Sarah at Boulder Pride Fest tomorrow!

The Boulder Pride Fest is tomorrow!  I'll be in the Literary Tent in Central Park (look for us near Arapahoe and 13th Street) from 11-6 tomorrow -- and I'm reading for five minutes sometime between 3-3:30 pm (probably from my in-progress novel, which is a modernization of Twelfth Night).  I'll be right next to my Naropa MFA classmate and author of the upcoming amazing novel Fig, Sarah Elizabeth Schantz.  Other than promoting my little novella, The Beginning of Us, I plan to make gifts of re-purposed pages of Harlequin romance novels.  Come say hello, get a re-purposed romance page, and support Pride!

On another note, the Lesbian HERstory Group met again last Sunday, this time to read and discuss the ideas and words of Audre Lorde.  Our discussion made me think about power -- where our power as women and as lesbians comes from and can come from.  I've been thinking lately that maybe I diminish my own power when I fail to take care of myself or to honor my own work.  And I've been thinking that the mere existence of this Lesbian HERstory group in Boulder -- and the slowly increasing number of people who read this blog -- have made me feel more powerful, more connected, more capable of becoming what I'm supposed to become.

I think that's what Pride Fest is all about, too.  I'm so honored to be a part of it tomorrow.

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.