BURNISHED BRIDGE

About the Book

Alex Dael is on the brink of achieving the extraordinary. It’s the scientific breakthrough of a thousand lifetimes, but inside he feels empty. Success is tempered when there is no one to share it with. He believes that to live without love is to live in true poverty. When Alex finally meets a woman who is everything he desires, she’s out of reach. Rather than face the constant reminder and a career that has peaked, he chooses to take a wild ride. Alex believes that because of us, the cosmos comes to know itself. This time it returns the favor.

About the Author

Just before college, Ray won first place in the National Pen Women Competition for his fictional short story, Distinction, as well as winning second place in the New York Best of City - The Written Word. While attending college, Ray Melnik's course on existential literature opened a whole new world for him with the study of writers such as Sartre and Camus. He pursued a musical career as a singer and lyricist, after leaving college. In the early 1980s he was the lead singer for One Hand Clap and then Fine Malibus, with Steve Stevens, current guitarist and song writer for Billy Idol. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ray was engineer and co-owner of MANNIK Productions, a recording studio in the Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island, New York. In addition to lyrics, Ray, wrote a monthly column about pro audio for a music trade magazine, American Liverpool. Later moving into the field of technology as a network engineer and then architect, he wrote for the technology panel of a regional newspaper, Times Herald Record, and was the primary writer of articles based on home technology for the website New Technology Home. Ray currently works as a Senior Network Architect in New York City, New York. His insatiable interest in science and unbending commitment to reason makes his first novel, The Room, a story of a life grounded in both. His second novel, To Your Own Self Be True, follows with the same intention. Burnished Bridge is his first novella.