Kindle Edition Amazon GARY VAL TENUTA: Author, Artist, Cat Lover GARY VAL TENUTA: Author, Artist, Cat Lover Category:  Drama Publisher: Gary Val Tenuta ISBN-10:  B0173MTZ80 Type: Fiction Pages: 304 Copyright: 2014 Price: $0.99 (eBook) Five novella-length "Twisted Tales From The Files Of The Second Chance Limousine Service", inspired by the likes of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone and Night Gallery. The concept is simple: Someone gets a second chance to right a wrong. The consequences of the second chance, however, are anything but simple. In each story, a person experiences some traumatic event. Let's say, for example, you are this person. The traumatic event might be something you did to someone or it might be something someone did to you. At some point after the traumatic event occurs, a mysterious, classic, black, 1959 Cadillac limousine arrives at a late hour. One way or another, you end up in the back seat and the car rolls off into the night. The next thing you know, you're suddenly back at a point in time just prior to the traumatic event with no idea how you got there. You find a business card in your pocket (or on the table, or on the nightstand next to your bed). A "Second Chance Limousine" logo is on the front of the card. The card has the numbers 1 through 12 printed across the top and the numbers 13 through 24 along the bottom. You notice one of those numbers has a hole punched through it. You flip the card over and read this: ••• This Second Chance has a time limit. The numbers represent hours. The number punched on this card is the amount of time you have to make things right. Your time will begin automatically the moment you finish reading this. This card is programmed to monitor your success or failure to complete your task. This Second Chance will expire if the task is not completed within the allotted time frame. Should that happen, you will immediately find yourself back in the moment of time and in the exact situation in which you were engaged just before the driver appeared at the scene. Good luck. Your time starts Now. ••• Suddenly, it all comes back to you. At first you're puzzled. This isn't possible, and yet here you are. Somehow, by some strange twist of fate, you've been given what everyone wishes for at some point in their life: a second chance. Now, the rest is up to you. Will you succeed? Or will you fail? You won't know until you try. And by the way, you'd better get a move on. Your time starts..... Now. The 5 "Twisted Tales" in this volume are: • ATONEMENT (novelette, 11,500 words) - A wealthy computer software entrepreneur is filled with remorse for having his wife murdered by a killer-for-hire. Can he atone for such a sin? The 2nd Chance Limo is on the way. But will it help? Or will it fail? You'll have to read this twisted tale. Wanna take a ride? • A BITE OUT OF TIME (novelette, 7,500 words) - Vince Blaylock, an up and coming rock star, finds himself smitten and bitten and not at all pleased to discover he's now a vampire. A hundred years later, to the day, his Second Chance becomes a tale of revenge with an ending you won't see coming. Wanna take a ride? • THE GOOD LIBRARIAN (novella, 21,500 words) - The tiny, rural town of Higginsville has a rather unusual library. Perhaps even more unusual than the library is the old head librarian, Ms. Beatrice Busby. She burns books. But when a Gypsy woman arrives and all hell breaks loose in the library basement, on Halloween night, and two young girls meet their demise, well... somebody's gonna need a second chance to make things right. Then again, who's to decide what's right? Wanna take a ride? • 1ST AVENUE ANNIE (novelette, 10,000 words) - A wanna-be actress, with a life full of baggage, finally gets a shot at the big time. The stage is set, the curtain is about to go up, the audience is buzzing with anticipation. What could possibly go wrong? Rest assured, something will. Something terrible. But you know what they say: The show must go on. The Second Chance Limo is on the way and the script is about to be revised in ways no one could have imagined. Wanna take a ride? • THE PRANK (novelette: 17,500 words) - The owner of a small grocery store plays a lottery prank on a homeless man. It was all with the best of intentions. Who would have thought it could all go so wrong? So wrong that the Second Chance limo had to make two trips. Guns and fists and turns and twists. Oh my. Wanna take a ride? KINDLE U.S. $.99 - https://amzn.com/B0173MTZ80       Excerpt From ATONEMENT: His hair was a tangled mess from having nervously run his fingers through it a dozen times, give or take. His vision was beginning to blur and to lift the weight of his drooping head, and actually have to utter the word ‘bartender’, would require a considerable amount of effort. Instead, he simply raised a single finger and lazily pointed it down toward his empty glass. The bartender brought him another double rum-and-cola. His fifth. Maybe his sixth. Charlie couldn’t remember. The only thing he could remember was the one thing he wished he could forget: Ten years ago, this very night, he’d killed his wife. And through extraordinary planning––the well-thought-out sort of planning that helped make his business such a success––he’d gotten away with it. Okay, maybe he didn’t do it himself. He hired someone to do it for him. But what’s the difference, really? He was as guilty as the killer. Only difference was the killer didn’t care. Charlie did care. He cared a lot. He’d cared from the moment he’d learned the deed had been done. The remorse was insufferable and it had been eating away at him