Book Title: In This Bed of Snowflakes We Lie
Author: Sophia Soames
Publisher: Self-published
Cover Artist: Miriam Latu
Release Date: November 14, 2019
Genre/s: Contemporary M/M Romance
Trope/s: Forced Proximity, Christmas, Family,
Themes: Christmas, family, coming out, University Dorm living, Norway, Scandinavia
No triggers or warnings. No age gap, University aged student MC’s.
Length: 62 891 words
It is a standalone story.
Buy Links – Available on Kindle Unlimited
Love is supposed to be easy. You are supposed to find your person and fall in love, and then you hold each other and kiss and live happily ever after.
Well, Erik has ended up in the wrong bloody love story. He is stuck in the one full of angst and worries and confusion and pain. Lots of pain.
Blurb
Oskar Høiland hides from life. It just makes things easier that way, not having to face all the fears and drama of living. He especially hides from other people, because Oskar has grown up fearing the snide remarks and the quick glances that strip him of the tiny scraps of confidence he still has left. He is just going to keep existing. Work hard to complete his medical degree and perhaps watch a few more series on Netflix in peace and quiet over Christmas.
Erik Nøst Hansen should be an almost fully-fledged adult. He should be able to sort out the mess that festers in his head and stop lying. It’s just hard. And it’s bloody terrifying to even acknowledge the thoughts that swirl around in his head at night when he can’t sleep. He also needs to figure out how to talk to the boy downstairs. The one with the golden curls and the crooked smile. The boy who is completely monopolising Erik’s messed-up heart.
A story of falling in love and being brave. A Christmas tale with a difference, set in the university dorms of central Oslo, where lies are uncovered, snowflakes are falling all over the place, and beds are made to lie in. There is a slightly unconventional family. A mess of animal onesies. Too much food and a very Merry Christmas.
Authors are always told to write about topics that we know well, and this advice is mostly solid.
Apart from when it’s writing about your own job. I have put off writing about what I do for years, because it is simply….yes. Messy.
I have spent the last 25 years knee deep in the Travel and Customer service industry, and whilst many people might think this is a glamourous and exciting career choice, let me start off by correcting that. Well…. Of course, they are absolutely right.
The Travel industry lets you meet the most interesting people, and has seen me travelling to far flung places that I had never thought I would ever visit. But still, every golden opportunity has a flipside, and that is true for most jobs. For me? Endless nightshifts and missing half my children’s lives. Still, I wouldn’t change a thing.
So, I hear you ask, what has my career choices got to do with my writing? I used to be a stern ‘’I only read contemporary fiction’’ person. I read all the talked about novels, and found a few Authors that I enjoyed. I was a mother, a wife, a respected member of the School Parents association, and I worked two fulltime jobs. You can see what is coming next, can’t you?
Well. I discovered this rabbit hole of independently published short stories written exclusively for a web-based audience. What? You may say. Well you might know it better as Fanfiction.
I ended up reading Fanfiction exclusively and almost obsessively, amazing angst-filled stories, some of them rather brilliant, written by people like you and me who were building an obsessed following through chapter-by-chapter based publishing.
I read until my eyes bled. Then I started writing a few stories myself.
Some Authors will look down at Fanfiction writers, thinking it’s an easy little hobby to have. It can be, if you don’t mind spending hours and hours perfecting your work without the help of an editor, publishing it, only to have nobody read it. Fanfiction sites are saturated with stories, and only a few writers build a following. You have no way of promoting yourself, no way of making people read what you publish, and all you can do is cross your fingers and hope that someone will press that kudos button, and leave you a supportive comment. Some days are good. Other days you question your sanity.
I was lucky, and built a lovely following of readers, who interacted with me and pushed me to write more. It’s not a fairy-tale of any sorts, I was attacked by trolls, had people threaten me and hurl random abuse at me on social media for daring to make my characters do something they didn’t approve of. Traditional Authors have it easy, moaning over a few bad reviews on Goodreads. Bearing in mind that the age range of writers on Award winning Fanfiction platforms like AO3 range from early teens to late 80ies, the internet can be a terrifying place.
