Lost fanfic.

No. Vanished fanfic.

No. Without a trace of fanfic.No.

Gone with the fanfic.( and , frankly, Scarlett, I do give a damn.) This is gonna be sort of a rant, bear with me.

I had a new piece ready to post. Sorta a crossover , I guess- a Firefly 'Verse BDH story as seen from the point of view of a Damon Runyon character.

Ya know Damon Runyon? 20's, 30's , 40's New York gangster and Broadway short stories, all told from a first person POV, and with a particular narrative style. Most of 'em with a surprise ending. The basis for a bunch of movies- Guys and Dolls, Robin and the Seven Hoods, the Bob Hope movie Sorrowful Jones, Lady for a Day with Bettie Davis, bunches. If ya haven't read his stuff, get ye to a library and read some.

It was 2 scenes, in a saloon-- First scene , Mal, Zoe and Jayne meet with Badger as the narrator looks on. This woulda been the meeting where they got the salvage job in the Big Damn Pilot. Second scene, the rest of the crew joins in. But the second scene wasn't working, so I decided to cut it, and put a finish on the first one and post it.

And I was editing, and I hit a key-- even I don't know which one. And my story was on a full screen window, and exactly 2 words long. Something helpful, like, " and then--"

I thought it did some kind of automatic page break thing, and this was a new page, even tho' it's never done that before.

So I saved it, and shut everything down, and re booted, and restarted , and reloaded the file, and there it was-- my story , all 2 words of it.

"and then--"

Fade to black over cursing in Chinese and English, and rending of clothing, and wailing and gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair.

* * * * * *

Anyway it's gone, and I was having SO much fun--- it's easy to write Runyon- a few catch phrases, and run-on sentences, and no contractions , and all in the present tense. Ya get into the voice and the accent and the story just happens.

But it can't be recreated. The combinations of words were almost poetr