Scarlet Yearnings Collective

Scarlet Yearnings: Stories of Love & Desire * The Scarlet Yearnings Collection • Book 1 * 2025 Winner of the International Impact Book Award for Short Story CollectionWhat if every stolen glance, half-healed scar, and late-night "what if?" could bloom into its own story? 🌺"Scarlet Yearnings" presents an unforgettable collection of stories that chronicle Black women's journeys through the landscape of unfulfilled love. With characters as diverse as they are familiar, these twelve tales explore the universal hunger for genuine connection in a world where partners disappear, deceive, or simply cannot meet the depth of a woman's heart. Poignant, powerful, and profoundly honest, this collection honors the complexity of desire and the dignity of women who continue to seek authentic love even when their experiences might counsel otherwise.Why Readers Can't Put It Down:Real-world resonance: Black, Caribbean-American, and multicultural voices that feel like friends across the table.Emotion you can taste: From swoon-worthy sparks to bittersweet gut-punches in under ten pages.Perfect "one-more" length: Commute, coffee break, or bedtime wind-down-devour a complete story in ten minutes.Genre-bending surprises: A dash of speculative, a hint of humor, and the quiet power of literary fiction.Book-club gold: Themes of longing, identity, marriage, and second chances beg to be discussed.Whether you crave a tender first-love flutter or a raw look at a marriage fraying at the edges, Scarlet Yearnings delivers love and desire in twelve ways that wrap around your imagination.Ready to fall in love, over and over again? Click 'Buy Now' and let your yearning bloom. 🌺 Scarlet Ibis James crafts stories where Caribbean spirits intertwine with Harlem's rhythms, drawing deep from her Trinidadian roots and her life in New York City. Her latest novel, "Scarlet Birthright: What My Father Left Behind" (2025), emerged from her acclaimed collection "Scarlet Yearnings: Stories of Love and Desire" (2024), when readers and characters alike demanded their voices be heard.Known for weaving intergenerational tales that pulse with soca rhythms and city beats, James explores how love, culture, and destiny reflect across oceans and decades. Her characters navigate the spaces between islands and boroughs, between traditional expectations and personal truth, creating stories that feel like conversations with your boldest friend – the one who understands that sometimes the bravest thing we can do is choose differently than those who came before us.When not writing about love's many faces, James can be found hunting down the perfect roti in Queens (TrinCiti it is!), swaying to calypso in her Harlem apartment-turned-writing-sanctuary, or collecting stories while people-watching on subways and in parks. She believes every tale holds a touch of ancestral knowing, whether it blooms in the frangipani or poui trees of Port of Spain or sprouts through the cracks of New York City sidewalks.Her writing celebrates the complexity of Caribbean-American identity, the power of inherited stories, and the courage it takes to break cycles and forge new paths. For James, inspiration flows from everywhere – family histories whispered over morning coffee, steelpan rhythms floating on island breezes when she visits home, and the endless possibilities in her American city built where the spirits of the Wecquaesgeek people still rise.

In "Scarlet Birthright," Scarlet Ibis James crafts a multigenerational tale of passion, fear, and redemption set between the vibrant shores of Trinidad and the unyielding streets of New York. When nineteen-year-old Joromi meets a magnetic woman at one of his DJ gigs in 1969 Port of Spain, their connection blazes with an intensity that terrifies him. Faced with an unexpected pregnancy, he chooses stability in America with another woman, abandoning his child and her mother.The novel spans two decades and three generations, weaving between Joromi's struggle with regret, his abandoned daughter Trisha's search for identity, and her grandparents' steadfast love that fills the void of absent parents. Through the cultural touchstones of Trinidad-the steel pan's rhythm, the Cascadura fish's promise, and the island's contrasting seasons-James explores how passion, fear, and courage flow through bloodlines like inheritance.As Trisha confronts her father's legacy and discovers her own path, the novel becomes a testament to breaking cycles and choosing differently than those who came before. In this lush narrative where the living and ancestral worlds intersect, "Scarlet Birthright" reveals that sometimes the greatest act of love is learning to let go. Scarlet Ibis James crafts stories where Caribbean spirits intertwine with Harlem's rhythms, drawing deep from her Trinidadian roots and her life in New York City. Her latest novel, "Scarlet Birthright: What My Father Left Behind" (2025), emerged from her acclaimed collection "Scarlet Yearnings: Stories of Love and Desire" (2024), when readers and characters alike demanded their voices be heard.Known for weaving intergenerational tales that pulse with soca rhythms and city beats, James explores how love, culture, and destiny reflect across oceans and decades. Her characters navigate the spaces between islands and boroughs, between traditional expectations and personal truth, creating stories that feel like conversations with your boldest friend – the one who understands that sometimes the bravest thing we can do is choose differently than those who came before us.When not writing about love's many faces, James can be found hunting down the perfect roti in Queens (TrinCiti it is!), swaying to calypso in her Harlem apartment-turned-writing-sanctuary, or collecting stories while people-watching on subways and in parks. She believes every tale holds a touch of ancestral knowing, whether it blooms in the frangipani or poui trees of Port of Spain or sprouts through the cracks of New York City sidewalks.Her writing celebrates the complexity of Caribbean-American identity, the power of inherited stories, and the courage it takes to break cycles and forge new paths. For James, inspiration flows from everywhere – family histories whispered over morning coffee, steelpan rhythms floating on island breezes when she visits home, and the endless possibilities in her American city built where the spirits of the Wecquaesgeek people still rise.

What happens when the first spark fades-but the feeling remains?Award-winning author Scarlet Ibis James returns with twelve unforgettable stories told from the perspectives of both men and women as they navigate the messy, beautiful work of love after the thrill of meet-cute.A grandmother learns the difference between holding on and holding close.A doctor enters a fake relationship that becomes dangerously real.A husband and wife confront what devotion really costs.From Trinidad to Toronto, from Washington D.C. to imagined futures, these stories reveal the courage it takes to forgive, to stay, and to begin again.Tender, bold, and irresistibly human, Scarlet Yearnings: Beyond First Glance captures love in its truest form-stories that remake what you believe about it. Scarlet Ibis James crafts stories where Caribbean spirits intertwine with Harlem's rhythms, drawing deep from her Trinidadian roots and her life in New York City. Her latest novel, "Scarlet Birthright: What My Father Left Behind" (2025), emerged from her acclaimed collection "Scarlet Yearnings: Stories of Love and Desire" (2024), when readers and characters alike demanded their voices be heard.Known for weaving intergenerational tales that pulse with soca rhythms and city beats, James explores how love, culture, and destiny reflect across oceans and decades. Her characters navigate the spaces between islands and boroughs, between traditional expectations and personal truth, creating stories that feel like conversations with your boldest friend – the one who understands that sometimes the bravest thing we can do is choose differently than those who came before us.When not writing about love's many faces, James can be found hunting down the perfect roti in Queens (TrinCiti it is!), swaying to calypso in her Harlem apartment-turned-writing-sanctuary, or collecting stories while people-watching on subways and in parks. She believes every tale holds a touch of ancestral knowing, whether it blooms in the frangipani or poui trees of Port of Spain or sprouts through the cracks of New York City sidewalks.Her writing celebrates the complexity of Caribbean-American identity, the power of inherited stories, and the courage it takes to break cycles and forge new paths. For James, inspiration flows from everywhere – family histories whispered over morning coffee, steelpan rhythms floating on island breezes when she visits home, and the endless possibilities in her American city built where the spirits of the Wecquaesgeek people still rise.