Work Hard, Play Harder

By Annalisa Conti

This is the ninth episode of THE W SERIES, a collection of short stories.

What is wrong with Guinn? A day at work and an evening therapy session with Jay help W surf through the thoughts and feelings of a superhero on forced vacation. What’s the point of being super if you can’t be a hero?

Guinn is also reminded of an unmissable upcoming opportunity to spy into the past, and everyone prepares to take full advantage of it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Annalisa Conti
• Release date: Jun 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781732199279

Annalisa Conti

Annalisa Conti lives and writes in New York City, where she has been spending the last few years of her life. She is a woman who writes about women, real human beings facing drama and challenges, finding happiness and rewards, succeeding and failing. Normal people. If you like Jane Austen for her honest humor, Gillian Flynn for her descent into human darkness, and Elena Ferrante for her focus on storytelling, you will find Annalisa’s tales wildly entertaining. She recently published her third novel, NINE. It is a modern tale on motherhood, a unique story about pregnancy, its hidden fears, and its untold truths. Her second novel, AFRICA, was an Amazon Kindle #1 in its category. Reviewers say it is a “fascinating” “astonishing” story of a life-changing journey to the end of the world, “powerful and dramatic, and well integrated into this incredible “decorum””. Annalisa is also the author of ALL THE PEOPLE, a novel built around a woman’s secrets. Reviewers say “you cannot put it down”, it is “capturing reader’s attention since the very first lines”, and it has a “very deep and accurate psychological perspective”. She publishes quarterly episodes in the collection of short stories THE W SERIES, which describe the world of W, a superhero like no other. Reviewers say it is "a classic action story but somehow very different from anything else", with a "writing style packed of action and visual clues as if it was taken right out of a Marvel comic strip". The first ten episodes of THE W SERIES have been collected in W IS FOR WONDER.

Book preview

WORK HARD, PLAY HARDER

Copyright © 2018 Annalisa Conti

Cover art by Valeria Frustaci, 2018

All rights reserved.

Published by AEC Publishing LLC in New York

www.annalisaconti.com

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Work Hard, Play Harder

About the Author

Books by this Author

Connect with Annalisa Conti

Acknowledgements

To Emmanuel, who always believes in me.

Work Hard, Play Harder

In my dream I’m dead.

It’s one of those strange dreams where all is blurry, I can’t recognize faces and I don’t really know what’s going on, but I know I’m dead. It’s a weird feeling, being dead. There’s some sort of quiet, a resignation that comes with it: you did what you could, and now it’s over.

The alarm goes off at eight, like every other day. My two hours of sleep flew by way too fast. I open my eyes in the blinding light of a mid-June Wednesday morning, to the sound of the humming fan in my room. Why doesn’t this damn thing do anything, it’s so fucking hot in here. I