A big welcome to Marie Sinclair this week! Marie is here to talk about her new release and the aromantic main character!
Greetings to Ally and her readers! I’m Marie Sinclair, a new author in the MM/gay romance genre. Thank you to Ally for letting me come talk about my upcoming release, Nothing Like Forever. It’s the second book in my Finding Forever series, and my fourth release this year.
I call Nothing Like Forever a soulmates to partners love story because it follows Jake and Micah over the course of the twenty years it takes them to figure out how to turn the instant connection they had when they met at eighteen into a sustainable relationship. On the surface, they’re a classic can’t-live-with-him/can’t-live-without-him couple whose attempts to be together lead to crash-and-burn disasters and silences that last years. Something always brings them back together, whether it’s a friend’s wedding or a chance encounter on airplane, and makes them keep trying to be together. It isn’t until they’re in their late-30s that they recognize and understand that Jake is aromantic and that, in order to build something together, they have to redefine their expectations of each other and what being in a relationship means.
This novel is all about learning what you can and can’t expect from your partner and what you can and can’t accept for yourself, what are lines you’re willing to cross, and where do you have to stay true to who you are no matter how you feel about the other person.
The idea for writing a romance with an aromantic character is based in a 30+ year friendship I have with a guy I met in college. We met, much like Jake and Micah do, when he came to visit his best friend, who lived on my dorm floor. It truly was an instant connection between us as soon as we saw each other. (And, yes, we have tried to turn that connection into something more a few times, but unlike Jake and Micah, we aren’t actually attracted to each other in that way – figuring that out took us years, and it was every bit as bumpy a road as Jake and Micah have, full of hurt feelings and a sense of betrayal that the universe would bring us together in a way that all the books and songs and movies say is meant to be, and yet…it wasn’t).
It wasn’t until a few years ago, when I was describing my relationship to this man to a new acquaintance, that I began to have an understanding of what was going on. As I described our relationship and the way in which I can often sense when he’s in distress or the time I called him after I came across puppy pictures of our dog who’d recently passed only to have him tell me he’d just (and I mean, just, he had it in his hands when I called) found a pamphlet his vet had given him after his dog passed away a few years before, this acquaintance said, “That’s so romantic! Like something out of a movie!”
Something in that moment made everything click, and I started to research aromanticism. The more I learned, the more I realized that my friend is aromantic, and the more I wanted to take on the challenge of writing a romance with a main character who does not experience romantic attraction.
Aromanticism is often linked with asexuality (aro/ace) in the queer community, but that’s a bit misleading. There are people who are both asexual (experiencing little or no sexual attraction) and aromantic, but they don’t necessarily go hand in hand. There are people who don’t experience romantic attraction but have a high sex drive. One of the challenges for aromantic individuals is that romantic attraction is so ubiquitous in most cultures that we don’t recognize there’s a difference between sexual and romantic attraction.
I did a lot of research as well as worked with an authenticity reader to make Jake’s experiences as true as I could. In the end, I settled on Jake being demi-aro, meaning that he can develop romantic feelings but only for someone he’s intensely connected to. While Jake intentionally comes off as a player at the beginning, I tried to be careful with the language I used in his POV chapters to highlight physical and sexual attraction to Micah. As the story progresses, that language begins to include more romantic attraction and then, as I hope you’ll see because I’ve enticed you to read the book, results in some epic fails for Jake as he tries to master what it means to be a boyfriend.
If you’re interested in more information about aromanticism, I highly recommend starting with the LGBTQ Wiki https://lgbta.wikia.org/wiki/LGBTA_Wiki. There are also some wonderful IG accounts such as aro.aro.ace and aromantic_support that can provide resources as well as information.
Nothing Like Forever
Fairy tales say that when you meet the love of your life, you know. Micah and Jake definitely knew they’d met someone special the instant they saw each other. Only Jake doesn’t believe in fairy tales, and Micah believes in them too much.
Nothing Like Forever is an insta-lust, soulmates-to-partners, can’t-live-with-him/can’t-live-without-him unconventional love story in which Jake and Micah learn that loving someone isn’t always enough for a happily ever after, and sometimes the journey is as important as the destination.
Now available for pre-order on Amazon and releases on KU on 10 August 2021.
