Richard Conte 
Close on the Heels of the Day 

A gripping tale that takes the reader on a midnight odyssey in the erratic life of one: Hector Iorio. Encouraged by his parents to pursue a degree in Mathematics at a leading university, Hector chooses to stay his cherished ambition of making a career for himself as an artist. Embarking on his freshman year, outside forces are pulling him in numerous directions as he struggles to reconcile the fate he has chosen to accept with the life he believes is his destiny. Closest to him is a sinister group of companions from his South Philadelphia neighborhood from whom he cannot – or will not – detach himself. Next, there is Gretchen, an outcast Manhattan socialite who relentlessly urges him to break free of the social norms that confine him and to do the work that he was put on this Earth to do. Finally, there is Leah – the broken doll – an emaciated drug abuser who is prone to violent outbursts and with whom he suffers a lengthy and stormy relationship. Hector’s parents believe him when he complains that it is the demands of his curriculum that prevent him from returning home for even a brief holiday visit, yet, unbeknownst to them, he is driving three hundred miles back to his old neighborhood every weekend to join with his friends and girlfriend Leah in their lifestyle of revelry and debauchery. Always caught up in the moment, the night comes quietly as the reader walks in Hector’s footsteps from a stable homelife to overwhelming academic challenges, to the exotic luxury of lavish mansions and penthouse apartments, and ultimately to the buried squalor of the city. Looming in the backdrop all the while is his slow descent into psychosis as he struggles with the bitter realization that he will never be the person he had hoped to be.