Missy's Twitch

Time: The near future

Place: New York City

As activists drive climate change anxiety to further their agenda for societal change, New York suffers through rolling blackouts. Therapists hang shingles to treat unhinged young people fearing the world is coming to an end. A climate countdown clock is erected in Times Square to alert the populace to the coming doomsday.

It's no wonder Missy has a twitch, a tic that becomes the talk of the town.

Heiress to an energy fortune built off fossil fuels, Missy Mayburn Crowe is stricken with overwhelming anxiety over what she believes is a looming "climate apocalypse." Wracked with guilt over her family's possible contributions to climate change, Missy develops an involuntary twitch, diagnosed by a famed TV shrink as climatosis. Exposure on television and in social media propels climatosis into a worldwide social contagion. That makes Missy a celebrity ripe for exploitation by politicians, media, and business opportunists as "proof" that the apocalypse is now.

Told with humor, insight, and brisk pacing, Missy's Twitch offers an entertaining twist on conventional wisdom about one of the most controversial issues of our time.

JON PEPPER is a novelist, entrepreneur, and business consultant based in New York City. Missy's Twitch is the fourth novel in his series, Fossil Feuds.