Adult

VIOLA I’m in love with love and I love couples who are in love. They are my bread and butter after all but that’s not why I love them. There’s something so magical to see a couple choose to go into the future together, to face life’s challenges together, and rise above it all to come out on the other side stronger and more in love than ever before. I love it so much that I became a wedding planner. Watching couples young and old committing their lives to each other is something that’s just so special. No couple is the same. There’s something different about all of them that makes each one special. I never get tired of seeing couples stare lovingly into each other’s eyes as they plan, prepare and execute their wedding ceremony pledging their undying love to one another for the rest of their lives. I haven’t got there yet myself but watching other couples keeps my dream of finding Mr. Right alive. But life doesn’t always see things the way we dream of them turning out. It sure didn’t see it my way when he crossed my path. RICK I don’t believe in love. If it really exists why are there so many broken relationships and people in the world? Not that I care… about the broken relationships I mean. After all, they are my bread and butter. And those events called weddings are my hunting ground. After all, people lay the foundation for the demise of their marriage before they’re even married. Prenups and all sorts of agreements are designed to protect their wealth and their assets and force others to stay with them even when they don’t want to anymore. Weddings give couples the right to punish each other when they don’t want to be together anymore for whatever reason. So, when anyone tells you that it starts with a wedding they’re wrong. It starts with a lawyer. And if it ends… well, it ends with a lawyer too. Funny that. Often the people that I work for before their wedding, come knocking on my door a few years down the line. Repeat business. So, love is great and it is for me but just not for me if you get what I mean. When I met the wedding planner she was incensed at the thought that we might collaborate. Other planners have no issue with it. Why she should have, I don’t get it. Normally I would just walk away but the universe seems to have other plans…lg...

Zane has worked hard to make police chief of Hurstville at his age. It’s a job he intends keeping. An anonymous tip off leads Zane and his team to arrest a queenpin and her recruits who have been tasked to set up shop in Hurstville. Hope is ruthless and will let nothing stand in her way not even her feelings for Zane. She has a job to do and has no choice but to do it for a reason she prefers not to disclose to Zane. She nevertheless tries to warn Zane that he can’t win the fight for Hurstville that lies ahead in the hope that he will give up and leave. But Zane’s not a quitter. He’s never sold out and he’s not about to start now. As a result, he finds himself struggling to juggle his conscience and the need for justice with his feelings for Hope and his desire to save her from the trouble she is involved in. Hope finally makes it clear where her priorities lie and just as Zane appears to move on and begins to rekindle his relationship with an old flame, Hope drags Zane to the forefront of her actions in Hurstville which threaten to destroy everything Zane has ever wanted and worked for. Can Zane prove his innocence and get the woman he loves?lg...

The novel opens in the midst of a world where Sarah Palin has become president during a time of financial ruin for the United States. It is a world for only the extremely rich and extremely poor. All public supports have been taken away, including Social Security, Medicare, and Unemployment. Unions have been outlawed. The streets are ruled by bands of thugs known as The Young Zealots and Sarah’s Soldiers. Chauncey Gibbons and Billy Wild, the one a successful, but ruthless, businessman, the other destitute, homeless and mentally ill, wander through the novel, unaware of each other, slowly working their way toward each other, through a series of unpredictable circumstances, until Billy Wild kidnaps Chauncey and drags him back to an underground hovel he’s dug at an abandoned construction site. The thread linking their destinies is the fact that Billy Wild was once a respectable accountant at Eagles Fly, a private investment company, owned by Chauncey Gibbons. One Christmas Eve, he receives a nasty pink slip from Chauncey Gibbons and his whole world begins to collapse. Soon, the bank seizes his house, all reserves run out, and Billy’s wife leaves him with the kids, only to commit suicide. The timeframe of the novel begins on Christmas Eve and ends on New Year’s Eve, adding a dark sardonic air to the narrative’s atmosphere. In the course of that time, Chauncey and Billy’s lives completely reverse themselves, as if the two men have exchanged roles. In the course of the kidnap phase, Chauncey is starved and driven mad until he offers up the codes to his offshore accounts, and Billy transfers all of his wealth to organizations helping the poor. Billy himself is left with a million in cash that he found in Chauncey’s car. At the end of the novel, we see Billy heading to a South American beach resort, while Chauncey is left to walk the streets in a diaper, a hair shirt, and a ghetto gold chain with a cross on it, proclaiming he’s the Messiah. lg...