foot-wide UFO on Anichka’s roof, just before her home is overrun by miniature Martians?

No! Didn’t I just tell you those paragraphs were total fiction?

The hole in Anichka’s roof was created when a fifty-five-pound sack of cement fell swiftly from space (well, from an airplane) and smashed into her living room.

No doubt many of you read plenty of science-slanted books, watch the Science Channel more often than I do, or didn’t flirt with Teddy Savoy in Earth Science class and miss everything you were taught about meteorology. Perhaps you already knew about cloud seeding. But for those of us who focus on more important topics, such as the status of the economy, the changing political scene, and which couple will win Amazing Race 13, this seeding thing is news.

The Russian Air Force meant for the cement to pulverize at a high altitude, sucking moisture from the sky so no rain would threaten the upcoming celebration of the break-up of the Soviet Union. Anichka witnessed pulverizing, threatening, and breaking-up, but not the way the air force planned.

The air force offered Anichka the equivalent of $2,100 to shut up and get over it. But she’s having none of it. She’s suing for damages and compensation for the suffering she experienced. And Boris?

Will you forget about Boris, already? He’s not real.