Aftershock

Three Disaster Survivors Must Survive Each Other
Wisecracking, ineptly lustful Hayden is the disgruntled proofreading coordinator at a large San Francisco leasing company. His big secret is that he's writing a novel that he hopes will change his fortunes.

Megan, his prim, overachiever boss, a former editor at a publishing house, has a secret too: she's a closet alcoholic.
Jacob, the homeless vet who begs outside their office, once a hopeless drunk himself, wouldn't know and wouldn't care about any office intrigues.

That is, until the 1989 earthquake throws all their fates together—in life-altering ways.
The interplay of the irreverent schemer, the guarded alcoholic, and the stoic veteran makes for an at times rollicking, at times sad collision of lives, where romances backfire and family secrets are revealed.

Sometimes hilarious, sometimes harrowing, the book's themes touch on the AIDS crisis, corporate vacuity, family dramas, awkward sex—and even the Bronte sisters.

Through the fragile fault lines of these rocky relationships runs loss, humor, and the longing for connection.

Tom Bentley is a business writer and editor, an essayist, and a fiction writer. He's had hundreds of freelance pieces published--ranging from first-person essays to travel pieces to more journalistic subjects--in newspapers, magazines, and online. He is the author of All Roads Are Circles, a coming-of-age novel, and Flowering, a collection of short stories. His self-published book on finding and cultivating your writer's voice, Think Like a Writer: How to Write the Stories You See was published in June of 2015. His novel, Aftershock, is about three lives tossed asunder by the 1989 San Francisco earthquake. His newest novel, Swirled All the Way to the Shrub is set in Prohibition-era Boston right at the Great Crash. Mr. Bentley would like you to pour him a Manhattan right at five. You can see his lurid website confessions at tombentley.com