Ripple
When high-powered attorney Helen Thompson discovers that her fifteen-year old daughter has been sexually assaulted, she takes drastic measures. Finding herself in trouble, Helen must relinquish control and put her faith in a process she knows to be flawed. As a team of lawyers, therapists and women from a safe house help Helen and Phoebe find hope and healing, a sociopath lurks, waiting for his moment to strike. A lyrical, dark fairytale that will resonate with fans of women's literature and psychological thrillers, RIPPLE delves into the nature of evil, without seeking to provide final answers to the issue of what makes a human commit evil acts. And while the author takes readers to scary places, she ultimately shines a light on the human condition and celebrates the triumph of the human spirit in the face of great tribulation.Purchase on Kindle / Paperback
Guest post:
First Chapter of I Run, A Novel
My name is Sally Lane Brookman. If you met me on the street, you’d probably wonder if you knew me from somewhere else, from another city or another time in your life. But unless you have lived or do live within an hour’s drive of Washington D.C., or maybe met me half a lifetime ago down in Williamsburg, Virginia, or just happened to catch a glimpse of my unruly blonde hair flowing behind me as I ran past you on some running trail somewhere in the Mid Atlantic states, my familiarity would be just a mirage, a hint, a tiny wisp of a suggestion. You’d maybe feel wistful, as I do, for something or someone you never even met. I feel like that a lot. I’m so often stuck not quite feeling the way other people feel, and I’m not sure if this is a good thing or not. I used to hate it. But I’m 40 years old and there’s something about reaching the autumn of your years that makes you stop caring what people think about you quite so intensely.
You know the kind of person who never quite fits in wherever she goes? Who wears some invisible freak flag that everyone can sense without exactly seeing? That was me until I had one of my breakdowns and then in a moment of desperate clarity, when I was asking God if he would still love me no matter how much of a fuckup I was, I realized that everyone probably feels a little like that, at least if they’re honest about it. And that’s when I realized that even if I were a little crazy, I was no better and no worse than any other woman. There’s peace that comes with knowing that.
Being a little crazy is just one of the things someone might tell you about me. I’m a writer and a runner; a mother and a wife. There’s a bunch of stuff that’s maybe sub-optimal with me: I’m bipolar and have AD/HD, so if my thoughts seem to race or my attention wanders all over the place, just bear with me and we’ll end up wherever we were headed at some point. Some really bad things happened to me when I was a kid. Some of it’s so bad, I’ve spent most my life burying it, and then when it was time to exhume it, I felt like it was going to bury me. Getting raped as a kid will do that to you.
But I’m more than just a rape survivor. I’m many things really, and who I am depends on whatever lens you’re looking through and which voices are loudest in my head. Who you see in me depends in part on who you’re looking for. In some ways, I am everyone and no one all caught up in one big suburban, mediocre not great soccer mama mixing pot. I look like every woman and yet no woman. I always was and probably always will be the girl next door according to my dear husband William.
I think we all want to feel special. We just don’t really want to feel too special. At least that’s always been one of my conundrums, and I have a lot of them. No matter how hard I’ve tried to stay in step with the people around me, I only seem to be able to hear and see the world when it, when I, am tuned to a certain frequency. I’m still trying to figure out the exact nature of this, my own frequency. I’m learning that God must have something to do with it, but I’m not sure. There’s a lot of things I’m not sure about. But I won’t stop trying to figure them all out, just like I won’t stop running until I’m done. I won’t stop until I get there.
That’s the first chapter of my upcoming novel, I Run: A Novel. The elevator speech version of I Run is that it’s the story of a woman who finally stops running from her past, and in the process, finds herself . . . and finds her way back to God. It’s got all the usual stuff I write about in it: addiction; abuse; overcoming all that stuff; love; marriage; lots of sex; spiritual questions asked and sometimes maybe answered; Zander stories; musings on motherhood . . . but at it’s heart, I Run is the story of a woman who finally grew up. I’m still working on the blurb, and I really hate writing them, but what I really wanna say is that I Run is like what would happen if Holden Caulfield was reincarnated as a woman, got a lot of therapy, stopped getting into trouble all the time, fell in love, had children and got scared enough to go looking for God.
