The Cheated

THE CHEATED, which falls into the Literary Fiction category, was inspired by how crime has hurt me. This novel takes place from 1996 to 2014 in South Florida -"the epicenter of nearly everything fraudulent," and it's written from the unique perspective of how the criminal activities of others indirectly affect the dating scene for people who earn an honest living. In search of a teaching job, warm weather, beach parties, and a bevy of beautiful women, Kevin, the story's protagonist, leaves behind a sheltered life in blue-collar Western Pennsylvania for Sunny and Cosmopolitan South Florida. His good looks and nice physique immediately afford him the attention of models, cocktail waitresses and other extraordinarily good-looking women, and he even achieves a relationship with one of them that lasts for more than four years, but nearly all of his relationships with these types of women end when they leave him for men who throw a lot of money at them. Compounding Kevin's frustration is his discovery that some of the men he lost women to are involved in illegal and unethical activities including operating "Pill Mills," and running insurance, Medicare and Medicaid fraud schemes. Kevin acknowledges that he is at least 50% of the problem, as he values a woman's appearance as much as the kind of women he is pursuing value a man's money, but he's just so fixated on dating women who possess a certain kind of look, resulting in a multitude of short-lived relationships with a type of woman that is unattainable for the long-term, leaving him crushed, and questioning whether anything other than money really matters to attractive women in this region of the country. Kevin wants to marry and have children like his closest friends and siblings have, but he finds it impossible to be physically attracted to the kind of women that would be most conducive to achieving this goal. He loves his career as a teacher, but recent cuts to education spending have drastically reduced his income. Approaching the age of 40, and with almost no confidence remaining that any amount of actual love can change the perspective of the type of women he is in pursuit of, associates of Kevin's offer him opportunities to drastically increase his income by getting involved in their fraudulent activities that would guarantee him the kind of money necessary to satisfy the very kind of female he keeps losing. Kevin is forced to make a decision -take whatever means necessary to secure the only kind of woman he is innately attracted to or do what his working-class values and conscience tell him to do.