(This is a repost from Blake & Beckner - my writing website. But in case you didn't see it over there....)
Dear Masses,
Okay, we are back from our ‘time out’ and ready to ROLL. Here’s a fast recap: As you know Blake & Beckner have a couple of books in the works. We started sending our first manuscript, Remember Us, out to agents earlier this year with mixed results. Some agents never responded, a few read/loved it, but said the same thing: the market for fiction books is crap right now. Agents are only paid when their authors are paid, so they’re mostly looking for the next blingy bestseller.
This was our favourite rejection, "You write wonderfully, which makes me even more sorry to have to turn this down. If it were ten years ago, I would have offered representation very happily and proudly. But the market is simply impossible now for this kind of insightful, well-wrought novel. So I have to say no, but I would read anything else you write with great pleasure."
Another agent we really love/respect sent us some advice: try something different, “try this thing called Publishizer to get your book published.”
We thought about it for awhile and decided we’re going to go for it.
SO, we are about to send our book proposal to Publishizer, a crowdfunding platform that matches authors with publishers. We have 30 days to raise funds by selling preorders of our first book together.
Before we go on… Wait, are you sitting down? Because this next part is really exciting! Maybe grab yourself some wine too - you’re welcome.
We’ve decided to gather a Launch Team of real readers - that’s you, our Dear Masses - willing to help us get Remember Us to infinity and beyond!
Er, WHAT IS A LAUNCH TEAM?
A launch team is an enthusiastic tribe of Blake & Beckner fans obligated volunteers who will cheerlead our book and help get as many preorders as possible in a 30 day time period from when we launch in mid-January. They will help spread the word through any means possible generally accepted social media outlets.
(We love you, Beth/Bernice, but you can’t join this team. #superfan)
WHY ARE YOU FORMING THIS TEAM?
We are looking for help to sell as many pre-orders of Remember Us as possible with Publishizer, a crowdfunding platform that matches authors with publishers. The more preorders we get, the better chance a publisher will pick us up.
WHO CAN APPLY FOR THE LAUNCH TEAM?
- Are you excited to read Remember Us and tell everyone you meet about it?
- Are you an obsessive reader or in a book club?
- Are you fairly savvy and active on a blog or on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram?
If your eyeballs are popping out of your head and your heart is singing YES to the above, then please reach out to us! More details coming below.
We will only take a few “Launch Team Members” and those spots will be gone before any of us can say Jack Robinson.
WHAT WILL YOUR COOL NEW LAUNCH TEAM ROLE LOOK LIKE?
It’s as easy as 1-2-3….
1) Read an early digital copy of the book. Yay!
2) Engage with your friends and followers online by posting about the book before and during our promotional month. (January 9 - February 9.)
3.) In your place of influence (yoga studio, chess club, bridge club, moms’ group, Tinder, Snapchat, blog, website), we’d love for you to shout or write about the book!
WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?
You will receive an advanced (digital) copy of the book, so you can read it and begin telling everyone and their moms about how much you love it. Once we get the printing press rolling, we’ll send you a signed copy of the book.
Oh wait, and did we mention you will have our undying gratitude?! Forever and ever, amen. Definitely that.
WHERE’S THE DOTTED LINE FOR ME TO SIGN?
Send us a photograph of your Blake & Beckner tattoo Email lindsayblake@gmail.com or layne.grime@gmail.com and tell us about yourself, your social media platform, and why you want to be on our launch team. We will get back to all of our applicants before Christmas.
Thank you so much for being with us on this journey! We couldn’t be here without you. Oh wait, that’s not entirely true. Our moms and dads had a little something to do with us being here, but let’s not talk about that right now.
We are so excited for you to read our book!
I'm including a few pages below to give you an idea of its style:
Remember Us
May
Reese
“Hi,” she whispered and I blacked out, standing straight up as her pinked mouth moved and the wind blew and my heart crimped along the edges. I should have slammed the door in her face, yelled profanities at the closed structure afterwards, but instead I stood frozen, arm suspended above the handle.
The top of my head tingled. This is a nightmare. And then I thought I hate her.
