It’s not unusual for people to seek answers at the bottom of a bottle. But it’s rare that those answers are truly life changing — even lifesaving. Get ready to embark on the pub crawl of a lifetime in author Mark E. Scott’s emotionally charged Drunk Log. It’s an odyssey unlike any other, through very real streets in a Cincinnati neighborhood. Emotions will run high, dark humour will worm its way in, and it just might change the perceptions people have of the barflies at their local watering holes. If all goes according to plan, tonight will be Jack Current’s last. The young engineer is at the end of his emotional rope and plans to take his own life. But first, a bar crawl through his downtown Cincinnati neighborhood is in order.

Jack Current isn’t just hoping to drown his sorrows during his evening pub crawl through downtown Cincinnati’s Over the Rhine neighborhood; he’s hoping to actually drown — in the Ohio River. But not until he has poured his heart onto paper in the dollar store notebook he’s got with him. Aptly referred to as The Drunk Log, Jack’s notebook contains the secret to his pain.

Readers follow Jack as he begins the evening at his local watering hole, where a gregarious bartender named Aria, with whom he shares a mutual attraction, takes a surreptitious peek at Jack’s journal. Sensing Jack is headed to the same doom that claimed her sister, Aria decides to intervene. Tracking him down in the middle of a winter storm, Aria finds Jack on the freezing, snowy bridge. Can they emerge from their individual cocoons of loss and suffering, save each other and rewrite their stories?

In his notebook, Jack documents the evening, ruminates on his existence and remembers his 7-year-old nephew, who died exactly a year earlier. It is a loss for which Jack feels responsible — a lapse in judgement for which there is no forgiveness. Jack’s plan is to jump off the scenic suspension bridge spanning the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Covington, Kentucky.

Drunk Log is a darkly humorous, deeply introspective exploration into one man’s attempt to find peace in the face of unrelenting pain. Told with a fast clip, the entire book covers about 8 hours and deftly avoids becoming an ominous dirge through relatable — and flawed — characters, unexpectedly funny situations, a budding romance and the wobbly balancing act of a man who must remain sober enough to write in his journal and finish what he started, but drunk enough to jump off a bridge.

Drunk Log is the first installment in Scott’s three-part, Day in the Life series, in which the unexpected, twisted saga of Jack and Aria unfolds over a combined period of 24 hours. Author Mark E. Scott’s compelling story of one man’s last hurrah, Drunk Log, invites readers to follow a relatable protagonist who, in the midst of buckling under oppressive guilt, embarks on one last bar crawl before he plans to end his own life.

Mark E. Scott was born in the small manufacturing town of Galion, Ohio, and has lived in various burgs in Ohio and Michigan before joining the Navy and spending four years traveling the world aboard the USS Mount Whitney. Upon returning home to southwest Ohio, he enrolled at Miami University and completed a degree in Education, only to become a banker soon thereafter. Scott now lives happily in a condo in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati. In his free time, he enjoys writing, finding new and creative ways of tricking his children into answering their phones, and anything related to travel and outdoors, of late including tumbling down snow covered mountains while dragging otherwise perfectly good skis behind him.

Instagram (markescottauthor), Facebook (@markescottauthor) or Twitter (@MarkEScott3).

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About the Author

Bryen Dunn is a freelance journalist based in Toronto with a focus on tourism, lifestyle, entertainment and community issues. He has written several travel articles and has an extensive portfolio of celebrity interviews with musicians, actors and other public personalities. He’s willing to take on any assignments of interest, attend parties with free booze, listen to rants, and travel the world in search of the great unknown. He’s eager to discover the new, remember the past, and look into the future.