It’s not exactly The Ritz. It’s more like Roadhouse meets a Metallica concert. There’s music, moshing, fighting, drinking and Anne “Bumps” Martin, the head bartender who can drop you faster than you can order a Jack and Coke. And why shouldn’t she? Trok’s is her life. It’s the only place where she doesn’t feel like a freak.

Unfortunately, that’s about to change. Now her safe haven has become a link to her past that she’d rather not think about, as well as a head-on collision course towards a future that burns bright with a passion and a strength she never knew she had.

 FROM THE BOOK

A loud shout, followed by the sound of breaking glass and splinting wood, pulled Bumps away from her thoughts and she immediately swept her blue-green eyes over the crowd. She hopped up onto the bar counter. People scrabbled for their drinks as her booted feet came down hard on the bar. The movement was so automatic that Bumps paid no mind to the spilling bottles of beer and glasses that danced across the countertop. Over the sea of heads, she spotted a tall, lanky man, weaving dangerously on his feet like a flower in the wind. He was looming over a dark-haired man who was on his back with a broken chair scattered beneath him. He stared up from the floor, dazed and blinking, at the tall man who had just laid him out. Blood showed at the corner of his mouth. At the sight of Bumps on the bar, everyone knew that something was up and, as if she were Moses parting the Red Sea, they backed up, making her job and the bouncers’ job a hell of a lot easier by getting out of the way. Evan, who still stood at the mike, stopped in mid-sentence, watching with part-amusement, part-fascination as she singled out the fighter and shouted,

“Him! Khaki pants! Blue polo shirt! Get him out of here!”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Melissa Groeling believes that the past can be overcome and that the future is what you make it. She lives in the Philadelphia suburbs with her family and pet cat. She is currently working on her second novel.