“I took a taxi, well a plane first, I came to help you know,” dark blonde hair lay in drenched strands plastered around her face; black lines of mascara streaked down each of her cheeks. She was backlit by the porch, by the rain, and I shuddered. “I’m here to help.”
It was 10 p.m. exactly - I remembered seeing the green numbers on the microwave as I’d scooted, confused, through the kitchen to answer the insistent doorbell before it woke him.
The storm pounded to the tune inside me, but I remained a statue, the seconds taut between us.
“Can I,” her voice squeaked. “Can I come in?” Still I stared, all ability to form syllables lost along the distant space of the more than ten years since we’d last been in this place together.
There was a movement at her side and a furry, barking head poked itself from her fuschia purse and into the porch light. She tugged the chihuahua out with ringed hands and shoved the offensive creature toward my face.
“This is Rocky.”
My insides screamed but as I opened my mouth, finally finding my words, there was a pressure on my elbow where Ben had presented himself.
“You need to get out of the rain,” he reached for her three large suitcases as he glanced at me. We shot each other telepathic messages until he shrugged and widened the door, inviting her inside with a wave.
As they melted into the house behind me, I moved into the rain and sat onto the wet porch as if I could float away on the sea of the storm.
***
I’d spent the entire 8-hour plane ride back to Omaha drinking mimosas, one after the other like cheap beads tucked along a string, and wondering how I could fix the chaos that was my life.
I’d been back for a few days, but hadn’t found the crux of the information I so desperately needed.
“Tell me again how you found out Dad was sick?” It was easiest to direct my anger at my 25-year-old twin.
The oppressive green walls of our childhood kitchen had not faded with time, and I sat at the scratched oak table with Ben pestering him for answers yet again. This had become a ritual since I barreled into town the previous week, but his explanations never seemed to satisfy.
“Reese, we’ve been over this. I found a dozen pill bottles in his medicine cabinet. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out something was up.” My brother leaned back in his chair and exhaled. His espresso-colored hair stuck up at different angles, a sea of exclamation marks.
“But why were you going through his medicine cabinet in the first place?”
He tapped out a beat on the table in front of him and smiled. “Would you rather me tell you I needed a band-aid or are you okay with the fact I always go through people’s cabinets when I visit?”
“You count moving back in with Dad for two whole months as a visit then?”
“Don’t nitpick my terminology, sister. Your twenty questions are almost up. And then it’s my turn, I have some questions for you about Charlie.” Behind the black frames, his dark eyes were infuriatingly calm. We’d looked at each other like this so many times through the years, his stormy eyes as familiar to me as my own, our prolonged stare full of unspoken questions and an overarching understanding, the mountain of unsaid things between us prodigious and daunting. I sighed and shook my head.
“Ben, don’t be lame. This is serious.”
“Okay, actually, I’ll save us both time. Let’s re-cap for the upteenth time. My company is starting a branch here in Omaha. You do remember I work for a marketing firm?”
“I will not deign to answer such ridiculous queries,” I punched his arm.
“Right, well, said Big Deal Marketing firm sent me over to little ‘ole Omaha to be the project manager for our latest plant since I’m a native and ‘know the vibe.’ Maya came with me for the first week, because we hadn’t been up to see Dad since Christmas, and we like to come a couple of times a year anyway. You know, like kids do.”
“Don’t. Just don’t.”
“So here we were. Here, also, were the pills and a little thing called cancer which Dad had hidden from all of us. I called you right away. Anyway, he’s at the end of his treatments. I knew even though ...” Ben trailed off at the sounds of bustling behind me.
The determined click of heels and smell of wisteria meant I didn’t need to turn around to know whom I’d see.
It had been two days since Bernice, formerly known as Mom, had shown up like an apparition - more like a nightmare - in the night. I couldn’t stand the sight of her.
The last two days had been a dance of avoidance between the two of us. The day before she’d waited outside the bathroom for me and even at 7 in the morning her slightly chubby five-foot, two-inch frame was bejeweled from head to toe. Her blonde bob was coiffed into big curls, tightly sprayed. I tripped down the hallway in my hurry to escape.
“I only want to help.” Her hopeful yells chased me down the hall in surround-sound.
