Autorentext

The author lives in El Paso, Texas, with his talented wife, Nora, and their two rescue dogs. A former Marine, he bears a single tattoo-a rugby player named Fuzzy-in honor of his late brother, Patrick Bettise, who introduced him to the sport he loves. Surrounded by his extended family and the desert heat, the author continues to write when not shouting at the television. Rugby Kisses is his first novel.

Klappentext

Conor Sullivan is the kind of asshole who can ruin your night with a single sentence-and then drink you under the table while you're still thinking of a comeback. By day he manages a liquor store. By night the liquor manages him. His time is split between feeding his habits and playing for the Billings Banshees, a rugby team so catastrophically bad they consider defeat a formality. Rugby is less a sport for Conor and more a flicker of meaning in an otherwise spectacularly mismanaged life. You can name your poison at the Jackpot club, and whether ingested cheerfully or passed through the convenient, drive-up window, it is always delivered with a smile - but when a dead bouncer leaves Conor a briefcase full of cocaine, cash, and anxiety, things unravel quickly. What follows is a darkly comic spiral through amateur athletic mediocrity, questionable loyalties, and life consequences that the protagonist is profoundly unequipped to handle. Rehab offers no salvation-only complications. There's Charlene, enigmatic and disarmingly perceptive, who seems more interested in saving his soul than sleeping with him, and "The Cat," a predator in every sense of the word. But when violence rears its inevitable head, Conor finally finds something he's good at: a perfectly executed rugby tackle that might be the closest thing to redemption he's ever known.