Valerie Brook
storyteller & photographer
“One of the best and most powerful new writers appearing on the scene.” —Pulphouse Fiction Magazine
Discover powerful fiction
Writing With Sunlight, Story Through The Lens
“A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective.”— Irving Penn
I can remember as a child when my mom gave me my first film camera, a Kodak, if I recall correctly. It was flat and rectangular. It was awesome like from outer space. It had a big blue button and was a point and shoot. It had been hers, and now it was mine. I felt big and grown up. My future whispered—the sense that photography was a big part of my life—indelible.
I shoot digital now, the excitement to get home and “develop” my photos is just as visceral. It’s an electric thrill, wondering if I captured what I wanted to say when I originally took the shot, or if I got anything worthy at all.
I love the lens, because I want to communicate with people, I want to share what I see, I want to connect and tell a story without words.
A Look Inside my writing life
“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t.”—Mark Twain
Right. So we all know that old saying, that truth is stranger than fiction? It’s really true. And so, I write and love the power of fiction to make sense of things. I write from my heart, trying to turn both extraordinary love—as well as anguish and nightmare situations—into exciting stories that testify to the deeper truths of what I have witnessed in life. Truth that is seldom spoken; because the testimony is hard to speak, and harder still to find those few who will listen.
It is said that our heart is our first teacher.
Then, let the power of story inspire our hearts, fire up our imagination, and blaze new paths toward healing our world. Storytelling is not just entertainment, it can be a deep medicine— story can inspire and lead, story can empower and change lives. It changed mine.
The Oniah trilogy
Welcome to the world of modern mind control, where children are tortured to evoke latent abilities beyond the average population and trained to become undetectable super spies—secret servants of an international elite known only as The Order. Caught up in a massive criminal enterprise intent on world rule, it takes a special courage to resist the scariest and most powerful people on earth.
Holding oniah
book one
oceans in oniah
book two
Oniah Answers
book three (coming soon)