Lonely Hearts
A Novella Bundle
Posy Roberts
M/M Romance
Release Date: 10.25.18
BLURB
Stoic men, who believe they’re happy alone, find the world turned upside down when their perfect someone stumbles across their path. In four novellas, eight men encounter unique struggles on their way to their well-deserved happily ever after.
Marc joins the Lonely Hearts chat room where men support men on their way to finding true love. He wants to believe that kind of love is possible for him, but his once-burned heart stops him from going all-in with anyone.
The chat group’s philosophy is, “Figure out how you keep screwing up your happily ever after. Once you know, you’re more likely to find the true thing.”
Skeptical as he is, Marc logs in and meets men in various degrees of getting there. At least he’s not alone. Luther truly loves his single life on the Bakken oil fields. William’s not sure he’ll ever measure up, let alone find someone he can be himself around. And Andrew still pines for a guy he hooked up with on a reenactment battlefield before he got blown up on a real one.
One by one they start dropping like flies. Flies drunk on love. And sooner than he expects, Marc’s luck starts changing thanks to these new friends.
Walk alongside these men as they find the men of their dreams and discover their happily ever afters.
101,000 Words | 396 pages | 8-9 hours to read
blue-collar | reluctant lovers | rural | bisexual | gay | meet-cute | fated lovers | love triangle | Halloween | white-collar | opposites attract | multicultural | coming out | second chance | first time | disability romance | meant to be | military | artist | world traveler | coming of age | long distance | pen pals | gay romance | contemporary | MM romance | lone wolf | alpha male
Stories included: Bent Arrow, Stroke of Luck, Momo, My Everything, and Love on a Battlefield.
Universal Amazon Link: http://getbook.at/LonelyHearts
Universal Buy Link: http://books2read.com/LoneHearts
Chat Rooms & Online Intimacy
Do you remember when chat rooms were a new thing? I just dated myself. Haha. Oh well, too late for that. I remember a college friend spending hours chatting with strangers in his room on his computer rather than socializing with friends in the flesh out in the living room. This was the early 90s, and it was weird to me. Never in my life did I think chat and text would be the way we interact with most people in our lives today.
I have a very close friend I met—first online and later in the flesh—that I’m still friends with nearly a decade later, and he’s not the only one. I chat with friends daily, and I’ve found that sharing struggles and heartbreak via text is occasionally easier. Oddly enough, not being face-to-face can bring about a level of intimacy that was unheard of back when I first learned of chat rooms.
When putting together Lonely Hearts: a novella bundle, I wanted to pull each individual story closer to the others. While they all share the theme of lonely, stoic men looking for love, I felt it needed something more.
I’m giving all the credit for the chat room idea to my muse, because it came from out of the blue. I’d always envisioned the guys from Stroke of Luck might possibly know Hugo and Kevin from my North Star Trilogy, mostly because they live in the same neighborhood in Minneapolis. It wasn’t until my muse told me to write a chat room scene that the bundle truly came together as a more cohesive work.
At the start of Lonely Hearts, we seen Marc logging onto a chat room for the first time because a friend of a friend told him about this guy who moderated a chat room dedicated to helping lonely queer men heal themselves so they’d be ready for love when the right guy came around. If you’ve read Spark, North Star #1, you’ll know Hugo swore men off for a year to deal with his shit so he’d stop making the same mistakes with men. He set up this chat room to help others.
While each story in this bundle is set in a different state, these men come together in the Lonely Hearts Chat Room to support and challenge each other in their relationship pursuits and personal healing. Between each story, you’ll get a glimpse of four of the men represented in the novellas, slowly getting to know them. So even though you don’t meet Andrew until the last story in the bundle, you’ll see he’s a wordy guy, which hints at his penchant for journaling and processing via the written word.
I hope you give this novella bundle a chance. Each story will take about two hours to read, depending on your speed, so they’re great for waiting rooms, standing in line to vote, or sitting in the parking lot while waiting for kids. It’s also available in a paperback that comes in at around 400 pages, just to give you an idea of the length.
Happy reading!
EXCERPT
5 Members in Chat Room
Hugo: Hi, Marc. I’m Hugo, the moderator. If I disappear all of a sudden, it’s because I’m waiting to chauffeur kids between gymnastics and yoga.
Marc: You have kids?
Hugo: They’re Kevin’s, my boyfriend’s kids. But who knows what the future holds. Anyway, I was in the same place as you not so long ago, with a cheating cheater who cheats. I had a string of shitty boyfriends, but cheating messed me up. Bad. I swore off men for a solid year, and it eventually paid off.
Marc: How did the time off help?
Hugo: I fixed my shit. Figured out what I kept doing wrong. Worked out my patterns.
Luther: Oh no, here he goes! Haha. Love you, H! Marc, H is all about fixing shit so you’re ready for love when it stumbles in your path.
