Set in the near future, The Last Bartender follows Justin Gardiner, a highly-decorated Operation Enduring Freedom veteran who returns home to work as a bartender. Just a few years into his new career, rising healthcare costs and other political factors lead to a new prohibition on alcohol - all bars are closed, retail alcohol sales are halted and criminalized, and Justin finds himself out of work. Soon afterwards, Justin and his barroom cohorts buy a rundown Catskill resort and set up an ambitious bootlegging operation, supplying keg beer to the New York City area. Events start rapidly spiraling out of control as the Drug Enforcement Agency closes its net and the mob aggressively moves in on the moneymaking operation, leaving Justin and his friends caught in the crossfire of the opposing forces.
I started my first novel sometime in mid-2000, on a Metro-North commuter train traveling into Manhattan, writing on my then new Mac Powerbook. The title stuck--The Third Revolution--but the rest of the work I'd completed was tossed out in early 2002 when I started the project anew. I completed that manuscript, found and worked with a professional editor, and, after spending about a year learning how not to attract a literary agent, I eventually took a chance on the then cutting edge publish-on-demand technology and got the book "out there." The first paperback edition of The Third Revolution appeared on Amazon (as well as in several local bricks-and mortar bookstores) in May of 2004. I have to admit, I liked the feeing.
Better than a decade later I'm still working on that same Mac Powerbook, and have somehow managed to write and publish five novels (The Third Revolution, Middle America, Little Birdies!, The Last Bartender and The Cenacle Scroll). I'm presently working on a sixth, Aqua Vitae, which should be completed this year.
In my pre-MBA days, a time when I had ready access to fast motorcycles and sympathetic women, I worked as a bartender at the historic Peter Luger Steakhouse in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan, the El Morocco Club on Second Avenue, the infamous Diamond's Whisky Parlor in Flushing and poured shots-and-beers (and kept my head down) through several stabbings and the occasional gunfire at Pirate's Pub in Kew Gardens, Queens. Today I can be found plying my trade at Frogs End Tavern within the elegant Glenmere Mansion, an exclusive eighteen-room boutique hotel in Chester, NY. The motorcycles and women have yet to reemerge, but I remain ever hopeful in that regard.