Her version of being useful was to give us each worried looks in turn and spend hours in the kitchen concocting a variety of casseroles, soups, and hams. She was from Mississippi and her love language was of the greasy variety.
We didn’t invite Bernice, didn’t expect to see her, but I wasn’t accounting for her strength of personality, her need to be at the center of any drama. Lord knows, she loves to be needed. I was still confused how she found out about Dad in the first place, but didn’t have the energy to ask.
She ran toward Ben with a weepy look and open arms, and I left.
I ignored Dad’s prone figure on the couch and headed outdoors.
The air was warm, dense, and replete with the sounds of insects chattering. I plopped onto the porch swing and gave myself a push. I had always loved our front porch, it had been my favored escape for as long as I could remember. When things were tense between my parents or when everyone had been in the house for hours glancing through each other rather than at them, I’d abscond being a Hamilton and look for better things outside our walls.
I’d sneak out in the summer, late at night to be alone and breathe in the air of the stars and dream about my new life and my new family far away from Omaha. Vines grew along the western side of the porch, sprawling, darkened in the golden hues of the late afternoon light.
My first and only kiss for a long time was with Carsen Finkle, after a swim meet in the fifth grade, right outside the pool where I’d just won my heat. But in subsequent years, I’d had my share of kisses on this porch. The summer of my eighth grade year, after Bernice left, I made out with the entire track and field team on this porch. Ben finally put a stop to it, storming out and ordering Philip Dyer to go home and tell his friends none of them were welcome to come back.
Ben grew more protective after our parents split. Dad worked later and later at the office, so it was Ben who cooked our dinners and biked the packages of hotdogs and macaroni and cheese home from the grocery store.
Dad ate his dinner cold when he finally made his way home, long after Ben and I had headed upstairs to our separate rooms, separate lives. I knew this because I once went back downstairs to talk to him after I heard the door close firmly upon his entrance, a bolded period at the end of a sentence.
I descended the steps covertly and paused in the kitchen doorway. The tiles were cold beneath my toes, the only part of me brave enough to enter the room. There was my father, head bowed, pushing around the congealed dinner we’d left him hours earlier. My mother had bought us a brand new set of bright red plates around the time I was five, she said it gave our family a bit of class and energy all at once. That night Dad’s tater tots and pizza looked an offensive shade of yellow against the ruby-tinted circle before him.
He held the edges of the cheery plate, and it wasn’t until I moved closer that I saw the tears at the edges of his eyes, vivid and insistent. I turned on my heels and left without a word. He noticed neither my presence nor my absence. In later years, Ben and I dubbed our teenage years “The Black Hole with Dad.” Even before she left, he’d grown absent, cool, distant.
I came home early from school a week later, not bothering to excuse myself at the principal’s office. I couldn’t be at school another second, so I instructed Ben and Charlie to tell the teachers I was sick if they asked and bolted home on my bike.
Dad’s truck was parked out front and I raced inside, suddenly cheerful at the thought of a whole afternoon with my father. He stood in the kitchen, with his back to me, packing up the red plates. One after the other, he settled them into a large brown box. When he got to the last plate, he held it for so long I thought he’d fallen asleep, but without warning, he turned and threw it at the far wall, shoulders heaving, sobs leaving his body in stuttered cadence.
The crash of it hitting the corner sounded deafeningly through the afternoon quiet of our kitchen. I jumped.
He propped himself against the counter, as if the granite top would give him the strength he needed for a lifetime alone.
I moved forward then, tentatively reached to pat his back and convey that I, too, felt weak, let loose.
“Dad?”
After a long pause, he turned and gave me a forced smile.
“Hey kiddo.”
With that he shuffled over to the stacked boxes. He walked with a slow limp, and I noticed grey at his temples for the first time.
“Wait!” I raced to where he’d halted in the doorway.
“I want two of them.” I placed one of the plates on the kitchen table and aimed the other one at the facing wall.
“This sucks.” I threw the red plate hard and watched it fracture into its new configuration.
“Reese, honey,” I whipped around fiercely, and he stopped himself.
We stared at each other over the expanse of the kitchen.
Finally, “I’ll sweep it up later. Be careful for now, don’t walk around on that side of the kitchen in your socks.”
