K. Brooks's Blog, page 3
March 10, 2016
The endings
I know it’s been a while.
I do apologize.
I am really struggling as a writer with the ending to the sequel to The Spark That Left Us.
Why?
Because I can do one of the following, and these are all scenarios I am able to build out and already know how to do:
a) end it on a terrible note, but wrapped tightly in a bow – no getting out, no second chances. You’ll probably cry. Everyone will cry – and the world of Collectors and the Tenders will be closed.
b) end it on a happy note – everyone gets what they want – wrapped tightly in a bow – you’ll probably cry, in a good way – and the world of Collectors and Tenders will be closed.
c) end it on a terrible note, but leave the opportunity for redemption and a rescue mission in a third, unwritten, unplanned book – essentially keeping the world open, closing off as a trilogy.
I can picture all three in my head. I know how to tease out the emotions that I want – but I am so very afraid of making the wrong decision! I am torn between what you as readers will want, and what is easy.
On top of it all, these characters are practically family now, living inside their heads and breathing their air. And I am not sure I can do it again.
The ending of The Spark That Left Us was admittedly heart-wrenching, even to write – and I’ve been yelled at by readers for it in the past.
Can I collapse this world into itself?
Will I have to backtrack the truths of that universe if I decide to delve into a third book anyway?
What say you?
February 4, 2016
Something fun for the Goodreads Winners
Quick little photo prints to go with their prize 
Artwork courtesy of http://svenjaliv.com/ of course!
January 25, 2016
Excerpt from the sequel … #spoiler alert
Felt like sharing some more of book 2, working title “Sparks Ignite”. This is unedited, so bear with me, I just really wanted to share.
“Why didn’t you tell me everything before, when we were here?”
The question hung heavy on the air, and I breathed in a long breath, inhaling the sunset, the golden light playing through my outstretched fingers, wind ruffling across my palm.
“Tell you what?” Mateo cocked an eyebrow in my direction before returning his focus to the road, the sunlight filtered between the scraggy pines, a flickering slideshow across his face.
I brushed the outstretched tip of a pine bud that nearly touched the window as we slowed to a stop. Why was there even a stop sign here?
“About the rest of this. About the past. About Rowan. The pull this place had on you,”
I squinted up into the trees, scanning the dark branches as Mateo pulled the van ahead once more, urging the lumbering vehicle back up to speed.
Mateo chewed his lip briefly, considering his thoughts.
“Would you have wanted to hear it? You knew nothing about this place, except it was where your world shattered. Why would I spring it upon you also that it was where your family was bent and broken before you were even born?”
I settled back in the seat, folding my hands together and staring back out the windshield at the twisting road ahead. The ground cover was becoming scrubbier between the trees, waving broad bladed grasses that glowed in the lowering light.
“I never thought I’d be back here. Never thought we’d end up chasing Reggie again, following him to the end of the earth. Last time was supposed to be just that. The last time, but here we are, and I wonder if it’d be different if I’d just known,”
Mateo sighed, clapped a hand on my knee before returning it to the steering wheel.
“That was a choice Reggie made. It wasn’t right, I’ll never say it was, just as Clara’s choice was never the right one. But you’re here now, and without either of them, so it goes to show, you know what they say about hindsight,”
“You’d think after all that, and all the problems that stemmed from lack of communication, you would have explained everything so it didn’t happen again,” I commented dryly, looking back out the window.
The trees had faded away, replaced by dunes, the sunset momentarily blocked by the hillocks, their crests golden with sea grass.
A note of exasperation escaped Mateo’s nose.
“And when mariposa, pray tell would I have done that? When you sat catatonic on the hillside for two days, ignoring us entirely? Or how about when in a fit of rage you lit Levina’s house on fire, rampaging around with gasoline and matches? Or, oh this would have been perfect, when you refused to get out of bed for three weeks after the funeral? I’ve yet to figure out how you survived on stale pizza and gummy bears but I’m still of a mind to make Deke learn a lesson for it,”
I rolled my eyes. Deke had tried, he really had. But he’d lost someone too, and misery loves company. Especially when it boils down to darkened rooms and lazy fans, and sleeping for what only felt like days on end. I couldn’t handle the sun shining on another day that didn’t have my brother and my sister in my life. It wasn’t until Mateo had stormed in that day, sick of knowing I’d locked myself away, and dragged me kicking and screaming back into the light that I’d finally realized I did in fact have to keep on living. I did relapse a few times. I’m not going to lie. But that October was the end of it. I’d promised myself. Mateo smirked, hazel eyes gazing along the horizon, idly, then continued,
“What it boils down to, is there was never a right time, and as much as I love you I didn’t want to rip those wounds open again. You’re all I had left, and I needed you whole,”
Mateo slowed the vehicle down, signaling his turn toward the beach.
“At least I made sure to get anything useful out of the mansion before I toasted it,”
I sounded petulant. I didn’t care. I crossed my arms across my chest, rubbing at my elbow.
Another indeterminate sound escaped Mateo.
“I should have done the same. About thirty years ago,”
I chuckled, quiet and adrenaline driven. It sounded weird in the car, sounded weird as soon as it escaped me. We were almost at our, my, final destination.
