The Seventh Round

A divorced, middle-aged father of two young children meets with ruin in the Great Recession. Broke and facing his second layoff with little hope for another job, he acquires a .32 caliber revolver with a seven-round load. He moves with fatalism through an alcoholic week of heartbreak, despair, and obsession over a lost love toward the inevitable disintegration of his life. But he intends to cheat the inevitable with the gun. Each night, he loads another round in the cylinder in a deliberate, measured preparation for action. Finally, the seventh day comes, and the gun is fully loaded. "The Seventh Round by Alan Wynzel is intense, disturbing and yet riveting. An unpredictable heart breaker." —Brenda Perlin, Author of Crime and PUNKishment "Where Kafka left off Wynzel steps in, with an added shove from Bukowski. Seventh Round depicts the naked, brutal demise of a modern-day tech worker amidst the rabid dystopian change that infects us all. Read it if you dare seek what waits staring at you from the other side of the mirror..." —Melvin Litton, sometime writer and guitar player www.borderband.com "Alan Wynzel’s writing is raw and filled with honesty. His story tells us some uncomfortable and uncompromising truths about love, money and the system. At times this shows a bleak and bitter outlook on life, at times it’s full of the joys and fun that comradery, friendship and the unexpected you still can find at the worst of times. Wynzel does all of this with just enough warmth and self-reflection that lifts it from self-pity to literary quality, not unlike - but more contemporary than - a Bukowski or Richard Yates." —Christoph Fischer, author of THE HEALER.