Anticipation is the story of what transpires in the lives of independent grocery store workers and citizens of small-town Sullivan, Tennessee, on a fraught-ridden Valentine's Day, written by the author of Bright Red Devil and Stars Rain Sun Moon, Ralph Bland, whom Piker Press describes as "a writer who takes you to the heart of characters and lets you listen in on what life brings to them." In this short novel he writes of the struggle for personal survival that employees of Ray's Bargain Foods and others of Sullivan undergo on Valentine's Day, a holiday that dawns with a possible snowstorm in the forecast that just might bring a blizzard of epic proportions to this southern hamlet and which threatens to halt any inclinations of romantic love and sentiment. Confusion, disorder to the norm, and impending panic manifest and begin to lurk in every corner and aisle of the store and the streets of Sullivan, with the result being the personal lives of the employees and townspeople soon intertwine and begin to spin out of control over the course of one day's passage. Ralph Bland lives in Nashville, Tennessee, and is the author of eight previous novels.