Please stand by : a novel

"Donate to ABS. Do it for Courtney. Do it for his safety." Preying on loving parents is second nature to Suzanne Foley. So is drinking to oblivion while shilling for the publicly-supported Alberta Broadcasting System (ABS). When new management from Toronto threatens to gut the station, Suzanne rallies reluctant coworkers to fight back. Sex with a younger man, intrusive memories and regular trips to the prescription counter aside, she pins all her hope on ABS surviving another day because as she tells Leslie, "It's all I have." Set in the throes of a bone-chilling Edmonton winter, Please Stand By lays to waste CanCon, the east-west divide, and secrets that can kill. Funny, wild and brave, Please Stand By is a fast and furious read for mind and heart The fight to save a publicly funded television station from privatization is led by a crusader willing to lose everything. Meet Suzanne Foley--single, 38, heavy-drinking, and Ativan-reliant--a freelance writer with the Alberta Broadcasting System looking to sabotage a smarmy new flack tasked with making the station's membership pledge campaign more "dynamic and entertaining." Her colleagues, none of them as smart or as desperate, either reject her schemes outright or reluctantly go along, but branding won't replace integrity, not on Suzanne's watch. Problem is, she's becoming unhinged, experiencing flashbacks to her troubled youth, which is nothing that sex with a far younger man and trips to the pharmacy and bar can't fix--until that fix almost does her in. Alcoholic and prescription drug abuser Suzanne Foley rallies her coworkers to fight back when they discover that new management from Toronto may gut the Alberta Broadcasting System, putting all their jobs at risk