Workingclass Stories

A humorous, gritty memoir, How to Find and Lose a Job in the Balkans, follows the chaotic daily life of a young man navigating the turbulent Balkan reality. No matter how hard he tries to find employment, he breathes a sigh of relief every time he loses it. A colorful parade of characters passes through his life, but the only constants are his love for women, booze, and above all, his grandmother. Perfect for fans of Charles Bukowski, John Fante, and dark, unfiltered storytelling. Note: This book contains explicit language and profanity!

Amara Monroe is not the kind of woman who stops moving. She is a graduate student, a business owner, a daughter, and a caretaker all at once, and she handles every single role with the kind of quiet discipline that most people never see because she does not ask them to. Her life runs on early mornings, tight budgets, and the deep belief that doing things the right way matters even when no one is watching. Kit Wattanakul is a Thai-American chef who built his Atlanta restaurant on the same principle. Disciplined. Intentional. Rooted in the culture and family that shaped him. He is not a man who does things carelessly. Which makes it all the more complicated when one unexpected afternoon puts Amara in his orbit and neither of them can quite find their way back to the distance they started with. This is not a story about two people who fall recklessly into each other. It is a story about two people who feel something real and choose, again and again, to handle it with honesty and care. About what it costs to want something you are not yet free to reach for. About family duty and cultural identity and the particular courage it takes to build love on a foundation that can actually hold. Set against the copper and gold of an Atlanta autumn, Eyes on You is a slow burn that earns every degree of heat. No shortcuts. No compromise. Just two people deciding that something worth having is worth doing right. ©️ _RelleLebby_// R. L.

*A band on the run. Two souls lost between back roads, borrowed stages, and songs that seem to know them better than they know themselves.* A boy survives a killing, and a knife changes everything. Kid spends his life chasing freedom through every woman, every highway, every late-night song-believing love might finally quiet the voices inside him. Midnight whispers: *Leave. Be free.* Dawn answers: *Stay. Be known.* He wants both. He loses both. Chance only falls in love once, and it destroys him. He disappears into the road, the music, and the spaces between towns, trying to become something strong enough to survive the wreckage. But when their paths collide, love becomes heavier than desire. It becomes a cost neither man is ready to pay. Because on these roads, freedom never comes clean-and staying always asks for a piece of your soul. *The Dead Cowboys* is a slow-burn modern western blending magical realism, found family, ancestral myth, and the melancholy atmosphere of late-night Americana. For readers who love emotional healing dramas, lonely highways, music mythology, and stories that ache long after the last page. #slowburn #foundfamily #magicalrealism #music #americana #roadtrip #melancholy #characterdriven > "Some men learn. The rest become The Dead Cowboys."

A peek inside the famed bando of Mr. Billy the Beefcake. You wont like what you see. Or maybe you will..?

Maya Hussain is sixteen, skint, and sleeping on a sofa bed in the kitchen of a council flat in Bradford. Her mum's hours just got cut. The deposit on their old place is gone -- lost to a scuff on a wall that a letting agent called "damage." Nobody explained the rules. Nobody ever does. When Maya lands a part-time job at the supermarket, she thinks the maths is simple: work hours, get paid. But her first payslip is short by sixteen quid, her bank balance vanishes in two weeks, and the systems she's supposed to trust -- tax codes, credit scores, zero-hour contracts -- seem designed for people who already know how they work. With help from Darius (her co-worker who's been through it), Nani (whose Cadbury Roses tins hold more financial wisdom than any app), and a Business Studies teacher who actually talks sense, Maya starts figuring it out. Not getting rich. Just understanding the rules before they cost her again. No Money, No Clue is a YA novel about money, family, and what happens when nobody tells you how any of it works. Set in Bradford, rooted in British-Pakistani family life, and written for anyone who's ever checked their bank balance and thought: where did it go? New chapters weekly. This is the Wattpad edition -- a trimmed version of the full story. Read the complete chapters free at clairepublishing.com Tags: #financialliteracy #YA #Bradford #comingofage #money #budgeting #workingclass #BritishPakistani #teen #realism

**THIS BOOK CONTAINS LANGUAGE AND SCENES THAT SOME MAY FIND OFFENSIVE!** Graydens/The Tedious Life Of Ashley Astley was a book I had originally started during lockdown. Originally supposed to be a diary based on the peculiar, socially deficit 12/13 year old girl Ashley/Ash I had then got carried away and produced both first and third person accounts of the goings on - this however got too repetitive as I was basically repeating the same thing but in different perspectives. So now the story is split into two books: the original idea 'The Tedious Life Of Ashley Astley' and now 'Graydens' (the fictional school in which Ashley attends) which still has a basis around Ashley (in it's 3rd person perspective) also describes the goings on of the students and even some of the teachers in the shabby dysfunctional school based somewhere in the south east of England (bordering London) however never specified exactly where. Unfortunately many of the early chapters had been corrupted and so I have to rewrite them both in Graydens and TTLOAA. Fortunately some of the chapters are either fully intact or have partial snippets of the story/stories which I shall add whilst I rewrite the rest. This book is continuous and so 3 or so years later I'm still writing on and off. I have no idea when this will be finished or if it will be finished. Likely these stories will be a series in the foreseeable future... Although this is my first story I'll publish here, it isn't my first overall. I have written many stories since I was a child/teen (pencil/pen and paper) These are when I decided to pick up my virtual pen and start writing again now as an young adult.

