A warm welcome to author Rhys Ford joining us today here at Love Bytes for the next part in the Back in Black blog tour!

Rhys shares the next exclusive scene and brought a fabulous giveaway!

Welcome Rhys 🙂

Hello! And thank you for joining the Back in Black Blog Tour! My name is Rhys Ford and I will be your guide through this serialized short story featuring Cole McGinnis and his trip to the altar. Hit each blog stop for the next bit of the story AND as a special bonus, Greg Tremblay has narrated each “slice of cake” on this wedding tour!

 

As some of you know, Cole McGinnis is a former LAPD detective who found love again in a romance suspense series called the Cole McGinnis Mysteries or as I call it, the Dirty Series. It is there he meets and falls in love with Kim Jae-Min, a Korean photographer with a few secrets of his own and a tiny black cat with an attitude. I left Cole and Jae in quite a happy place five years ago in Los Angeles with a promise to come back and “reboot” Cole’s life in a mystery series.

 

(You can find the first series here at Dreamspinner Press, including a special free bonus collection of shorts in both ebook and audiobook format)

 

If you’ve already met Cole, well then I am happy to announce he’s back and well, while things are a little bit different… and he’s a hair older… his life is still as insanely jam-packed with action and more than few mysteries to figure out. All of the old gang is back along with a few new faces and I hope you all enjoy Back in Black as much as I enjoyed writing it.

 

And as if Cole wasn’t fun enough to write, Greg Tremblay is back as Cole McGinnis in the upcoming audiobook which is supposed to be out on Feb 13th! If you aren’t a part of my Facebook group or follow me on social media, please be sure to find me to learn about any future stuff. Because 2020 is going to be a hell of a lot of fun.

 

As always, there is a giveaway! Please comment, rafflecopter or however this blog chooses to run their giveaway, Please Please enter to win a $25 Gift Certificate to the online store of your choice!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Nothing Else Matters: Part Seven

Audio Snippet Link

 

We were both shoed and suited, cradling bottles of ice cold hard cider when Mike finally decided to man up and share what little wisdom Maddy imparted on him after she put a gold ring on his finger. I couldn’t hear anything outside of the room and the windows’ draperies were thick, heavy brocade, keeping the parting day from seeping in. The giant grandfather clock by the door began to toll the hour, warning me I only had about an hour and a half left of bachelorhood but my stomach didn’t drop in fear.

I was still terrified of screwing Jae’s life up but I’d calmed down enough to realize he was willingly jumping into the fray with me.

At least we would descend into the madness together and that seemed like a pretty good way to go.

The cider also didn’t hurt.

“Here’s the thing about marriage,” Mike began, resting his arms on his legs to lean towards me. “No one knows what the hell they’re doing.”

“Not exactly the best start to a pep talk, big brother,” I pointed out. The cider was a bright sting of apple and tang on my tongue, numbing a bit of my mouth before going down. “Remind me to give the kiddo the birds and the bees talk when she’s older. God knows what she’ll walk away from if you’re the one doing it.”

“She’s never going to have sex. Not even a kiss,” he retorted, stabbing at my chest with a stiff finger. “She’s going to be a nun.”

“You’re not even Catholic.” I rubbed at the spot, smirking at the guilty flush over Mike’s cheek. “’Sides, Mad Dog will probably make sure she’s set right. She gets you on course. All the time.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about. Marriage isn’t just something you do once.” He reached over and rubbed at the spot he’d poked. “You say I do every time you wake up. Each time he does something that gets on your nerves and all the times when he smiles at you. That’s what marriage is really about. Committing to those shitty moments as well as the good ones. You’re going to have to learn to say I do over and over again. And mean it. Because the moment you don’t, that’s when you’re in trouble. Marriage is work. Don’t let anyone lie to you. But it’s worth it. Both of you are. Now finish that thing and let’s get you out there. It’s time to say I do.”

