Release of The Beginning of Us!

If you type in "Sarah Brooks The Beginning of Us" into Amazon.com, you find the little book I've written, starting NOW!  Thank you to everyone who wants to read it.  You can buy it at Amazon or at my publisher's site, Riptide.

Also, I'm going on a virtual tour all this week.  Follow me by going to these links:

January 27, 2014 - Planet of the Book Blog

January 27, 2014 - That's What I'm Talking About

January 28, 2014 - Prism Book Alliance Reviews

January 28, 2014 - MamaKitty Reviews - Spotlight Stop

January 29, 2014 - Book Reviews & More by Kathy

January 30, 2014 - Live Your Life, Buy the Book - Spotlight Stop

January 30, 2014 - Queendsheenda

January 31, 2014 - Sid Love

January 31, 2014 - Lipstick Lesbian Reviews

Amazing.  Maybe -- just maybe -- this will be the start of that full-time writer path about which I've always dreamed. . .

Imposter or storyteller?

On Monday, Riptide Publishing will release my novella, The Beginning of Us, as an ebook -- for sale on the Riptide website for $3.99.  The book will be featured on various blogs Jan. 27-31, as well.

Really?  I've wanted to be a "real" writer for so long that I just can't believe it's finally happened.

But maybe I've been "real" for much longer than this. Maybe it happened when The English Journal published an essay I wrote in 2004, or maybe it happened when I completed my first novel manuscript (a macabre, overblown gothic look at Iowa farm life) in 1999, or maybe it happened when I started keeping a journal at the age of 13, in 1990.

Or maybe I'm not a "real" writer yet, because The Beginning of Us is just a novella, just an ebook, just a little romance story about a girl who falls in love with an older woman.

In his memoir and writing guide On Writing, Stephen King argues that a writer should not require publication or positive reviews to feel justified in saying, "I am a writer."  If you write, you're a writer.  Especially if you have a writing practice -- a writing life.  Every night when TK goes to bed, I try to write 1,500 words.  Sometimes I get too tired.  Sometimes I write twice that.  I'm a writer.

King also says the first draft of a manuscript should be written only for the "Ideal Reader", a person to whom he refers with the neat acronym "IR".  King's is his wife.  Mine is Ali.  It will always be Ali.  In The Beginning of Us, I talk directly to her the entire manuscript.  In the novel I'm writing at the moment, I write every scene wondering (and knowing, I think) how Ali would react to it.  I imagine watching her read it, waiting for the head-thrown-back laugh I loved so much, or the "Hmm" and the "Huh" she would murmur when she reached parts she especially loved.

So I'm a real writer, and I write for a woman who can't tell me what she loves or hates anymore.

And I'm an imposter.  I say I write fiction and all of it is real.  Every character, every event -- it's all so real I watch it unfold in my mind like a movie, and then I just write down what I see and hear.  Every protagonist has my tall thin frame; every beloved woman has dark curly hair.  Again and again.  Someday, I'll have other stories to tell, but right now all I want to do is find ways to tell our story different than it actually happened.

Ali?  I've written a novel someone wants to publish.  What do you think?  Tell me.  Tell me.  Please.

on second thought. . .

I gave Match.com one week. . . I've deleted my profile, though I never paid the $16/month to subscribe, so all I ever saw was that 24 women had sent me emails ("Subscribe today to find out who is interested in you!").  I imagine the messages:  Saw your profile.  Want to get a drink sometime?  Yikes.  I can't do it.  I don't want to do it.  Every day that I checked my email, I caught myself hoping SHE would "wink" at me, send me an email, mark me as her day's "favorite".  What if that was in my profile?  "36-year-old woman seeks deceased lover".  That's the truth.

The rest of the truth:  no woman will ever make me laugh as much, no woman will ever make me think as much, no woman will ever make me want to embrace the world as much as A__ did.  On the other hand, no woman will ever take me on such an emotional roller coaster, or simultaneously change my life for the better and the worse.  The loss of a woman will never plunge me to such depths again.

But.

I don't just want coffee, or a walk somewhere, or a kiss.

I want A___.

And because that's impossible, I bought myself a set of cross-country skis.  Ten years ago, A___ taught me how to cross-country ski in the rose-hued evening light on the frozen glacial lake in Juneau.  She teased me that I skied so slowly, wondering aloud if I stopped to journal along the way.  I remember her distant form in the moonlight, her curly hair silhouetted against the snow, her skiing stride graceful, easy.  The snow sparkled as I struggled along, somewhat frustrated that I couldn't master the skill, but mostly just glad to be out in the night, in love with the wintery world and with A___.  Always, A___ waited for me somewhere down the trail.  Her cheek and her neck and her collarbone were salty where I kissed her, and the woods were silent.  Perfect.

I didn't have those memories in mind when I bought the skis last week.  I've had the same 1970s skis and shoes for a decade, and I wanted to make nordic skiing my winter exercise since I can't afford to downhill ski here.  So I bought the skis, took an intermediate lesson, drove to Breckenridge, left my daughter with my aunt and skied out into the woods alone.

And. . . A___ was there.  Just ahead of me on the snowy trail, just after the moment she grinned at me and glided away.  I slid silently through the forest, fast now with good gear and instruction, and still could not catch her.  Each curve, I craned my neck to see her, I tried to hear the slice of her skis on the snow, but I was still too slow.

Sunlight shimmered and scattered through the tree branches, and the mountains were purple against the azure blue sky.  I dug my poles into the snow and pushed hard so I skimmed down a hill, the wind against my face.  And then I found myself in a meadow, in full sunshine, and for just a moment I felt her in me, breathing my breath, hammering my heart.

Then I was alone again.

I don't want the ordinary.  I don't want the drink that leads to dinner that leads to something else.  Not right now.  I still dwell in an in-between world, and sometimes -- ah! -- I see her there.

Sorry, ccny678 and lovincolorado, Wink44 and T4123.  I'm still taken.