We’re so pleased to have author J. Scott Coatsworth joining us today on the tour for his new novel, The River City Chronicles. We’ve got an exclusive excerpt from the book to share with you along with a great giveaway, so be sure to check out the details below.

Welcome, Scott!

About the Book

Title: The River City Chronicles
Series Title: River City: Book One
Author: J. Scott Coatsworth
Publisher: Other Worlds Ink.
Release Date: Wednesday, May 30, 2018
Is This Book Romance?: No
Word Count: 115k
Genres: gay fiction, queer fiction, magical realism, contemporary
Characters: gay, bi, trans, straight
Keywords/Categories: gay, bisexual, transgender, trans, gay fiction, queer fiction, magical realism
Cover Artist: Kelley York
Book Blurb: A group of strangers meets at Ragazzi, an Italian restaurant, for a cooking lesson that will change them all. They quickly become intertwined in each other’s lives, and a bit of magic touches each of them.

Meet Dave, the consultant who lost his partner; Matteo and Diego, the couple who run the restaurant; recently-widowed Carmelina; Marcos, a web designer getting too old for hook-ups; Ben, a trans author writing the Great American Novel; teenager Marissa, kicked out for being bi; and Sam and Brad, a May-September couple who would never have gotten together without a little magic of their own.

Everyone in the River City has a secret, and sooner or later secrets always come out.

Buy the Book: Amazon, B&N, and Other Online Retailers

Other Links: QueeRomance Ink | Goodreads

The Excerpt

L’ho trovata, the message from his sister said.

I found her.

Diego stared at it in disbelief. It was the night of the new moon, the apartment lit only by the streetlights outside.

He was dreading the inevitable demand from Max, his ex-immigration attorney, for the blackmail money. Instead, there was one from Valentina.

He checked the clock. It was just after eleven at night in California, or seven in the morning in Italy. Matteo was already in bed.

The two of them had worked side by side at Ragazzi all afternoon and evening, but Matteo had barely looked at him, let alone spoken more than three words. Now Diego sat by himself on the couch, afraid to go to bed.

He’d asked Valentina’s advice the week before, and the words had come back with startling clarity. “You have to tell him.” He’d put it off until he really had no more choice, and now he risked losing everything.

You found who? he texted back, his hands shaking, making it difficult to type out the words.

The three dots appeared on the screen for a moment, then went away.

He could picture his sister, perfect in her Valentino suit, getting ready for work, staring at the screen pensively while she decided how to tell him. Or if she should tell him at all.

What???

A moment later, the dots appeared again. And finally: I found Luna. She wants to speak to you.

He dropped the phone as if it had burned him. After all these years… Luna had been unstable, a live wire. There was no telling the damage she might do if he let her into his life again.

What did she say? he asked.

Three dots.

He waited, growling with anticipation. It was magic the way thoughts could be shared like this from the other side of the world. Magic and maddening…

She says she needs to see you…

The message trailed off.

What aren’t you telling me?

There was a long pause. He stared at his phone as if he could will her to type whatever she was holding back. He started to call her when the dots appeared again.

“You have to sleep,” Matteo said in Italian, from the doorway.

Diego looked up. “Are you talking to me now?”

Matteo frowned, his brow creased. Whether in anger or exhaustion, it was hard to tell.

Diego glanced down just as the message appeared from his sister. “Cazzo!”

She says you have a son.

About the Author

Scott lives with his husband Mark in a little yellow bungalow in East Sacramento, with two pink flamingos by the front porch.

He spends his time between the here and now and the what could be. Indoctrinated into fantasy and sci fi by his mother at the tender age of nine, he devoured her library. But as he grew up, he wondered where the people like him were.

He decided it was time to create the kinds of stories he couldn’t find at Waldenbooks. If there weren’t gay characters in his favorite genres, he would remake them to his own ends.

His friends say Scott’s brain works a little differently – he sees relationships between things that others miss, and gets more done in a day than most folks manage in a week. He seeks to transform traditional sci fi, fantasy, and contemporary worlds into something unexpected.

He runs Queer Sci Fi and QueeRomance Ink with his husband Mark, sites that bring queer people together to promote and celebrate fiction that reflects their own reality.

Social Links: Website || Facebook || Author Page || Twitter || Goodreads || QueerRomance Ink || Amazon Page

The Giveaway

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