“You nervous, boy?” Claudia’s hat bobbed and weaved about as she talked, a veritable Muhammad Ali of haberdashery. “Because you look like you’re about to pass out.”

She’d come dressed to the nines, tens and elevens, a deep red sparkling dress cinched about her voluptuous curves with a dazzle of bezel-set diamonds strung about her neck. The bling matched the one we’d given Scarlet, gifts for the women who stood by us through thick and thin, and the ones walking us down the aisle as the mothers of the grooms.

Stuck in an alcove while guests milled about, streaming into the Majestic’s long hall to find a seat for the event of my life, we were cozened up tight, hidden away from Jae and Scarlet in the opposite niche. They were speaking Ilocano, or at least I guessed they were. Maybe Korean. I couldn’t tell anymore through the buzz of people chatting as if today were nothing more than a movie they were going to see at the end of their work day.

Today was everything to me and the cider in my belly was telling me drinking it down quickly was perhaps a bigger mistake than punching at an old Chinese woman hacking at my best friend with a machete.

“You’re going to be fine,” Claudia reassured me in a tumbled molasses motherly tone she normally reserved for the times when I’d been shot or did something so incredibly stupid she felt like she needed to tell me to inhale or exhale before I suffocated to death. “You’re doing a good thing today. Waited a long time to see you get this kind of happy and thank God I am still alive to see it. Thought you two were going to take forever and a day to get here. He’s good for you. And you’re good for him.”

“I can see the one but sure as hell not the other,” I retorted, dodging the playful slap she aimed at my shoulder. “And this isn’t God’s house. I can swear.”

“Man of God is in there waiting to tie your souls together for all eternity. Close enough.” She had a gleam in her eye, one that promised a good mouth-washing with a bar of Ivory soap and I wasn’t too big for her to give me one. “And definitely the other as well. You taught that boy he was worth being loved. You’ve given him the greatest gift you have and that’s your heart and before you say that it’s nothing, I’m going to remind you I know exactly how great it is because you’ve given it to me as well. So I know how precious it is. And there’s the music. Now, let’s march on in there so everyone inside can get a damned good look at my fine hat.”

 

Back in Black

There are eight million stories in the City of Angels but only one man can stumble upon the body of a former client while being chased by a pair of Dobermans and a deranged psycho dressed as a sheep.

 

That man is Cole McGinnis.

 

Since his last life-threatening case years ago, McGinnis has married the love of his life, Jae-Min Kim, consulted for the LAPD, and investigated cases as a private detective for hire. Yet nothing could have prepared him for the shocking discovery of a dead, grandmotherly woman at his feet and the cascade of murders that follows, even if he should have been used to it by now.

 

Now he’s back in the dark world of murder and intrigue where every bullet appears to have his name on it and every answer he digs up seems to only create more questions. Hired by the dead woman’s husband, McGinnis has to figure out who is behind the crime spree. As if the twisted case of a murdered grandmother isn’t complicated enough, Death is knocking on his door, and each time it opens, Death is wearing a new face, leaving McGinnis to wonder who he can actually trust.

 

Purchase Back in Black at Dreamspinner, Amazon (Globally) and other online book stores:

Dreamspinner Press 

Amazon

Back in Black Audiobook can be preordered here

 

About Rhys Ford

Rhys Ford is an award-winning author with several long-running LGBT+ mystery, thriller, paranormal, and urban fantasy series and is a two-time LAMBDA finalist with her Murder and Mayhem novels. She is also 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 and really, who doesn’t mention their cats, dog and cars in a bio? She shares the house with Harley, a grey tuxedo with a flower on her face, Badger, a disgruntled alley cat who isn’t sure living inside is a step up the social ladder as well as a ginger cairn terrorist named Gus. Rhys is also enslaved to the upkeep 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
Facebook Group: Coffee, Cats, and Murder: https://www.facebook.com/groups/635660536617002/

Twitter: @Rhys_Ford

For more information and to keep track of his upcoming releases, visit Greg Tremblay at: https://gregtremblay.com/