“And yet unlike me, you resisted the call of arson, and you became a cop instead,”
Mateo shrugged resignedly, peering through the windshield for the cut-off to the parking lot, the sand drifting across the road in the high wind.
“It’s what she wanted. She needed someone on the inside that could work around the corners where they were blind. In exchange, you three were safe and provided for. Still provided for, thankfully. I can’t imagine where the bunch of you would have been, fending all on your own,”
I shifted uncomfortably. It was true that Mateo had ensured, through careful coercion and outright lies that Levina should ensure that a portion of her amassed wealth and fortune through her hundreds (thousands?) of years on this earth be allocated toward the only blood ties she had – us, but the thought of it still made me uncomfortable. It was blood money, however it was obtained. But as much as I liked to insist to myself that my freelance work was enough, and would be enough, with the addition of several more people to my home, I’d come to lean on the income much heavier than I ever had growing up. Keeping my head down and ignoring where it could have come from had always been the unfortunate truth.
“Point taken,” I muttered.
“Well, I’m sure eventually, the insurance money will come through as well, and then you’ll definitely be in a good spot, right?”
“As long as they never prove I was here, pouring gasoline on everything,”
The van slowed to a stop, lonely at the crest of the hill, looking down on the rushing blue of the ocean, the waves cresting and disappearing rapidly, a lone gull swerving away overhead. I worriedly ran my fingers through my hair, chewed my lip nervously.
Mateo engaged the emergency brake.
“Don’t worry, I erased all the gas station tapes,”
He threw a wink at my gaping mouth as I swiveled in toward him in disbelief, and clicked his seat belt open, hauling himself out the door, groaning from the cramped driving position. I stared at him through the window, appreciating just for a moment everything that he was.
Maybe I should forget about this. Just go home.
Mateo rubbed a hand across his chin, and shook his head, moving toward the beach.
I scrambled out of the car after him, and joined him where he stood at the top of the nearest dune, the wind whipping his clothes around his lean form, eyes narrowed against the brilliant glow of the sunset.
“Are you ready for this?”
“Never,”
January 22, 2016
Sparks Fan Friday
Welcome to Fan Fridays – where hopefully, I can provide you with a little love each Friday
Just wanted to share a project I was working on with the lovely Svenja (http://svenjaliv.com/) for The Spark That Left Us.
I felt it really captured Deke’s haunted nature, and the amazing electricity that entraps him.
Hope this inspires you to give it a try!
Many many thanks to Svenja for working on this commission!
January 21, 2016
Are you ready to win? These beauties just came in
Nothing quite like a freshly printed book. Just give it a smell, give it a touch. Soft paper, velvety cover. ALLLLL GOOD.
And it can be yours…
Just go here…
January 13, 2016
Want to #win a copy of The Spark That Left Us? Six days until entry!
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Goodreads Book Giveaway
The Spark That Left Us
by K. Brooks
Giveaway ends January 28, 2016.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
Want to #win a copy of The Spark That Left Us? #enter here!
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Goodreads Book Giveaway
The Spark That Left Us
by K. Brooks
Giveaway ends January 28, 2016.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
January 1, 2016
#writing tips from beyond
Evidently, whiskey is a better choice for literary lubricant than tequila.
Make good choices, authors.
Discuss.
December 4, 2015
Tale spin #amwriting There’s too many layers
The problem with fiction involving worlds of your own design, people of your own making, and implications outside the realm of possibility – is you can fall down your own rabbit hole.
You start seeing connections to other media.
You start wondering if you are replicating existing worlds.
You start thinking about alternate dimensions, everything you’ve ever read, movies that you’ve watched.
You start to wonder how much of it is your own, and you simply hope for the best.
It’s hard, in a millennia of writings, minds, movies, communications, to disperse the original thoughts among the learned ones.
The other difficulty – is sometimes you start believing it. And when you start believing it, you start seeing it everywhere.
November 18, 2015
#writing : you can’t go home again
This has been an interesting chapter in the developing story of Sparks.
Currently titled “You can’t go home again”, it explores a team-up you wouldn’t expect – Deke and Mateo, a shared moment, and what happens when Deke returns to the scene of his original crime. It was quite a long time ago, when Deke woke up, when he realized something had fundamentally changed him, and I wanted to make sure that the audience also were taken back to those initial moments.
It’s a fine line, somewhere between nostalgia and bitterness. It’s a moment of tableau for the home, shuttered up since Aaron’s body was discovered, his homework still on the table and fruit still sitting on the counter, albeit it covered in a thin layer of dust and rotting away.
Someone will come now, it will be cleaned up. Aaron’s notes will be thrown into a garbage bag, maybe his textbooks will be donated. Deke has retrieved the few things he tried making a new life with after the tragedy of his youth – and another door is closed behind him.
I think the choice of Mateo, aside from his obvious law-enforcement tie, is a soothing one. Rick is frenetic, Connor is anxious. He’d never want Addy to see this place. That was the before him, the unrecognizable him.
He had confessed on that mountain that the old him was gone, and he was better for it.
So Mateo. Soothing. Respectful.
I felt this piece could be added as a respite to the trauma that Sparks is going to instill, the havoc that it’s pulling between our players.
And I’m okay with this.
