Love Bytes says hello and welcome to author Rhys Ford who is joining us today to talk about her new Dreamspinner Press release “Tramps & Thieves”, book 2 in the Murder and Mayhem series.

Rhys is showing us part 2 in the tour serial she is doing and she brought with her a fabulous giveaway!

Welcome Rhys 🙂

One of the best things about being a mystery writer is that there are always murders to solve so I get to revisit a fantastic-to-write couple like Rook Stevens and Detective Dante Montoya. There are endless possibilities and plot lines for the characters, the city and their circumstances that I cannot wait to explore over the years. With the second book coming out, I wanted to do a blog tour that was just a bit of fun so in this serial, I welcome you to join Rook and his cousin, Alex, on what should be an estate sale of macabre curios but what awaits them is something neither of them planned for.

 

So sit back, be sure you read the whole story AND please enter the blog’s giveaway! One lucky winner will be chosen to receive a $20 USD gift certificate from the online store of their choice!

 

I hope you enjoy this small jaunt as the cousins set out on their quest and be sure to pick up Tramps and Thieves, the sequel to Murder and Mayhem. Published by Dreamspinner Press, it will be out on September 18th on the DSP portal, Amazon and other fine book stores.

 

Tramps and Thieves by Rhys Ford (Book 2 of the Murder and Mayhem Series) Release Date: September 18, 2017

 

Whoever said blood was thicker than water never stood in a pool of it.

 

Retiring from stealing priceless treasures seemed like a surefire way for Rook Stevens to stay on the right side of the law. The only cop in his life should have been his probably-boyfriend, Los Angeles Detective Dante Montoya, but that’s not how life—his life—is turning out. Instead, Rook ends up not only standing in a puddle of his cousin Harold’s blood but also being accused of Harold’s murder…and sleeping with Harold’s wife.

 

For Dante, loving the former thief means his once-normal life is now a sea of chaos, especially since Rook seems incapable of staying out of trouble—or keeping trouble from following him home. When Rook is tagged as a murder suspect by a narrow-focused West L.A. detective, Dante steps in to pull his lover out of the quagmire Rook’s landed in.

 

When the complicated investigation twists around on them, the dead begin to stack up, forcing the lovers to work together. Time isn’t on their side, and if they don’t find the killer before another murder, Dante will be visiting Rook in his prison cell—or at his grave.

 

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Two

In the end, James was right. If there was one thing Alex cannot walk away from, it was the lure of the hunt. Nothing made his soul sing, like digging through mounds of dirty boxes to look for a prize no one thought was there. It was an addiction he and Rook shared, that insane need to ferret out the unrealized. It was treasure hunting at its finest. Amid cardboard and plastic, there were trinkets of lost childhoods and unfulfilled fantasy… And Alex wanted to find them all. He didn’t know if it was because most of his own childhood was spent alone and lost in his own head. As an only child — and a weird child — too often is playmates were ones that he made up in his head but then along came Rook, and suddenly he didn’t feel so odd.

Although he did seem to get into a lot more trouble. Much like having a brother. And an insatiable need to see what the cookie jar on top of the refrigerator held.

The way to Antelope Valley was unremarkable. A lot of people likened it to the prairies the Midwest, dusty and ringed with barbed wire fences. The houses were few and far between in the valleys and as the highway ribboned through the beige grassed hills, Alex was struck by how desolate the area was despite not being much more than 15 minutes away from Los Angeles. They passed a few semis, heavy with groceries and merchandise. The trucks swayed in the high winds, cutting through many dust storms and leaving gritty, tiny tornadoes in their wake.

“I don’t know how you did this kind of sale driving that sports car of yours,” said Rook. “I mean if you bought more than a notepad and a pencil, you’d run out of space in that thing.”

“I really didn’t do a lot of estate sales and private auctions before you came around.” It was hard to admit but the arrival of James and Rook into his life opened up so much of his world. They were different foods to taste, explorations of self that he had never imagined he would do and the journeys he taken with his cousin — even in the small confines of the county — were some of the greatest adventures he’d ever taken. “I guess I was just too busy trying to get the store going and I felt kind of weird doing stuff like that by myself.”

“Well if ever you see anything that you want to do you let me know and I’ll be right there with you,” his cousin assured him. “Dante doesn’t understand sometimes how we get along so well but I don’t think he sees how much we’re alike. People only see the differences. Even when they love you, they don’t necessarily get you. You and me — we like to dig through people’s lives, explore their pasts, and is hokey as it sounds, I think in a lot of ways we like to uncover their dreams. People don’t get that. Sometimes your greatest treasure isn’t something that’s made out of gold, but something that makes you smile.”

“See, that’s what I was telling James this morning. I mean, don’t get me wrong, but you get me embroiled in a lot of stuff that I normally wouldn’t get into. And sure, a couple of times it ends up badly —”

“It often ends badly.” Rook grimaced. “I swear to God I had a perfect track record of not getting caught at anything that I was pulling off until I met you. I don’t know if it’s because you’re just a decent, honest person and there something inherently about you that screams please come arrest me or if a cop can just sense you panicking and hone in on you like you’re a free for one hour donut giveaway.”

“I am not that much of a boy scout.”

“Oh yes, you really are that much of a boy scout. They call you to ask you permission before helping an old lady cross the road.” Rook eased around a slow-moving VW van, its tail lights rattling and puffing out balls of blue-gray smoke as it struggled to get up a hill. “You made me go back because the gas station attendant gave you fifty cents more change than he should have.”

“That kind of stuff comes out of his wages. Maybe not immediately because that’s illegal for a store owner to do to his employees by it adds up in the long run so they would have to raise their prices to make up for that kind of loss over time. Having —”

“See, this is why Archie has a hard time with you. He loves you but the normal Martin is not an honest creature. We just aren’t. If there is a way to squeeze out a penny just by shaking someone’s hand, we’re going to break every single one of their fingers and get a dollar.”

“Not all of us.” Alex tried to think of an example — other than his parents because they were guilty by association — but as he scrolled through the relatives, he discovered there wasn’t any one of them he could trust any farther than he could throw them. “Well there’s…”

“You can think of one goddamn person can you?” He laughed at Alex’s sour expression. “It’s okay to come from a family of cheats and schemers, so long as you know that’s who they are. It’s the ones that aren’t honest about wanting to stab you in the back, are the ones who end up burying the entire silverware drawer into your chest and that’s the kind of people we have in our family.”

Be sure catch the entire story on the Tramps and Thieves Blog Tour and enter to win the giveaway featured on every blog!

September

14        MMGoodbook Reviews

15        Love Bytes

18        Sinfully Gay Review

19        Joyfully Jay

20        NDulgent Bloggers

21        It’s About the Book

22        The Novel Approach

23        rhysford.com (Epilogue)

Rhys Ford is an award-winning author with several long-running LGBT+ mystery, thriller, paranormal, and urban fantasy series and was a 2016 LAMBDA finalist with her novel, Murder and Mayhem and a 2017 Gold and Silver Medal winner in the Florida Authors and Publishers President’s Book Awards for her novels Ink and Shadows and Hanging the Stars. She is published by Dreamspinner Press and DSP Publications.

 

She’s also quite skeptical about bios without a dash of something personal. Rhys shares the house with two cats, Yoshi, a grumpy tuxedo and Tam, a diabetic black shorthair, as well as a ginger cairn terrorist named Gus. She is also responsible for the care and feeding of a 1979 Pontiac Firebird and enjoys murdering make-believe people.

Rhys can be found at the following locations:

Blog: www.rhysford.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/rhys.ford.author

Twitter: @Rhys_Ford

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