By the author of Small Town PunkIn John L. Sheppard's darkly humorous "The Runner-Up, alcoholic ex-sailor Ray reviews his lonely childhood trying to discover why he ended up on his father's couch sipping gin. Was it his mother abandoning the family when he was only nine? Was it his father's insistence on not being a father to him? Was it the lack of siblings? Or was it that he was always coming in second? Praise for Small Town Punk: Small Town Punk is brutal, honest, funny, and acerbic. It's also ... pretty dead-on accurate about what life in Central Florida for disaffected, low-to-middle class outcast teens was like. --Julio Diaz, Ink19.com