Hello! Welcome to the E.R. Brookes Universe!

Hi!

My name is E.R. Brookes and I am so incredibly thrilled that you're here! I'm a YA Fantasy author, and I write clean fantasy and fiction. Clean in my definition is, I do not include any smut, or obscene swearing. (If you consider crap to be a swear word, well, I guess you're just out of luck, lol.)

I thought I might start off by giving a brief history of my writing journey, as well as how Kidnapping Grimm came into existence.

I've been writing for as long as I can remember. Stories have been ingrained into my world since I was little. My parents encouraged a love of reading and writing, music and art. Whatever I was good at or interested in, they helped me pursue it. They were very earnest about encouraging us to pursue our passions, to grow the skills that came naturally to us. In the end it always circled back to writing for me.

The first book series I wrote was about a two time and realm traveling sisters. It was a mashup of worlds, given I was only 8, Peter Pan obviously made an appearance and stole the show from the goblin king Jareth. (Because what is a story without another fanfiction character added in?) The idea from the story came from a dream, and in the dream, it was me and my best friend who were the sisters. So obviously I had to write the book, which, in the end, my character tragically died. That book created the pathway for more and I turned it into a series.

When I was 10, we moved and I managed to lose one of the books. Which, I was terribly upset about. You can't really have a series without book 2 and once you've written a book it's essentially gone. You can recreate it to a sense, but all that magic, the dialogue, the flow that comes when you write? It's gone. You can't recreate it and if you try, it'll never be the same.

When I was 13, I started a new book series with my best friend Betsy. It was also a fantasy book, ripe with faeries and snark and sweet, young love. This is where Kidnapping Grimm was born.

In the beginning, Kidnapping Grimm was light and fluffy, it had a lot of whimsical and not a lot of plot. Over the years, as I wrote and rewrote the book, it became something more. Life moved on, and Betsy got busy with life and school and sports and didn't have time for the book though we had a lot of fangirling sessions over it. When I was in my early twenties (I can't remember exactly how old) I asked Betsy if I could have the series, and she said absolutely. So began my solo journey with KG. In 2020 I began to seriously consider publishing (it had been my original plan to have all the books written first and then publish them one by one while working on a new series.) I began to reach out asking for beta-readers, and that's how I met my husband. He was one of my original beta-readers. He gave me thoughts, inputs, caught inconsistencies and we had what we called our 'Sunday evening emails' because he'd email me about it every Sunday evening.

Time went on, I began to look for an editor, and Drew and I started to date. In and among all this, I lost my job, started a new job, and then began a new job on top of that. It was a very turbulent time in my life. But I think the gift of working on a story helped me cope with everything because, in the midst of everything changing, there was something I could control. My own little world of my own making--a world in which I knew the outcome.

I have always been a long winded writer. When I was younger, I'd fill notebooks front to back and then add pages to that on top of it. As I got older and began to use a computer, my word documents grew with me. Soon it wasn't just a couple hundred pages, it was smaller font and 300-400 pages with over 100,000 words. (Well above industry standard.)

When contemplating my publishing plan, I knew I wanted to approach it from the direction that allowed me to maintain full ownership and rights over my book. Thus, I pursued a hybrid publishing plan. I bought my own ISBN's, I published on each individual platform, and with the mere shred of courage I had left, I clicked publish.

It was a nerve wracking experience, waiting for people to read it, and then knowing I was going to have to hear what they think. I often dread people's opinions, because I can see the whole story, I can see where it's going and what needs to happen. Whereas they're just caught in the first book, and have no idea why any of the characters did the crazy things they did. But with every read, it seemed that people only had positive things to say. Which, in all honesty boosted my courage. I tend to thrive on praise and cry at criticism.

Now, with book two's release in a couple of months, I am once again a ball of nerves, because I have no idea if I'm going to have the same reaction, or if people are going to be upset because it ends on a cliffhanger. There's also some more serious content in book 2 that I tried to deal with delicately, but needed to be there nevertheless. As a clean author, I still face the challenge of tackling hard subjects and issues in a delicate manner.

But, all this being said, I am still very excited about the launch of book two and the continuation of this journey for Fay, Ember and Evadne. I am also very excited about the progression of the side character's arcs. Everyone gets to know them a whole lot better and I am so excited for this story and honestly, I can't wait for all six books to be written (I guess that means I should get writing) so that you can all read it and see the faerie world like I do. :)

Until next time, -E.R.