He didn’t ask me about school or where Ben was.
As he escorted off our dishware, I took the second red plate up to my room and reverentially placed it beneath my second pillow, the serene pink roses on my pillowcase reassuring any viewers all was ordinary.
*****
“Reese?”
Ben stood in my bedroom doorway, his frame shadowed in the hallway beyond. The sounds of the kitchen television floated up to the second story. His face was darkened, but I could see the lines of hope, worry, tiredness, spreading themselves across his forehead.
“Reese?” I didn’t realize I hadn’t answered and wondered how many seconds or minutes had passed while he stood there, waiting. I motioned him in without words.
When Ben and I were kids, I’d sneak into his room almost every night after Mom and Dad tucked us into bed. We needed to dissect the events of the day. We were as quiet as could be, but almost nightly Dad would yell from the bottom of the steps for us to get back into our own beds. The ritual stopped sometime in our early teenage years, when our family structure had disintegrated into a hundred unrecognizable pieces, and communication had been relegated to the category of artifacts.
Ben had lugged the cumbersome box TV from the basement and placed it on my desk. I couldn’t see which VHS sat on top with a bag of M&Ms and a bowl of popcorn, didn’t ask what it was, but I wasn’t surprised when Hayley Mills came to life across the screen.
The Parent Trap was Ben’s favorite childhood movie, and I pompously indulged him with a viewing when I could. It was a treat generally reserved for the rare Christmas I deigned to come home, but it had been three years since that happened.
Ben has always been fascinated with other twins’ stories, even fictional ones, and therein lies the only explanation I can find for his long-standing loyalty to this movie.
His girlfriend, Maya, said his guilty pleasure was cute.
I teased him that Jung and Freud would point out the obvious - he had a subconscious drive to lead our parents back to one another, but he shrugged it off.
“Thanks for this,” Ben lobbed a fuzzy blanket at my head.
We leaned against the pillows and drifted back to California 1961.
*****
I responded to work emails all morning, and by mid-afternoon, I drifted through the silent house to the kitchen. The sun slanted sideways through the windows creating a friendly pool of light on the counter where Ben had meticulously lined a row of full shot glasses across the length of the granite.
“Drinking again, brother?”
“Please darling, I never stopped.” I rolled my eyes at his bow tie and the two empty shot glasses off to the side.
He motioned for me to sit down and before I could refuse, he pulled a package out from under the counter.
“What’s that?”
“It’s for you, and here’s how this will work. I’m going to ask you a question and you will tell me an answer. For the sake of your conscience and liver, I recommend the truth. I am Sherlock Holmes. We will drink if I think you’re lying.”
“Umm, I’m Sherlock. You’re Watson, and I’m not playing.” I scrunched up my nose.
“As I was saying, when all the shots are gone and the whole truth is out and about, you may have your precious package. By the way, it’s heavy - could it be gold? Clearly it’s gold, it was mailed three days ago and expedited. Please do introduce me to Croesus when you get a chance.”
“Bennjjjjiiii. Your absurd game doesn’t even make sense, you weirdo.” I tugged at the edges of my t-shirt. “And why aren’t you at work?”
He took a slow sip of the water with his left hand and ignored my eye rolls.
“I took off early. This is Scotch, rum, bourbon, some of Dad’s fancy Irish whiskey, vodka, gin, and tequila. As you can see, I’ve arranged them from lightest to darkest, but we may proceed in any order you’d like. This one here is water; you’re welcome.” He strummed his fingers along the counter and paused for effect. “For example, how is Charlie? I only hear from him on occasion, and you were with him up until two weeks ago. What’s happening with my brother? Don’t be pithy.”
“He’s not your brother, you nob.”
“Oh, but he is. As our lifetime neighbor and subsequent best friend, he is better than any brother Carl and Bernice could have given me.”
“Charlie is, you know, Charlie. He’s getting jobs left and right. He’s full of charm and natural talent. Everyone loves him. Everyone wants him. He has enough ideas for the next five years and is always on the lookout for something new. He only launched the media company two years ago, but he’s ready to add a video component to our team and a product line and, and, and. He’s great. May I have my package now?” I forced a polite smile.
“I need a re-cap. You two graduated photo school four years ago and got an internship or two together. Then you each set out to freelance on your own, but you signed up to work with him three months later. Am I missing anything?”
“Ben, you make it sound like I didn’t try. Three months is a long time and you don’t know everything that happened. You’re not always as smart as you think you are. Working with Charlie was the wise choice.” I reclined my arms on the counter.
“You mean the safe choice.”
“I mean the choice that made sense then.”
“And now? You’re content, working with him still? Are you considered partners or is he your boss? Actually, hold those answers. Which shot are we doing first?”
“Hey, that’s not fair - I answered your dumb question.”
“Aha, you did.”
“Ben! It’s three in the afternoon.”
“Reese, Reese, calm down. Alcohol should be consumed with joy, not angst. I’m thinking you’re thinking gin, so here you go.”
“You’re impossible.”
He successfully blocked my lunge toward the package and shook his head, nodding toward the drink.
“Bottoms up, babycakes.”
“Charlie is great, ecstatic actually. He loves that we work together, tells everyone we make the best team. And we do. He loves the fashion side of photography, so he’s in his element. By the time he’s 30, you can officially say your best friend is a big deal. He’s well on his way. Just remember you heard it from me first.”
“You’re still pulling the best friend card, are you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean it’s easy and a cop out. I’m both surprised and not surprised that after all these years you’re still trying to fly under the radar of the whole best friend notion. I thought you were better than such small-mindedness.”
“Now you’re making me angry. You don’t know anything about it.”
“Okay, fine. Are you happy?” He sounded somber.
“I mean, I’m happy. Of course. I’m a photographer traveling the world with my best friend. People would kill for my job. I am the poster child for a happy life.”
I batted my eyes and grabbed a full shot glass which I threw back without his nudging and continued. “I guess I always thought I would go a bit more in the documentary direction, be more gritty with my work, but that can come later. These photo shoots and experiences are invaluable and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I mean, I met and photographed Taylor Swift. I’m living anyone’s wildest dreams.”
“Wait what?” I took Ben’s brief interruption as an opportunity to snag another shot, and as I slammed the glass on the table, my cheeks flushed.
“Well, you know Charlie’s parents. They know everybody. So we got in as assistants on the shoot. It was small. But still.”
“Did you actually talk to Taylor? How have you never told me this before now?”
“I mean, no, but she said ‘Hi’ to Charlie right before the shoot. Of course, who could resist his handsome face? She probably wanted to date Charlie.”
“And then write a song about him.”
“She probably kissed him!”
Ben slid a shot glass of rum in my general direction and plowed forward.
“Sister dear, you’re looking a bit green and we are getting off track. Speaking of dating, are you and Charlie snogging?”
“What, are you Harry Potter now and is this rum?” My nose touched the glass. “You know I hate rum.”
“Then drink it fast. One, two, three, go.”
“No, I’m not dating or snogging Charlie! No. Not then. Not now. Wow, I’m feeling the gin.”
“Are you sure it’s not the rum?”
“He’s adorable. Brilliant. Hilarious. Too-much-to-handle. My best friend. Gorgeous. Have you ever noticed his lips? Of course you haven’t. Well I have, and Charlie Beck has great lips. Not that I’ve ever touched them. But they sure do look nice on his face. Only it’s not like that.” My sentences ran together.
“Then what is it like? I’m not an idiot. I know there’s always been a little something between you two. You’ve loved him forever; I knew it after the one Halloween party when the three of us dressed as the Three Amigos and sang ‘My Little Buttercup.’ I was Chevy Chase playing the piano and you two were Martin Short and Steve Martin singing. I saw you fall in love with him that night.”
“Sure, Dr. Phil. Sure.”
“Reese, mine eyes have seen the glory.”
“Maybe I have thought about settling down in a cottage built for two with him. So what! But Charlie will never, and I mean never like me like that. We are Snoopy and Charlie. Period.”
“Wait, are you Snoopy or are you Charlie?”
“I’m leaving.”
“Okay, okay, Snoopy, I didn’t mean to get your fur ruffled. But speaking of drinking...”
“I said nothing about drinking.”
“Here’s your Scotch. Drink it like a good girl.”
