Welcome to Groove House
Author
Jill Meniketti
Author Bio
Jill Meniketti manages a popular rock band that tours the world annually. She takes pride in belonging to an elite set of women who double as band managers and rock star wives (Sharon Osbourne, Wendy Dio, Denise Martin, Susan Tate, April Malmsteen, to name a few). Jill lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her rock star husband. Welcome to Groove House is her debut novel.
Description
Lock up your grandmothers! . . . When rock’s former biggest rebel loses everything, he’s forced to call in favors from all the rock star royalty whom he’d burned his entire career.
With a trashed comeback tour, creditors on his ass, no record deal, a health issue he doesn’t even know how to spell, and nothing but a few bucks from the sale of his last guitar, Mike Mays is destitute for the first time in his rock star life. He’s forced to crash his estranged, uptight daughter’s tidy world, and when she kicks him out, to couch-surf halfway around the world at a ragtag farmhouse in Tuscany called Groove House—home to a pack of aging ex-rock stars, who aren’t thrilled to see him.
Mike creates chaos at every turn, bulldozing everyone in his path. His raunchy offstage antics snagged headlines back in the ’70s and ’80s, but can the aging bad boy bluff his way out of his worst bungle yet and actually stage a comeback?
Book excerpt
Chapter 1
Mike Mays glared at Nick, the rhythm guitarist—his twenty-something, hired gun with tar-black hair veiling his dark eyes, and the shitload of hardware hanging off his face. Poseur.
“Face it, old man,” Nick growled. “You left your chops in the ’80s.”
“I got jeans older than you, ya little pissant.” Mike felt pressure rising in his chest. His breathing thickened. “Shoulda shipped your ass back to L.A. after the London gig.”
“I’ll be glad when this embarrassment of a tour is over.” Nick scooped up his skull and bones McSwain guitar and began noodling.
Bones, the frizzy-haired guitar tech for the tour, straddled the dressing room doorway in his combat boots, plaid shorts, and a Judas Priest T-shirt. “Okay,” he announced, “time to clear the dressing room.”
Mike turned and ogled the chick’s killer bod as she stood in her sexy red stilettos and her black lace skirt that barely covered her ass. One tug of the tie on her halter top, he thought, and her tits would come spilling out. He licked his lips. She’d be a tasty treat after the show.
She spun her back to him and he grinned as he ran his fingers over the bare skin above her ass. There it was: his own face staring back at him. He glanced down at the tattoo—the kid with pouting lips and long, puffy hair. Not bad, he thought, the jaw line looks pretty good and the eyes look okay. “Damn, they got my nose all wrong . . . too narrow.”
He turned and caught sight of Nick in the mirror. He’s about the same age as me in the tattoo, Mike thought, and then he glanced away from his own withered face and thinning hair. He turned back to the tat.
“I feel sorry for the poor bastard who has to stare at me when he screws her from behind.” Mike grinned as his guitar tech and backing band laughed—all but Nick.
The chick shifted her head back to check Mike’s expression, an auburn curl dropping to her shoulder. She handed him a black Sharpie. “Can you sign it?”
“I’d be delighted.” Mike caressed the colors on her skin and then scribbled his name above the tat. “How ’bout you come back after the show and we’ll see how great your ass looks on my face?”
The chick giggled and then hugged Mike as he planted a kiss on her cheek.
Then Bones ushered her out and poked his head back inside. “I’m off to the stage now. Need anything before I go?”
“A line of blow?”
Bones did a double-take.
Mike glanced at Dylan, the bleached-blond drummer. “Down boy. . . . No need to get on your AA soapbox.” Even though Mike didn’t believe in all that sobriety bullshit, he no longer did the hard stuff; it just took too much out of him anymore.
