Many of you may still be recovering from Labor Day, so I'm offering you a chance to sit back and read an excerpt from my Blessing or Curse Collection . Some stories end happily, others not. Some characters are nice, others are not. Today's particular short story, called Who'll Mend This Broken Man , is about how a wife copes with the heartbreak of her husband's Parkinson's Disease. Over eleven years ago I watched my own mother suffer from this debilitating disease, and it's something I'll never forget. Excerpt: Ah, the wonderful love they’d shared. Why must it end this way? “Diego, eat,” Consuela Morales said, holding out a spoonful of puree to her shrunken, wheelchair-bound husband. His dry parched lips remained obstinately shut, his gray eyebrows furrowed. He wanted to die and she didn’t blame him. God help her, sometimes she wanted him dead too. Till death do us part seemed a long time to live with half a man. Placing the spoon into the jar with a...

The Blessing or Curse Collection , a sequel to my thriller, Forever Young: Blessing or Curse , is now available. This collection contains five short stories, about five very different types of people who take a pill to be young again. Instead of dwelling on the thriller aspect, the collection focuses on how the choice to take an experimental pill impacts not only the lives of the test subjects, but also that of their spouses or significant others. The only thriller mention comes toward the end of the collection in a very short bonus section in which the villains from the first novel plot their next moves. Since not everyone might like to read all the stories, I'm also offering a choice to read one or more separately. Catch a glimpse of the covers in the panorama below. What the stories are about: Who'll Mend This Broken Man - Desperation forces Consuela to order the Forever Young pill to cure her husband, Diego, from Parkinson’s Disease; but is the cure really a curs...