every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year of his life since the moment he’d opened the envelope and read the single word typed on a sheet of paper: ‘Congratulations’. How in the world could this have happened? The scenario that led up to the killing was running through his drunken brain now like a loop tape. Linda had been cheating on him, he was sure of it. She must have assumed he didn’t know. She’d tried to hide it from him with clever lies. Oh, she could deny it all she wanted but he knew. It had made him jealous and angry. Very jealous and very angry. Understandable, really, if that’s all there was to it. What made the whole thing more complicated, in his mind, was the guilt. Oh, yes, the guilt. The goddamn guilt. Not just the guilt over having her killed. That came afterward. No, it was the guilt he bore prior to the killing, combined with the guilt of having her killed. That’s what consumed him now and that’s what’s been chewing away at his soul all these years. You see, he’d been cheating on her, too, but she didn’t know it. Didn’t have a clue. He’d kept it hidden from her with clever lies just as she had tried to keep her affair hidden from him. Only his lies were more cleverly conceived than hers and, clearly, they were more effectively executed. Jealousy, lies, anger and guilt. Separately, those concepts seem manageable. Sometimes. For some people. Maybe. But stir them all together and you have a recipe for a whirlwind concoction of emotions that can end up as a veritable out-of-control psychological maelstrom. And, of course, murder. Funny thing though, now that he thought about it. No, not the murder. That wasn’t funny. The funny thing was he never did find out the identity of the other guy. Probably would have had that asshole killed too, had he known who it was. Over and over the scenario played out in his head. A seventh, eighth or ninth rum-and-cola wasn’t going to stop it. He’d lived with this damned thing far too long. It was time to end it. Right now. But how? He didn’t own a gun so he couldn’t blow his brains out. There were no barbiturates in the house so he couldn’t overdose on pills. He rubbed the two-day’s worth of stubble on his face and then it hit him. Razor blades. He’d seen it done in the movies. Didn’t seem too difficult. Climb into the tub, fill it with water, slash his wrists and just fade away. In his inebriated condition he probably wouldn’t even feel the pain. It was a good idea. A great idea. Finally, it would be over. The hint of a smile crossed his face. It was time. He pulled a hundred dollar bill from his front pocket, slid it under the empty glass and tried to stand. But his left foot was caught behind one of the cross supports of the barstool. He tottered on one leg, trying to free the other from the stool before he tumbled awkwardly to the floor. The burly bartender sauntered around the bar and helped Charlie to his feet. Charlie swayed back and forth, steadied himself with a hand on the bartender’s shoulder and mumbled something under his breath. The bartender nodded. “Yeah, whatever. I think I better call you a cab.” Charlie, still trying to keep his balance, gave the bartender a perturbed look. “A cab! Screw that. My car’s out back. Got stuff to do. I just gave ya a hundred bucks. Now leave me alone, will ya, for Christ’s sake?” “Look, Charlie. I don’t know what’s going on with you tonight. But if I let you go out there and you kill somebody with that fancy Jaguar you’re driving then I’ll be partly responsible. And that ain’t gonna happen. Now, I can call you a cab or I can call the cops. What’s it gonna be?” The conversation was suddenly interrupted by an unfamiliar and rather authoritative but friendly voice. “That’s all right,” the man said. “I’ll take it from here.” The man was tall, thin, rather pale, clean-shaven, attired in a neatly pressed black chauffeur’s uniform. He was an odd and somewhat formidable sight from his chauffer’s cap with the shiny black brim to his polished black knee-high boots. And, in spite of the fact that it was nearly midnight, he was wearing a pair of aviator-styled sunglasses. “Who the hell are you?” the bartender asked. “I didn’t see you come in.” Charlie removed his hand from the bartender’s shoulder and wavered a bit as he tried to stand on his own. “Yeah, who the hell?” The stranger addressed Charlie directly. “Mr. Harper, right? Mr. Charlie Harper? Three-forty-two Willow Drive?” “Yeah. I mean, no. I mean, yeah, that’s me. But I don’t live there anymore. I sold that place after my wife––” “Oh, yes. My mistake. You now reside at fifteen-sixty-four Timberlane Road. Correct?” “Yeah,” Charlie said, eyeing the man suspiciously. “How’d you know all that?” “Doesn’t matter. What matters is you need a ride and your limousine is waiting just outside the door.” Charlie was confused. “My limousine?” It’s not that he was a stranger to limousines. Within his circle of business associates it wasn’t uncommon to hire a limo for transportation to and from parties and some business meetings which, on occasion, were one and the same. So that’s it, Charlie thought. That’s how he knows. He must have been one of the drivers we’d hired before. Somebody must have hired him now to get me home. In his current stupor, it made sense. “Well, alrighty then!” he said. His words were slurred and he sounded like a pretty happy drunk for a guy who was going home to kill himself. “Let’s get the hell out of here, shall we? I got a date with destiny, you know.” The chauffer tipped his hat with an affirming nod. “Indeed, you do,” he said, offering an arm to Charlie. "Indeed, you do."