Marc: Makes sense.
Luther: If you have a path filled with potential partners, I supposed it does. H is all about twuuuu wuv cuz he has it. All I can find out here on the oil fields is a hookup. Nothing else. Can’t be out.
Marc: That sucks.
Luther: It’s not all bad. I have a lot of sex and very few awkward conversations. Few conversations at all, to be honest.
William: So, Luth, do you save all the awkward conversations for when you come in here to chat? Stop scaring Marc off.
Luther: Ha. Ha. Okay, Mr. Serious, what have you done lately to make yourself available to the hot dudes who run around on the beaches half naked?
William: I bought a guy a drink at the club last weekend. Spent most of the night with him.
Luther: Before you went home alone?
William: Well, yes, but I had to work the next day.
Luther: LOL.
Andrew: Hi, Marc. Welcome. I’m pretty new here too. New to being fully out despite knowing I liked men for years. I’m still trying to figure out how all this works. Gay clubs are about all I’m capable of yet. If I go to a club, there’s no chance I’ll hit on a straight guy, at least. I’m a vet, and my PTSD and injuries make taking that risk of hitting on the wrong guy anxiety inducing. I distrust everyone, including my own brain and injured body.
Luther: And I’m the sole closet case here.
William: Not entirely. I’m not out at work. No one there has earned the right to know that about me yet. But my family knows.
Hugo: I’ve been out for ages, but I’m still not entirely open about my drag persona. That’s still need to know.
Marc: You do drag? What’s your drag name.
Hugo: Yep. Miss Cherri Pop! ;)
Marc: Where does everyone live? Or should I not ask that?
Luther: On the dusty oil fields of North Dakota, but there are tons of men to hook-up with here. No questions asked. No demands to kiss. Just how I like it!
William: Sunny California, though right now, I’d prefer rain.
Andrew: I’m in Texas, happy to be home after four years in the army.
Hugo: Minneapolis.
Marc: Me too! Minneapolis, that is. I gotta say, it’s nice chatting with some queer men. Everyone around me assumes I’m straight. And since I haven’t dated a man in ages, it’s like all my friends forgot I’m bi. But I’d really like to date a man again. I think if I date a woman, I’m bound to . . . What’s the word? Put all my shit on her?
Hugo: Project?
Marc: Yeah. I’m gonna project my hurt on her cuz of my ex. So I’d really like to try something serious with a guy.
William: So, what are your greatest fears when thinking about falling in love?
Luther: Coming out. I know, I know. It won’t be as bad as I think it will be. But what if it is? I’ll lose everyone around me.
William: But you prefer being alone. Or so you’ve claimed, Luth.
Luther: Right. I push people away. Easier that way.
Marc: I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to trust again. And if I do, what if the guy I end up with assumes I’m cheating on him only because I’m bi?
Hugo: My Kevin is bisexual, and I never made those assumptions. We’re not all neanderthals who can’t appreciate subtlety.
Marc: True. There’s that lack of trust thing again.
William: I’m worried I’ll never measure up.
Luther: Says the man who probably has a dick the size of an eggplant.
William: . . .
William: I might. ;)
Luther: LOL. I knew it!
Hugo: If W and L weren’t thousands of miles away, I’d suggest you guys get a room and fuck to work out your sexual tension.
William: Not going to happen.
Luther: He’d probably want to marry me. ;) I’m not settling down. I just want to fall in love. Big difference.
Andrew: I already know who I want to be in a relationship with. But I’m too boring for him.
William: You’re far from boring, Andrew.
Hugo: The only way you’ll know is if you take a chance. But get into a good headspace before that. Yes, I know, Luther, you’re sick of me saying that, but if I hadn’t fixed my shit before running into Kevin again seventeen years after our last kiss, I would’ve fucked it up that first night.
Marc: Thanks for this, guys. I’m glad I found you.
About the author:
Posy Roberts started reading romance when she was young, sneaking peeks at adult books long before she should’ve. Textbooks eventually replaced the novels, and for years she existed without reading for fun. When she finally picked up a romance two decades later, it was like slipping on a soft hoodie . . . that didn’t quite fit like it used to. She wanted something more.
She wanted to read about men falling in love with each other. She wanted to explore beyond the happily ever after and see characters navigate the unpredictability of life. So Posy sat down at her keyboard to write the books she wanted to read.
Her stories have been USA Today’s “Happily Ever After” Must-Reads and Rainbow Award finalists. When she’s not writing, she’s spending time with her family and friends and doing anything possible to get out of grocery shopping and cooking.
Follow on Amazon
All of Posy’s Links
Posy’s Newsletter
Booktrailer on IG
GIVEAWAY
Promotional post. Materials provided by
No comments:
Post a Comment
Hey, thanks for reading this post. We hope you liked it. Please share your thoughts - we always enjoy hearing from readers.