I’m crazy enough to write that on the back of a book, so I’m hoping someone talks sense to me about it. In the meantime, thank you so much for your support.
You know the kind of person who never quite fits in wherever she goes? Who wears some invisible freak flag that everyone can sense without exactly seeing? That was me until I had one of my breakdowns and then in a moment of desperate clarity, when I was asking God if he would still love me no matter how much of a fuckup I was, I realized that everyone probably feels a little like that, at least if they’re honest about it. And that’s when I realized that even if I were a little crazy, I was no better and no worse than any other woman. There’s peace that comes with knowing that.
Being a little crazy is just one of the things someone might tell you about me. I’m a writer and a runner; a mother and a wife. There’s a bunch of stuff that’s maybe sub-optimal with me: I’m bipolar and have AD/HD, so if my thoughts seem to race or my attention wanders all over the place, just bear with me and we’ll end up wherever we were headed at some point. Some really bad things happened to me when I was a kid. Some of it’s so bad, I’ve spent most my life burying it, and then when it was time to exhume it, I felt like it was going to bury me. Getting raped as a kid will do that to you.
But I’m more than just a rape survivor. I’m many things really, and who I am depends on whatever lens you’re looking through and which voices are loudest in my head. Who you see in me depends in part on who you’re looking for. In some ways, I am everyone and no one all caught up in one big suburban, mediocre not great soccer mama mixing pot. I look like every woman and yet no woman. I always was and probably always will be the girl next door according to my dear husband William.
I think we all want to feel special. We just don’t really want to feel too special. At least that’s always been one of my conundrums, and I have a lot of them. No matter how hard I’ve tried to stay in step with the people around me, I only seem to be able to hear and see the world when it, when I, am tuned to a certain frequency. I’m still trying to figure out the exact nature of this, my own frequency. I’m learning that God must have something to do with it, but I’m not sure. There’s a lot of things I’m not sure about. But I won’t stop trying to figure them all out, just like I won’t stop running until I’m done. I won’t stop until I get there.
That’s the first chapter of my upcoming novel, I Run: A Novel. The elevator speech version of I Run is that it’s the story of a woman who finally stops running from her past, and in the process, finds herself . . . and finds her way back to God. It’s got all the usual stuff I write about in it: addiction; abuse; overcoming all that stuff; love; marriage; lots of sex; spiritual questions asked and sometimes maybe answered; Zander stories; musings on motherhood . . . but at it’s heart, I Run is the story of a woman who finally grew up. I’m still working on the blurb, and I really hate writing them, but what I really wanna say is that I Run is like what would happen if Holden Caulfield was reincarnated as a woman, got a lot of therapy, stopped getting into trouble all the time, fell in love, had children and got scared enough to go looking for God.
I’m crazy enough to write that on the back of a book, so I’m hoping someone talks sense to me about it. In the meantime, thank you so much for your support.
Ex-lawyer E.L. Farris is a born-again, marathon-running married mother of three who resides in Northern Virginia.
What else do you need to know about me? I talk a lot. I write a lot. I adore my husband. I adore my children. What else? Well, I run. I’ve been running since I turned 14. I started to run then and I’ve been running ever since. Whenever I stop running, I land in a lot of trouble.
I ran through a childhood that could well be described as hell. I ran through major depressive episodes and often teetered one step from the edge of a breakdown. Through running, I held onto my sanity, my sobriety, my life and my belief in God. Each step I take, no matter how physically painful, draws me a shade closer into my better angels.
And the steps have become painful over the years, which is how I earned the nickname Phoenix. Some mornings I feel like I’ve been run over by a bus and the truth is, I was. I survived a collision with a metro bus, and it’s fair to say that the accident messed me up. And yet I keep rising from the pyre of a burning fire and as I run I realize that as long as I hold the Holy Spirit inside me, my spirit will never die.
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