Are You Ready For Some Dirty Deeds, Some GayRomLit Countdown Fun, And An Awesome Contest?

We are positively chuffed to bits to be kicking off the GRL Countdown Celebration at TNA today with Rhys Ford, as we also countdown the few remaining days until Cole McGinnis and Kim Jae-Min arrive on bookshelves everywhere in Dirty Deeds, Book Four in the Cole McGinnis Mystery Series.

Rhys sat down to answer some random questions for us–that last one, courtesy of Mary Calmes, deserves further exploration in an upcoming book!–and she’s also offering a truly fun giveaway to celebrate it all.

Read on and enjoy!

TNA: So, Rhys Ford, within you lurks a crafty evilness that makes you like to kill people in your books. What’s the most twisted way you’ve ever come up with to off a character, I’m talking so twisted you decided not to use it in the book because it was so out there?

Rhys: Thank you for having me here. Heh. And yes, let’s pull no punches and go directly for the pulse point, shall we?

The most twisted thing I’ve come up with and not used? Wow. See, I’ve not actually had any horrific murders happen on the page. It’s a lot of smoke and mirrors. I’ve shown the aftermath mostly. Which, in its way, is its own kind of horror. I’ve had a character carve up a whore so he could get her kidneys and give them to the nice grandmotherly lady who lived under his apartment so she could make steak and kidney pie for him. Um, I’d say maybe Tsukoi’s peeling off his client’s skin while the man was alive so he could preserve the tattoos he’d made…that story they told was probably the farthest I’ve shown.

I can get pretty macabre. But on page, for the general public, I try not to. Um… slitting a person’s skin, inserting air hoses and duct taping them down so the cuts are air tight, and then turning on a compressor to separate out the skin from the flesh. I’ve debated doing that once. Shock will usually kill a person before anything else. That and blood loss. The human body is a very delicate machine in certain cases. And the human mind can create its own horrors with very little effort on my part.

TNA: Tell us 3 things we might not know about you that we should.

Rhys: Hhmmmm, well you know me so very well. Let’s see. First, I have to try very hard to be social. It gets tiring because I’m usually off in my own little world so often. I get distracted easily. Focusing on social stuff is hard.

Secondly, coffee calms me down. It’s like an anchor. Really useful in a lot of ways. A good coffee candy is like an internal hug.

Third, I try to be a good person but oh, I feel like crap when I’m not. I hate excluding people from anything, and I always want someone to feel welcome and a part of things. Sometimes I don’t realize I’ve forgotten to check if everyone’s okay and just toddle off in my own brain. Always check to see if everyone’s been included. *nods*

TNA: If we were to ask your characters—let’s pick Jae, Bobby, Miki, and Kai—what do you think they’d each say about you?

Jae: Couldn’t you have gotten me a boyfriend without a death wish?

Bobby: No, really. What were you thinking? Are you fucking insane? What the fucking hell? This isn’t going to work. It’s all going to shit and hell, and you are fucking nuts for doing it.

Miki: Thanks. Dude, just…thanks.

Kai: Really? A fucking sidhe Lord? Why not have me screw a black dog too? It’s about the same thing.

TNA: Of all the books you’ve read in your lifetime, what’s the one book you can honestly say you wish you’d written, and why?

Rhys: God, so many. I have my old standby of Courtship Rite by Donald Kingsbury. Its elegance of language and world building. How the pieces fit together and just the sheer scope of it… but it’s all so damned simple. It’s a tesseract of language and concept, and then you get to the end… one fucking sentence and the whole book shifts and changes. Mind blown. Beyond blown. Masterful book.

TNA: Of all the characters you’ve created, which has been the most fun to write? Why?

Rhys: Miki is the most fun. He’s probably the one who thinks most like me. Well, until I get to Quinn then I’ll steep into the brain there. Miki is very flow-of-thought. There’s very little filter but his heart is so good. It really is. He’s fierce but broken inside. Or rather, not broken as much as shattered, then calcified over. I enjoy his exploration of the world because there’s still wonder there… a bit. He sees everything and stores them away in his little squirrel brain. He’s the kind of character that sort of sees sounds. Quinn’s going to be a much more intense version of that kind of thinking, but a bit more logical in how he processes it out. Miki’s a bit of a thug in a lot of ways. So much fun to write.

And I enjoyed the fuck out of writing Parker. *grins*

TNA: If you could sit down and get drunk with one of your characters, who’d be the most fun drunk, and why?

Rhys: Wow. Probably Damie and Miki? Hell, I don’t know. I wouldn’t get drunk with any of them. Maybe the Morgan clan. It’d be nice to have a barbeque with them. And just sit there, listening and eating the food. But I’d probably last about half an hour, then it’d start crawling over me like ants, and I’d have to bail. *grins*

TNA: You’re at a speed-dating event. At each table awaiting you sits Ernest Hemmingway, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Bram Stoker, Charles Dickens, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Whose table do you choose to visit first, and how do you start the conversation?

Rhys: Probably Wilde’s. Because really, I think so much of his inner soul was sorrow, and I’d want him to know it’s okay. It got better for men like him. That he’d become someone others listened to and admired, even in his most debauched. I think so much of his self-destructive behaviour was because he wanted to be loved and love in return. I’d want him to have that.

TNA: Finally, Mary Calmes would like to ask Cole, “Where’s the kinkiest place you and Jae have done it, and were there condiments involved?” :-D

Rhys: The kitchen counter, despite Jae’s insistence that they not do it anywhere there is food prepared. And sesame seed oil. Cole believes it was worth every second of that two hours, and he didn’t mind that he stunk of bleach for days afterwards because he had to clean it up.

Thank you for having me, love. *hugs* I really appreciate it!

TNA: Can we get a group hug here, people? ::HUGS:: It’s our pleasure to have you here, always! ::smish::

BLURB: Sheila Pinelli needed to be taken out.

Former cop turned private investigator Cole McGinnis never considered committing murder. But six months ago, when Jae-Min’s blood filled his hands and death came knocking at his lover’s door, killing Sheila Pinelli became a definite possibility.

While Sheila lurks in some hidden corner of Los Angeles, Jae and Cole share a bed, a home, and most of all, happiness. They’d survived Jae’s traditional Korean family disowning him and plan on building a new life—preferably one without the threat of Sheila’s return hanging over them.

Thanks to the Santa Monica police mistakenly releasing Sheila following a loitering arrest, Cole finally gets a lead on Sheila’s whereabouts. That is, until the trail goes crazy and he’s thrown into a tangle of drugs, exotic women, and more death. Regardless of the case going sideways, Cole is determined to find the woman he once loved as a sister and get her out of their lives once and for all.

THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED