Book Title: Life is Good and Other Lies
Authors and Publishers: Magdalena Di Sotru and Sophia Soames
Cover Artist: Sophia Soames
Release Date: October 15, 2022
Genre: Contemporary M/M Romance with one MC being an FTM Transman
Tropes: Slice of Life, what happens after the HEA?
Themes: Finding your way back to each other when life gets tough. A holiday on a remote farm. Kids, family and Friendship. HEA.
Length: 120 000 words
Heat Rating: 4 flames
It is a standalone story.
This is book one in the series.
Book two will release on December 1, 2022
Buy Links – Available in Kindle Unlimited
Universal Link | Amazon US | Amazon UK
When we no longer have the kids to keep us glued together, will there be enough left to make us stick?
Blurb
This is not a romance. This is what happens when life goes on, when people grow and fall out of sync. Not out of love; some people are just meant to be.
Thomas at least hopes that is the case, even though he sometimes feels like he’s clinging to his marriage by a brittle thread.
Frank clutches to the scraps that are left, knowing he’s the root cause of Thomas’ grey hairs, their kids being hormonal monsters and his own sanity being questionable at the best of times.
Gabriel needs to stop worrying and take control of his life, but with young kids and a body that refuses to do what it’s supposed to do—to sustain and nourish and build muscle to keep bones in place—his feels like a traitor, laughing in his face when he struggles to keep it together. He knows he is loved. His kids are everything. But his marriage feels like a distant memory, and he’s tumbling from one disaster into another. It’s just…life.
Bruno thought this holiday would bring them closer together as a family. Isn’t that what a trip abroad is supposed to do? Four weeks in the Swedish mosquito-infested countryside, sharing a farm with strangers. He should have known better.
Life is good. But the rest? Lies. All lies.
This is the first of two books following a lifelong friendship between two families. A slice of life from two established M/M couples, children galore, stray sheep, heat, sizzle and laughter, this is what happens after the HEA.
The second book, Life is Right Here, will be published in December 2022.
Gabriel pulled a clean T-shirt over his head and smoothed down the front, pulled his fingers through his hair, scratched his beard.
He looked OK. He looked absolutely fine. He wasn’t fine. He was a fucking mess, but he still smiled when he walked into the bedroom, where his husband was half asleep, with his arms around Andreas, who was desperately fighting to get out of his father’s grip.
“I need cuddles,” Bruno grumbled.
“Get off me, you shithead,” Andreas hissed in return, trying to bend Bruno’s arm away from his body, which only resulted in him getting a kiss on the forehead before Bruno pushed him off the edge of the bed.
“Where are the girls?” Gabriel asked, a pang of anxiety rolling through his veins. Calm down. Calm the fuck down.
“With those other kids,” Andreas answered. “They’ve gone off to look at something. That Thomas dude is with them. Why is there no Wi-Fi, Papi? You never said there would be no Wi-Fi. This holiday sucks!”
“With no Wi-Fi, you can use your head. Read a book, Andreas. Go out and enjoy nature.”
Gabriel didn’t even believe those words himself. He’d have killed for an hour on the net bleaching his brain with nonsense.
“More time for cuddles,” Bruno said from under the covers, his voice muffled by a pillow.
“This is like child abuse,” Andreas whined and clumsily kicked Bruno’s foot that was hanging off the bed. “You can’t force us not to have any contact with the outside world. I have friends, you know, and my YouTube channel and my gaming community, and this…sucks! How am I supposed to keep up with my Twitch?”
“Tough,” Bruno said. “We’re going to be here for a while, so get used it. Now your Vati is going to make us some coffee.” Bruno sounded far too sure of himself.
“Fuck that!” Gabriel cut in with an involuntary chuckle. Andreas’s language was disgusting at times, and they should be setting a better example, although Bruno still sounded like a disgruntled teenager despite his degree, age and, well, sense. “Get your Papi to get up and make us all coffee. I’m going to go and chill. Enjoy the sunshine.”
“Come cuddle first,” Bruno begged, holding out his hand.
He was desperate for things to go back to the way they were. Gabriel knew because Bruno was like an open book. Gabriel used to be a complete cuddle slut himself, used to love any little touch. At one time they’d been the butt of everyone’s jokes, the two of them joined at the hip, always sitting on each other’s laps, their lips practically fused together.
“Please,” Bruno tried again.
Now, he felt so far removed from his own body he couldn’t bear to touch it himself and definitely recoiled from anyone else touching him. He hurt everyone around him every time he pushed them away, even the kids, and he couldn’t quite explain it. It was just the way things had become.
It wasn’t all him. Life was nothing like what he’d expected it to be.
“I’m starving,” Andreas muttered and shoved Gabriel out of the way with his shoulder. “Is there at least food? Or is this holiday about us starving and dying from lack of communication with the outside world? Is there at least a fucking TV?”
“No TV,” Gabriel said like a fool reading straight from the handbook of bad parenting. He wasn’t helping the situation. Bruno stared at him, gave him that look. Disappointment. Hurt. Fear. It made Gabriel want to throw up, hurl regurgitated bread and ham and coffee and shit all over their room. Bruno did this all the time, the guilt trip that floored him emotionally and then killed him off with that look.
“I got a bloody mozzie bite. This place sucks. Look! It bit me twice!” Andreas stormed back into the room, furiously scratching his elbow where two large red bumps glowed angrily on his skin.
“I love you,” Bruno said, his voice low, his blue eyes dark. Gabriel felt like he was drowning. Andreas rolled his eyes and snorted, scratching his arm until it bled.
“I know you do.” Gabriel couldn’t make himself say the words. Not right now. “I’ll go make some food. Frank gave us more of those bread rolls from this morning,” he replied instead and walked out the door.
“Coffee!!” Bruno shouted at his back.
Gabriel permitted himself a small smile. “Get up and make it yourself, dickhead.”
“Fuck you,” came the muffled response from behind, where Bruno had no doubt curled back into the foetal position with a pillow over his head.
Gabriel laughed. “Fuck you too.”
They were back on safer ground, for now. Keeping it simple. Stable. Safe.
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 dogs are too. She lives in a creaky old house in rural London, although her heart is still in her native 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.
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Magdalena Di Sotru is an information security and data protection enthusiast from Norway. She is a mother of two and wife of one as well as a long-established fanfic writer. Her favourite food is (actually) salads (without mayo), her favourite guilty pleasure is fresh bakery goods (and that explains why everyone would think the salad was a lie). She knows her way around knitting, lock picking and skydiving (all at about equal skill levels – go figure). Life is Good and Other Lies is her first novel.
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