Mine Is Clouds was written by Jeff Warren, who also happens to be a good friend of mine. I met Jeff online on Myspace many years ago, back when people had Myspace pages. (I still have mine. Obviously.) His writing was vulgar, bold, sensitive, thoughtful, and I thought to myself, Holly, this is someone you need to know. I felt a peculiar kinship with this fellow; not as a brother or a lover but as something entirely unique. And so we met, online, and then, later, in person, and we hung out and lent each other books and drank together and went on rock and roll road trips together and we, occasionally, wrote some things together. Those were good times, man. But this isn't about Jeff Warren and me. This is about his book, Mine Is Clouds.
Mine Is Clouds is a love story. It is about beginnings and endings and the things in between. It is about expectation and ecstasy, anticipation and loss, the magical and the mundane. It is about music and beer and joy and despair. Clouds herself is both Everygirl and each girl the narrator has known. (And she is beautiful.) The language of this love story is simple, sparse, complex, honest. Similes abound, analogies that made me pause and wish that I had thought of them. If you can't somehow find yourself in this story, in the narrator's pain and in his rapture, then you've never been in love.
You can get your own copy at www.brokenbeard.com, but act fast because Jeff only printed 100 copies. (I have a feeling he'll have to reprint.) As an aside, Jeff, it's gorgeous. I am so privileged to have been able to read it, and to have been trusted with parts of it before it was finished. Riot on.
