Jose Saco

Discovered in an illicit romance with her uncle, Megan Morgan is forced to face life without her uncle's counsel. Initially, Megan pushes back into her many school activities to fill the void but soon finds herself frustrated by several situations. Kelly Simmons, Megan's recently discovered sister-in-arms, has time only for new love, Ryan Royek. Kate, Megan's mother, is enamored with an attorney, Gus Leone, who she meets through her court-reporting endeavors. Joe Edwards, with whom Megan attended her school's Mistletoe Ball, is sidelined from dating Megan with a sport related injury. Megan must also deal with Harry Campbell, the counselor that Kate requires Megan to see for ten sessions in order to acquire insight on Megan's affair with Jack Morgan. Matters come to a head the night of the school play. Megan becomes involved in bizarre activities at a clandestine post play party at the home of the son, Paul Ugalini, of a wealthy plastic surgeon. New alliances formed at the party will later prove crucial in Megan's life. She finds Paul Ugalini and Nadine Cortez alluring and perplexing and discovers why Paul's precocious younger sister refers to the family bathroom as the "great bath". On her return home, Megan is forced to accept assistance from a person she despises and encounters two overwhelming traumatic events. Megan must draw on the help of family and friends plus her own resources to survive and overcome the aftermath of those events. Jose Saco is a pseudonym for the author who lives in rural northwest Pennsylvania. He bases much of his fiction work on his experiences when working as a high school teacher, counselor, coach, and sex abuse therapist.

In Illicit Liaisons, Volume 3, The Studio, Megan Morgan works on four basic issues. She struggles to put her relationship with her uncle in proper perspective and to relate to Uncle Jack in an appropriate fashion. She faces the complexities of dating two very different boys, Paul Ugalini and Joe Edwards, and with her own confusion of how she wishes to behave when she is on a date with any boy. To complicate her dating experiences, she discovers she has a third issue to tackle. As a consequence of being kidnapped and raped, she has developed a post traumatic reaction that emerges when her dating encounters turn sexual. Finally, her friendship with Paul's sister, Francesca, leads Megan to take on the responsibilty of assisting Francesca's friend, Emmanuelle, with drug related difficulties. This last issue begins to dictate much of Megan's experiences and behavior over the course of her tenth grade summer. Both Megan and Nadia Cortez, the free lance photographer that Megan met at Paul's unchaperoned party, build a closer bond as they try to gain insight into the child pornography ring operating somewhere around the greater Pittsburgh area, and with which Emmanuelle has become involved in order to earn money to pay for her growing drug addiction. Emmanuelle's low self esteem has made her vulnerable and she becomes entangled in the devious web cast by the adults who profit from her beauty. Even the combined efforts of the three young women, Megan, Francesca, and Nadia may not be enough to save Emmanuelle.