“He’s too busy becoming famous to think about love anyway. At least that’s what he tells me.”
“But you love him.”
“I mean. Whatever. We’re best friends. You’re best friends with him too - does that mean you’re going to marry him? Does Maya have a little competition? So you have noticed his lips. I’ll need another Scotch when I break the news to her; make it an entire bottle.”
“Your belligerence has earned you your fifth shot. Dealer’s choice. There’s a lot more where that comes from. Ah, the Irish whiskey, an excellent choice. Speaking of the Irish, how are things in Ireland these days?”
“Oh, ya know. Green and magical, as always.”
“So. Did you make any friends while you were over there? Anyone to write home about? Anyone special?”
“You are spectacularly annoying.”
“The fact that you just enunciated ‘spectacularly’ correctly lets me know it’s time for our next shot. Let’s go for the bourbon and save the vodka for a clean finish. So what’s up with Irish men sending you packages?”
“Oh wait, that’s from … He’s this guy I met when I was there three years ago. It’s not a big deal.”
“Sister, Irish Santa Claus beamed you a package from halfway around the globe. That’s not nothing.”
“Is it going to sound bad if I say we met at a pub?”
“Only if you had six shots with him. Keep going.”
“Well, he’s nice. And gentlemanly. Our age. He studied his undergrad at one of those proper schools, Oxford or Cambridge or something.”
“Oh, you mean Hogwarts?”
“He’s getting his Master’s in writing at some fancy university, and he lives on a sheep farm with his grandpa and dad.”
“You’re making this up. Sheep farming writer, yeah right. Take a shot, take two for that matter.”
“Whatever, Ben. He’s a really, really nice guy. A good guy.”
“He sounds boring.”
“Right? Only he’s hot. I mean not.” I blushed. “He’s smart, but he never talks down to me. He’s quirky and witty in an understated way. We hung out every day for two weeks straight when Charlie and I were there assisting for that Guinness shoot three years ago.”
“I’m sure Charlie loved him.”
“Well, they never met. Charlie doesn’t know about him. It never came up. He was busy during the trip, so I was busy. Blake, this guy, and I only got to hang out a couple of times on this past trek to Ireland before you called me back to the home front. Thanks for that, by the way.”
“You’ve been dating an Irish guy for three years, and you’ve never once mentioned him to dearest me or Charlie? Drink this vodka, and tell me exactly how hot he is.”
I took the glass, threw it back and continued. “Ughhh, no, we’re not dating. We’re letter writing. We’re friends. We’re nothing.”
“You’re ‘letter writing?’ What the hell does that even mean?”
“Like I said, he’s clever and wants to write for a living. You know how much I hate social media, so when we met three years ago, he asked if we could write letters, and I agreed. He said something like, ‘I find handwritten epistles of this variation modish in a manner little else in this frenetic world is.’ I didn’t understand half of it, but it sounded like fun.”
“Really, it did?”
“It is fun. Remember having pen-pals from South Africa in third grade? Blake and I have never even exchanged numbers; we thought it would be more real this way. And Blake is one of the nicest things in my life right now. It’s simple. He’s simple.”
“Can you use the word simple one more time. And there’s no love there? Reese, people don’t just write letters. Tell me you’ve kissed.”
“Well, don’t you ask a lot of questions.”
“So that’s a yes.”
I avoided eye contact, only smiled.
“How did this Blake get our Omaha address? That’s pretty creepy, Reese. Creepy Irish man who refuses to be on the grid knows where you live. I’m imagining a hobbit looming over me in my sleep tonight.”
“Hobbits are from New Zealand and leprechauns are from Ireland.”
“Well, technically ...”
“Shut up. Sending him my specific geographical location is a habit now. You know I travel a lot, so I have a stack of postcards in my purse. I send him one as soon as I land any place new I’ll be for more than two weeks. I think I even mailed it on my way to the airport when I left Ireland. Like I said, it’s uncomplicated. He’s probably been the most stable part of my last three years. Hey, what’s that?”
By the time Ben turned around, my package and I shoved past Bernice who stood like a fixture in the kitchen doorway.
“Don’t forget to hydrate,” Ben called after me.