Take the ride with this very entertaining 4-pack!
5-stars for "Wanna Take a Ride?" 4-pack

Here's my reviews of each individual story:

A Bite Out of Time - A lively short with a superb twist!

This is a fun, sexy, entertaining short story brimming with danger as the main character enters the night-time predatory world of vampires and experiences the high cost of the vampire life - the years that go on and the loneliness and isolation that ensues.

My favorite aspect of the story is the limousine service. I don't want to say too much and give away the story, but what a cool, slick concept it is. It really got me thinking if such a thing existed, what if anything, would I want to do with it? Does fate exist? Are certain outcomes inescapable? I love stories that have a powerful hook like that, that get you looking inwards, imagining possibilities for your own life. Clever storytelling!

*******

Atonement - Give me more of these twisted tales!

Like the first story, A Bite Out of Time, Atonement has a very intriguing concept at its core - a specialty limousine service - I can't say anything more about it so that I don't spoil it, but I hope there will be many more of these stories. The possibilities are endless, plus they're wickedly cool and entertaining!

Atonement had me zipping through my kindle pages very quickly. I found my heart beating faster with each page, wondering what was going to happen. And what happens also packs a delicious twist, as the story bends your sympathies this way and that. You don't know where it's going to take you, and then it turns everything on its head so fast that you're thinking `no way', then it spins it around again. What a ride!

******

Annie - An entertaining tale about choices and second chances

The Second Chance Limousine series actually make you think about choices, how fragile life can be, and how things can turn on a dime. One wrong move, one bad decision, and it can unravel a life.

Annie is the story of a woman who made a tough choice and now lives with the consequences of it. So do others. But we find out her story isn't finished, all is not yet written.

As a reader, it's an absolute delight to find a tale that not only entertains, but gets you thinking. The Second Chance Limo series does just that. Right choices, wrong choices - it can be hard, if not impossible, to predict outcomes. Life is far more unpredictable than we'd all like to think. Is there such a thing as fate or do we hold our own destinies in our hands? Can we out think, out hustle, out manoeuvre a predetermined destiny, to create a different and hopefully better path for ourselves? Maybe. Maybe not. Thats what makes these 'twisted tales' such great reads!

******

The Good Librarian is very good!

This novella is an excellent and very different addition to The Second Chance Limousine stories series. This story has a spooky, paranormal, occult hook that grabbed me immediately. I'm really amazed at how unique each of these stories is. It's fun to dive down these different rabbit holes, you just never know what's going to happen.

The Good Librarian revolves around a potentially demonic book and a woman who has a long history with it. She was touched by the book's power as a child and has spent her whole life guarding it and fearing it. Until Halloween night, when a mysterious stranger from a distant land comes looking for it for deep, lifelong reasons of her own. The story plays around with what's really evil and what might be the lie. What unfolds is a trip!

--Review by Rai Aren, Author of Secret of the Sands, Destiny of the Sands, Lost City of Gold

Creative Concept!
I really liked the concept behind this book. How many of us have ever wondered what it would be like to have a second chance to make something right that went horribly wrong in our lives? In Wanna Take a Ride, Tenuta's stories show that having a second chance does not always produce happy results. The twists in the stories made them fun and unpredictable.

As in most anthologies or collections, there were some tales I liked better than others. My favorite was First Avenue Annie, however, I must say that all of the characters in the stories were well written. It takes a talented writer to pen 7,500 words with multiple characters and bring them to life so well that you can see them in your mind.

This book was my first introduction to the author and I was very impressed. I do plan to read more from him in the future.

Would you take a do-over?
A very interesting take on a question we have all asked ourselves - if we had a chance to change one moment in our lives, what would it be and what would be the consequences? Would undoing a wrong word, bad decision, or chance encounter alter life for the better? Gary Val Tenuta adroitly addresses that question with four tales - excuse me four twisted tales - four spellbinding tales - of second chances taken.Sometimes it's best to be happy with the cards you were dealt. Definitely looking forward to more of this author's offerings.