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Four distinct stories sharing one theme: How losing your first love can pave the way for a deeper, more sensitive, more mature love with another.
BRONZE STAR: Marine vet Matt Hayes returns to teach at his old middle school and enters a romantic alliance with the principal's secretary. When he discovers her ingrained racial prejudice, he ends the relationship. She retaliates by accusing him of unbecoming conduct with a student. Though faultless, Matt is compelled to resign. But in the midst of the darkness, someone else will bring him back to the light.
TWO TWO TANGO: Having lost his job as an airborne courier, Vic is desperate to find a way to keep his private airplane with its extended cabin. He resorts to advertising Mile High Club rides, and his new business thrives. But as his business soars, Vic's own love life takes a nosedive-until someone else intervenes to bring him back to cloud nine.
SECOND TIME AROUND: Jay, a newly-divorced romance novelist, has fallen in love with his former sister-in-law Casey. Seeing her as forbidden fruit, he sublimates his feelings into the plot of his latest novel. Casey reads the book and admits she loves him too. But the reality of their love can't live up to their mutual expectations, and Casey must leave. Jay finds solace with Casey's best friend, an African-American college professor, whose loyalty to Casey is tested as her interest in Jay becomes more personal than professional.
LAST DANCE: On their wedding day, a drunk driver kills Donald Greene's bride and leaves him alive but wounded, both physically and emotionally. Eleven years later, as a college instructor, he still carries the wounds-until, in one of his adult classes, he meets an exotic-looking woman who may have the potential to heal them. Like Donald, Hannah Soong has wounds of her own, and sharing them only brings the couple closer. But Hannah harbors a secret, one she fears she must withhold to keep their relationship alive-a secret which, when ultimately revealed, leads to acts of unspeakable violence.
Stephen M. DeBock
Stephen DeBock writes on just about any topic but for fun concentrates on sci-fi/fantasy adventure and supernatural fiction. As a teenager, Steve would entertain (and frighten) the neighborhood children by retelling them stories from E.C. horror comics like The Crypt of Terror. As a middle school teacher, he continued the tradition by reading his students a horror story to initiate the school year. Now retired, he has time to write his own stories. His first writing success came as a high school senior, when a 25-word essay won him an all-expenses-paid vacation in Alaska. Upon his return he entered the Marines and was chosen to serve in the President's Honor Guard. Vignettes from that venue have appeared in American Heritage magazine and in various newspapers. Upon leaving the Corps, Steve worked days, went to college at night, and spent weekends earning a private pilot's certificate. A flying narrative he wrote was published in AOPA Pilot Online. During his teaching career, Steve garnered an award by the State of New Jersey for his work in consumer education. He served briefly as a consultant for Consumers Union and contributed to essays in Time magazine, ABC's World News Tonight, and CNBC. Having founded and later sold a video rental business, Steve and his wife also sold their home and lived for three years aboard a 42-foot sea-going trawler yacht. An article describing one of their summer cruises was sold to Living Aboard magazine. Steve has written newsletters for both private and non-profit organizations; a flash fiction story for the children's magazine Spider; and the text for a coffee-table book on one of America's most-collected living artists: The Art of H. Hargrove. He and his wife Joy live in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
More by Stephen M. DeBock
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