Excerpt
Jake knew someone was in his house as soon as he opened the front door. It was something in the way the air moved, or the echoes sounded in rooms that should be empty, maybe the trace of a scent that was out of the ordinary. Whatever it was, it put Jake on alert that last night’s hookup had stayed longer than was either necessary or welcome.
He put his briefcase down on the table by the front door and toed off his shoes before shrugging out of his wool overcoat and taking off his leather gloves. An arctic blast had blown in from Alaska over the weekend and the temperature in the Bay Area was still in the low forties. Jake left his coat draped across the lime green chair that had been a gift from an interior decorator he’d slept with a few weeks ago.
He’d assured Jake it was fun and kitschy in a 1960’s Palm Springs pool party way, totally in keeping with his ocean front bungalow. Jake wasn’t sure he was a fun and kitschy type, but he was definitely not an interior decorator kind of guy. The more times he saw the chair, the more he hated it. Not to mention it reminded him of the less-than-stellar sex they’d had, and the way the guy had screamed dramatically as he came. Jake was not a fan of performative orgasms.
At the moment, though, Jake had more pressing issues than a walk down memory lane and deciding whether he wanted to hurl the chair out the door. There was a twink to send home as well. The guy had been a fun fuck, maybe he’d gift him the chair on his way out.
Jake had very specific and clear-cut rules for hook-ups and made sure potential partners understood them before he brought them home. No kissing. No overnights unless given an invitation. No sharing his bed: fucking happened in the guest room and that’s where hook-ups stayed. There were no repeats, and no exceptions.
He’d long ago accepted that he was interested in sex not relationships. Romantic gestures and sentimentality made his skin crawl, and finding Mr. Right had never been his goal, and, even though he’d tried relationships a couple of times, Jake was only ever looking for Mr. Right Now. He had little patience for anyone who thought they could change his mind or expected him to make an exception for them.
He climbed the stairs to the living room, and stepped through the archway on alert for anything that might have been moved. The room looked the same as he’d left it with its leather sofas and dark wood tables and blond hardwood floors. The big picture window looked out over Great Highway and towards the Pacific Ocean beyond, both sea and sky gray. He didn’t stop to admire the view, focused instead on finding the location in which his visitor was overstaying his welcome. When he saw the roller suitcase tucked into a corner, he realized he had a different issue to deal with entirely.
The bag was the generic black all flight attendants used, but he knew who this one belonged to without looking at the ID tag.
Micah.
What had it been? Six months since he’d left San Francisco? Maybe eight? A year? Fuck, could it have been that long since they’d seen each other? Since they’d last spoken?
Jake tried to remember when Micah stopped flying out of SFO and transferred to Seattle. It had been nearly a year since Micah’s part-time residence in his house had come to a devastating end when Micah crossed a line he knew was unforgiveable. They both had that night. Jake wasn’t enough of an asshole to blame it all on Micah, but they’d also both gone silent afterwards. No texts, no calls, nothing. That wasn’t surprising. In the history of their relationship, they’d done this before, but Micah usually got in touch after they both cooled down. When that hadn’t happened, Jake figured they were probably done for good this time and let the walls he’d erected harden into fortifications.
Now Micah was back, and Jake knew, no matter how hard he tried, he’d never be able to say no to Micah.
About Marie
Marie Sinclair is a queer writer living in San Francisco. Though she’s been a writer all her life, it wasn’t until she stumbled upon MM romance that she knew she’d found a home for herself and all the characters in her head.
Her focus is on contemporary romance, usually on the steamy side, and HEAs are guaranteed, though it might take some work for the couples to get there. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, Marie believes in rooting her stories in the real world of queer culture and showing how love can survive even in challenging times.
Her first novel, A Kind of Forever, released in January of 2021, with a prequel novella, A Winter’s Dance, available on Prolific Works and Book Funnel. Jake and Micah’s prequel novella, Nothing Like a Summer’s Romance, which details the month they spent together when they were nineteen, is available on Amazon and KU.
Marie’s Sin Bin readers’ group on Facebook : IG: marie.sinbooks : Twitter @marie_sinbooks : Website and newsletter sign-up: www.sinbinbooks.com
Adding to my TBR list. I’m aromantic so it’ll be nice to read a book that explores that.
It’s so nice to find books that have good representation! I really hope you enjoy it 💜