A working class kid's attempts at earning, learning, unlearning, mourning, loving and breathing.

Non-racist and racist skinheads look the same. When Bryant's best friend dies at the hands of a rival gang, will revenge tempt him to switch sides? Blind was a top 10 Honorable Mention for Best General Fiction novel in the 2008 Writer's Digest Self-Published book awards and received acclaim from Maximum Rock 'n' Roll and Razorcake magazines.

My name is Marcus, and I'm one of the many, many people employed in my hometown's factories. I found out I was gay when I was twelve, stayed single until twenty eight. My partner, Peter, writes for a handful of small American magazines. He is a good man, but his mental state has been deteriorating in the past two years. I'm trying to keep him happy, but it's hard. I don't know if I can leave him alone. I'm in a constant state of fear; that the moment I've gone to work, or to the store, I'll come back to a dead husband. Peter gets angry when I try to talk to him about it. He yells a lot. Sometimes he shoves me, if the fight gets heated enough. Being with Peter, when he gets like this, is killing me. There are times when I wonder if he even is the man I fell in love with. {we follow Marcus, a man struggling to maintain intimacy with his mentally ill partner. He balances love, work, and family, in this story.} [warning: coarse language, violence (including mild spousal/domestic violence,) sexual themes (consented), mentions of mental illness, mentions of minor self harm.] This story was made two years ago. I changed its name, and made heavy revision.

When a nuclear explosion ended hundreds of lives , it split the world as we knew it LITERALLY in half. No one knew what and WHO was on the other side until a gutsy girl and her bestfriend ventured out into the unknown. The truth was always a dangerous thing to unravel. But maybe this time , Vera was in over her head... 》》》》》》 "My soul remembered him , my heart connected with him but time had separated him from wanting me right now " *started 6 May 2020* *finished 9 Feb 2021* *unedited *

Taking a walk to free your mind isn't always a freeing as it's supposed to be, being an introvert doesn't mean to be alone it means to walk in thought.

Born in a coastal village in Malaysia, raised by love and hardship, this is the story of a young man who built his life not on luck - but on grit, gratitude, and quiet strength. A story of climbing, without noise.

Lars has just experienced the worst day of his life. He has always been too common for the title he will inherit and the fact he is the son of a Lord means he will never be accepted as a commoner. Throw into the mix his disappointing career choice, his love of animals and the fact that both his parents have children they like better, it is hardly surprising that he starts to find things tough. But is this day worth dying for?

Kurai Nagai is a shy and insecure teenager who lives on the bad side of town with his uncle who has high expectations of him. When his best friend goes missing he discovers that the government is using, missing children, and juvenile delinquents for human experimentation. Now Kurai must make a choice. Play it safe and stay under the radar, or rise up and expose them Graphic warnings in episodes: 2, 4, and 6

The backbone of America isn't the billionaires or the giant corporations. It's the the every day workers, the immigrants, those who sacrifice everything in order to provide for their families. Join these hardworking people on their day to day journeys.

"The moment that Jordan Shearer steps into the classroom, Lee knows that he's not from around here." Preslash short between two boys from two very different backgrounds. Ingredients: two cups of Glasgow Patter; one teaspoon of NED; a tablespoon of callow middle class; a cup of general teenage incompetence; and an entire quart of UST.

Them... Those... People you'd deal with at work: - co-workers - bosses - customers Essentially, anybody you need to be around who could make things more difficult then they need to be. This is a blog-ish story accounting my personal experiences, along with the odd special chapter doccumenting the accounts of people I know. Though seemingly bleak, the aim of this series is to share and hopefully give people a bit of a boost, something to relate their experience to & know they're not odd or alone. Those around me & myself rant about work, some people don't have this luxury. I have had apparantely contrasting work & am able to more empathetic to specific sectors I knew little of before hand - so you'll likely find a work rant just for you. ;) Updated when stuff happens, I remember stuff or someone's told me stuff.

For fans of Jennifer Niven and Nicola Yoon. Mackenzie Craig is no stranger to struggling. After a childhood marred by poverty and homelessness, she's worked her way up to the number two spot in her graduating class, become a champion debater, and secured a scholarship to a great college. But then Mackenzie collapses at the state debate championships. She's rushed to the hospital where her prognosis is grave--she's having a stroke. Mackenzie wakes up with right-sided weakness and a speech impairment that hinders her ability to talk or write. She works hard to be able to return to school in time to graduate, but when she overhears one of her classmates insulting her younger sister, Mackenzie doesn't have the words to tell him off, so she punches him. The boy calls the cops and Mackenzie ends up with an assault charge. When her college finds out about the arrest, they threaten to pull the award. Mackenzie must meet with them to defend her actions before the fall semester starts. But August is only three months away and now Mackenzie's got to fit in community service along with all of her therapy. Can she re-learn to communicate in time for her hearing? Or will her stroke steal away her entire future? Stronger than Words is an uplifting story about perseverance, hope, and human connection.

Jax, a gay teen fresh out of high school, is stuck between figuring out his future and surviving his chaotic home life. Living with his tough but caring manager Kris and her two daughters-rebellious Rene and overachieving Katie-Jax's life takes an unexpected turn when he meets Levi, a mysterious boy weighed down by small-town expectations and secrets of his own. As dreams blur into reality, Jax finds himself drawn to Levi in ways he can't explain, while Rene struggles with feelings she won't admit. In a small Southern town where everyone is searching for freedom, can Jax uncover the truth about Levi-and himself-before it's too late?