Back to my career choices. I decided to take my Fanfiction characters and push them further. I made them do silly things. I made them have awkward stupid sex. I made them straight, gay, pan, bi and in the end it didn’t matter. I made them feel, and I made them ache and I made them fall head over heels in love. They made terrifying mistakes, they said the wrong thing, they made the wrong choices, but they loved. Damn it, I made them fall in love, helplessly and endlessly so. I loved it. And I loved these stupid men who kept talking to me in my head, right back.
Fanfiction gives you a very narrow frame to develop your characters, and I started a new story where I introduced a few original characters to see if I could make my readers love them as much as the well-known names in the story. They luckily did. So, I took them out of the box, and gave them jobs. They became airline crew, worked in hotels, studied and taught. They nannied and travelled the world. See the pattern? I made them do all the things I had loved doing, and I am still finding new angles to push my boys even further. Having stepped over into traditional self-publishing, my stories are still coming, thick and fast and I now spend most of my downtime writing.
I have spent the last 20 years working as a flight attendant, or as we in the UK prefer to be called: Cabin crew. Glamourous! I hear you shout. You should write more Flight attendant stories! Romance in the air!
I have read a few Airline crew romances, and unfortunately, as you would do if you read a book about someone doing your job, you half cringe and half sweat and then shake your head and whisper ‘It doesn’t quite work like that!’.
The problem with believably writing about airline crew is simple. We just don’t know eachother. We meet a few minutes before our prefight brief, then spend a day or two getting hurled across the planet in a whirlwind of turbulence, stale food, bodily fluids and sweat. Add a few tears and you can picture what we look like when we finally step through the door of the hotel room that will serve as our home for the night. You drop your ridiculous high heels by the door and sit yourself down on the toilet, greedily side-eyeing the Room Service menu despite the fact that you have spent the whole day picking at airline meals, whilst wondering where the bruise on your knee came from and if your tights will survive a handwash in the sink so you can wear them again tomorrow.
Your uniform has gained a few new suspicious stains, and you wish you could skip washing your hair, but it stinks of Eau-De-Boeing or such, and after a long hot shower (should you be lucky enough to be able to work out how the weird looking hotel shower works) and spending at least ten minutes staring at the air-conditioning unit thundering in your room wishing you had an axe so you could just spend some of that pent up frustration from dealing with the arsewipe in 22D, beating the shit out of it? You nosedive head first into the hotel bed, and you don’t even care to look under the pillow to see if there is a nasty bug or some crap like that hiding there.
Now, this is when the fun part starts. This is usually when the husband texts you to find out where items A, B and C are, because he can’t be bothered to look, then Kid 1 Facetimes you to ask why you haven’t washed his hockey kit, it smells, apparently, and Kid 2 sends a message that his School Uniform is too small, again, can I order a new one? Kid 3 has to bring in some monstrosity home made Roman fort for Monday, and can I help make it? Do we own any shoe boxes? The school has sent at least 3 memo’s that require my attention and on top of that? My favourite Author goes and drops a new release. So no, your average cabin crew member does not put her little cocktail dress on and she certainly doesn’t end up rat-arsed at the bar after a flight. Most of us sit in our rooms and micromanage our lives from a far, whilst our families seem to manage quite well without us. Apart from the missing dog collar and the fact that Kid 4 only has one school shoe because the puppy ate the other.
The next day, you are back in a metal tube with a bunch of strangers, and you have a right laugh for another day being hurled across oceans and landmasses back to base, and then you all air kiss and wave and call eachother darling (mostly because after all this time you still can’t remember their names) and then? You never see eachother again. You rarely make lasting friends, of course you do gel with some people, and hey, I met my husband, a dashing cabin crew member who flirted relentlessly with me over a trolley, and spilt hot tea on my hand before offering to take me on a date. So yes, true love does happen. Sometimes. It’s rare, but it does.
