Marina Vivancos and Indigo Promotions are here today to celebrate the release of Nights Without Night, the second of the Fox Lake Series. Find out more about this contemporary romance, listen to the playlist and be sure to enter for your chance to win your own copy of the series below! Good luck!

Title: Nights Without Night

Series: Fox Lake Series #2

Author: Marina Vivancos

Publisher: Self-published

Release Date: 18th June 2018

Heat Level: 3 - Some Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 60,000 words

Genre: Romance, Contemporary, Childhood Friends, Mental Health

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Nights Without Night: Soundtrack (link to playlist below)

Music is a big part of my writing process. Not necessarily because it inspires me directly—rarely do I listen to a song which sparks a concrete idea, although that’s happened once or twice (watch this space), but because it’s a crucial part of my day. I listen to music while I write, while I walk, when I travel. If it’s not music, it’s the radio or a podcast. I like to drown the world away.

When I write, I mostly listen to lyricless music; soundtracks, hip-hop lofi, etc. However, I love making playlists of songs that fit with the stories I write. I currently have 18 nascent Spotify playlists dedicated to stories—stories I haven’t even started planning, stories which still haven’t grown names for their main characters.

The playlist I’ve made for Nights Without Night hopefully captures the progression of the book. From distant longing, to lust, to depression, to hope, to togetherness. I found that, unlike most of all my other playlists, this one was mostly composed of lyricless songs. Songs that swell or tremble with sound and push thought out, salt water filling your lungs.

Maybe this lack of spoken word is to capture Isadoro’s inability to express what he’s going through to Iván. Maybe it’s just because that’s how hopelessness sounds in my own head. Mental health difficulties are tightly entwined with thoughts, but when I think of sadness it’s not a speech I want to give, but a wordless cry.

The first song that came to me when I was writing this story was Elegy for Dunkirk, from the soundtrack of the movie Atonement. For me, it represents the difficulty of war with comradery at its centre. The flowing strings, the approaching and dissolving voices, takes you on a blind journey that ends with more of a whimper than anything else.

But that’s not where the soundtrack ends. For me, the song that best fits the story is All My Joy, All My Pain, by Fabrizio Paterlini. It’s the turning point in the playlist. A beautiful piano piece, it starts soft and almost melancholic, or at least a little joyless, resigned. Then, a bracing breath. You can feel the music fill with a sudden, peeking light, like rays at the edge of a horizon. Even this, though, is not a straight line to the end. It’s repetitive, pausing at times as if to gain strength. By the end, although the piece returns to the notes with which it began, they sound different. When before they were softer, melting into each other a little, ambiguous, they end decisive, fingers leaning into the keyboard, sure of themselves now. The same experience seen in a different way. These sounds are not simply accepting what is, but prepared for what is to come.

By the end of the playlist, well, it’s not a quick fix, but it’s filled with love—and hope.

Synopsis

Isadoro and Iván have known each other since before memories were memories, when they were just the imprint of shape and sound pressed inside your head. They were raised together in La Portera, between the orange trees and water reservoirs, under an endless blue sky. Where they grew up is where Iván’s love for Isadoro grew, too. There, from the earth and the water, organic and helpless.

Iván had grown used to this love. He’d grown used to absence, too.
Isadoro left for the military when they were both eighteen and took a piece of Iván with him. It was as inevitable as the baking sun and sandy winds of those lands. Iván didn't know how to fight it.

A thread between them remained. Phone calls, Skype sessions, rests between tours. But it was never quite enough.

After eight years, Isadoro comes back. At his core, he is the same man Iván has always known. But life has transformed them both from the malleable shapes of childhood and into the stiffer skin of adults. The situation is complicated further when they rekindle the ‘benefits’ portion of their friendship. The heat between them has always been undeniable, and now it scorches through them.

In the beginning, all seems well. But there are creatures under calm water. When they breach the surface, both Isadoro and Iván must learn how to help each other, but also to save themselves.

Please note: This story contains themes of affected mental health following the return from military combat. However, the ultimate focus of the story is on hope and recovery.
This story also contains very explicit scenes of a sexual nature.

Excerpt

The summer before Isadoro was finally deployed had run on borrowed time. I hadn’t applied to college but had gotten a summer job in La Portera while I figured out what to do with my life. After work, I would go to the beach with Isadoro, pretending this was any other summer and that adulthood wasn’t looming in September for both of us.

One night, we went down to the beach when it was late and dark. The sea was a pool of ink, the sound of it washing in and out a secret call. On Isadoro’s dare, we’d stripped our clothes and ran into the water, the coolness a relief from the thick summer air.

The half-moon had been a bowl of rice perched on the black. We’d swam around, free in the salt and the waves, pulling each other under in a familiar game. We’d been our child selves, free of the ties that tugged at us beyond the water.

When we tired and let ourselves drift, I remember Isadoro swimming close to me. Remember the moon in his eyes. The way his wet skin had felt against mine. It had almost been a kiss. Almost. But I couldn’t do that to myself. Not again. Not when he was leaving and he wasn’t in love with me back.

Who would have thought that I would be able to resist the pull of the moon at eighteen, and cave so many years later, caught completely in its tide.

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Meet the Author

When Marina was a child she couldn’t sleep. Night after dissolving night she just couldn’t sleep. Nothing much worked – until she started making up stories in her head. Suddenly, the transition into unconsciousness was a smooth dive into calm waters.

Marina is currently in a period of sleepless upheaval, and she hopes writing down the stories in her head will cast the same spell it did decades ago.

Marina hopes to write in a variety of romance sub-genres, from contemporary to supernatural to sci-fi. Her style, however, tends to focus on character-centred stories that explore different facets of the human experience, such as mental health. She also enjoys writing explicit, drawn-out sex scenes, so expect those to be a prominent feature of her stories.