So, should I write an airline romance? Well, I kind of did. What if it all goes right? Is a short novella where three cabin crew members get themselves stuck in a triangle of confused feelings and hurt. This book will be out on January 10, and the follow-up will land next year where you will meet the most hilarious messy gang of cabin crew. Fasten your seatbelts and get ready for Viking Airlines, coming to a kindle near you in late 2020.
So, to round this little essay up, do I actually write about what I know? The answer is yes. My books are full of imperfect human beings, who have big messy families, they work hard and play harder. My books are the place where things go wrong, but at the end of the day? My book people, they love eachother, and their love lasts a lifetime. And I know all these characters really well. If you loved Little Harbour, the messy tale of Jens and Axel finding out that being a family is bloody hard, and that kids are not the perfect little humans we expect? You will laugh when I tell you that that book was written at my kitchen table, whilst my own brood argued and smeared themselves with Nutella, throwing food fights and arguing, as I ate cheese doodles and drank coffee. Those kids are all real, and they still all squat in the house I call home. Open Water is full of the professions of friends and family who endlessly supported me and answered all my weird questions. 717 miles? I spent two years as an Aupair in my youth, and Felix Mother Birgit? Ahem. I think I don’t need to say anymore. She is me, the best and the worst of my sometimes insane Mothering skills.
In this Bed of Snowflakes we Lie, my new release, is a story of a bunch of students sharing a University dorm in Oslo. There is Oskar, the nerdy runner who hides himself away to keep himself sane. There is the extroverted Erik, the ringleader of the cool guys, the golden boy with a seemingly endless line of friends. There is a family bound by love, where Christmas is all about laughter and food, yet there are secrets that need to be aired, and bravery that needs to be found. I hope that it will bring you a warm fuzzy feeling of holiday cheer as Erik and Oskar find their way in the world over a few weeks in December, where pizza is eaten, slippers are worn and snowflakes are falling all over the place.
I write what I know. I think. At least I try.
Thank you for reading,
Sophia Soames
Sophia Soames should be old enough to know better but has barely grown up. She has been known to fangirl over tv-shows, has fallen in and out of love with more popstars than she dares to remember, and has a ridiculously high-flying (un-)glamourous real-life job.
Her long-suffering husband just laughs at her antics. Their children are feral. The Au Pair just sighs.
She lives in a creaky old house in rural London, although her heart is still in Scandinavia.
Discovering that the stories in her head make sense when written down has been part of the most hilarious midlife crisis ever and she hopes it may long continue.
Miriam Latu is a Norway based artist, specialising in hand-drawn pencil portraits. She works with old-school pen and paper, and more of her work can be found on Instagram @om_hundre_ar_er_allting.
Also by Sophia Soames, with cover artwork by Miriam Latu
717 miles
717 miles Christmas
The Scandinavian Comfort Series
Little Harbour
Open Water
IN THIS BED OF SNOWFLAKES WE LIE
What If It All Goes Right? (Out Jan 2020)
Come join my Facebook reader’s group
Find me on social media @sophiasoames on all platforms
Facebook: Sophia Soames | Twitter: @sophiasoames | Instagram: @sophiasoames
717 miles – Christmas Special
A short novella to follow on from where the novel 717 miles left off.
This will be FREE to download from Amazon from November 14 -18.
Just follow the link and enjoy.
Please note that this is not a standalone story and should be read after completing 717 miles.
BLURB
717 miles Christmas Special
I promised myself many years ago that I would never set foot in London again.
I promised. Adam promised. I said I wouldn’t. He said I would never have to.
Yet here we are again, and life has become quite surreal. This is us, a good few years later, older and wiser with more baggage than the baggage belt at Heathrow.
And now it is Christmas and Adam is working too much and I have far too much time to think about things that shouldn’t really matter. Or maybe they should?
717 miles Christmas Special is a short novella to follow on from 717 miles, the novel, and should not be read as a standalone.
Follow the tour and check out the other blog posts and reviews here
