Sara Niles's Blog: Sara Nile's Blog

Books and Bio

https://youtu.be/DQCia6YXW58

Mega Authors

There are bestsellers in books, and there are epic, mega-bestsellers: books that have sold over one hundred million copies. The authors who have had the distinction of being included among this very elite group, as mega-authors, are few.

The book by author Agatha Christie that was published in 1939, And Then There Were None reportedly sold over one hundred million copies worldwide; which is no small feat considering the fact the prolific Christie has reportedly sold over four billion books worldwide, making Agatha Christie one of the most prolific authors of all time. Christie wrote only bestsellers in rapid fire motion that would dizzy the average author, in fact, even artificial intelligence (AI) would have trouble besting her enormous output. But back to the world of mere mortals in which authors are enamored by their success if they reach the pinnacle of selling one hundred million copies of anything at all. Of course, the Classics have a defined advantage over contemporary authors because they never go out of style, they sell forever, whereas the contemporary author has a window that closes with the passing of time.

Classic Books that have sold over one hundred million copies include The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien and A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens; both English authors whose long running sales dated back to the nineteenth century, which of course, gave them both a good head start.

Since the dawn of the second millennium, there have been noteworthy authors who may eventually eclipse the former prolific champions for the prize of mega-authors; to name a few:

Barbara Cartland (1 billion), Danielle Steele (800,000,000), and JK Rowling (450,000,000)
according to : USA Today ,followed by Dean Koontz, Stephen King (350,000,000), and Louis L’Amour (330,000,000), with a pretty long list of authors who have sold over one hundred million books per volumes of workhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_... however, there remain two distinct authors who are set far apart from the crowd early in the game: Suzanne Collins and E.L. E.L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey and Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games topped the list in 2012 of book sales: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by...
AS of 2012 the Hunger Games reportedly outsold JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series with over fifty million copies sold worldwide. http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by...
Wow! Now that is a lot of book sales…but wait, Fifty Shades of Grey by Suzanne Collins has sold over seventy million copies, according to the Wall Street Journal in its March 26, 2013 issue:http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/S...
The latter two authors, American author Suzanne Collins and English author E.L. James, are epic mega-authors whose names will live long in the annals of literature; but wait.
Two mega-sellers were just around the bend, amazingly both were memoirists who were married to each other, Barack Obama and Michele Obama, both topping the charts quickly, both memoirs, selling almost a million copies the first day of sales. Becoming by Michele Obama and the eight hundred page A Promised Land by Barack Obama broke records as memoirs and as ‘books’, a powerful combination. Imagine that, nonfiction sells.
Now...what about

Where The Crawdads Sing: Review

I was intrigued by the title from the beginning, so after having devoured this book with an ravenous literary appetite, I was pleased to see how poetic the title was to the content.
The story is fiction, yet it rings true in real life in a haunting sort of way. The main characters were well developed, adding flavor as the power of the story built upon itself. There is a saga of underlying abuse and societal rejection that is sadly common in truth as well as fiction. The child who gains our pity at first, will later capture our hearts.
If I reveal any details it may ruin your experience; if you are a serious reader, not enchanted by trivial simplistic monologues, you will love this book.
Where the Crawdads Sing is an Original.

REVIEW: The Four Winds, Kristin Hannah

The Four Winds is similar to the classic style of one of my favorite books, The Grapes of Wrath by John Grisham, even including the same themes and motifs; yet it is also original in-its-own-right, not a copycat version of another book. It is also relevant to the times and the people of today, especially today when the entire world is in chaos. Although it is a work of beautiful fiction that makes the characters live and breathe right before out eyes, it is also a book of universal truth whose human virtues, weaknesses, and struggles, as old as humanity itself.

The depth of the story lends insight into the psychological makeup of humans as social creatures in need of validation and love from people who matter. The main characters were common people, suffering from the ravages of disease, natural disasters, loss, and betrayal. Every human on earth can identify with the emotional journey of the main characters, although most humans will never encounter the same struggles.

Triumphant, and resplendent, painful, and inspirational, The Four Winds is a read you may never forget. I have added it to the short-list of my top all-time favorite books. If you love great writing and realistic characters, you will love this book.

Bad Date-Bad Life

The average 'bad relationship is one in which the partners are incompatible in enough areas to cause each other more pain than pleasure. Divorces, breakups, and the parting of ways usually solve the problem; however, there are relationships that cannot be quantified by mere mortal descriptions like 'good' or 'bad', some are LETHAL. Relationships with potential killers leave the partner 'Unalive', when the relationship ends. IN a small subsection of toxic relationships, they leave a trail of victims behind them.

Could this pain and misery be avoided? Is it possible that there are Red Flags that let you know when a potential partner may become a Villainous Victimizer?

The answer is 'Yes', toxic people leave a trail of clues, and exhibit Red Flags, no matter how subtle, are indications that you are dealing with a con artist, a fake person, a Charmer, A Malignant Covert Narcissist in Sheep's clothing.

Every Toxic partnership begins with a First DATE; so Are You Dating a Monster?
Are You Dating a Monster?
ONLY Available on Amazon Kindle Vellla currently

Review: Invisible Child

Set in one of the most dangerous and difficult cities in the world to be homeless and poor, Dasani Coates and her family fight to survive.
the author uses a hybrid writing style that is part biographical and part journalistic; packed with accurate details that broaden our view, yet personal with a human touch. The story told is more than just a story about a family, it is revelatory of problems that erode the underbelly of society, like a slow rot. Although this is an entertaining read, if is also educational, and psychologically insightful. There are reasons why people are stuck in generational cycles of poverty and abuse, which spread beyond the family systems. Each system within our society, no matter how large or small, impacts the whole. One weak link in the societal chain, weakens society.
Urie Bronfenbrenner theorized that no individual personality is formed in a vacuum but is affected by the microsystems and all the social systems outside the family. The author reaches out into the political systems where policy originate and returns to the small spaces of one family to reveal exactly how legislation and control, affects the most vulnerable of the poor. The primary focus is within the Coates family wherein the invisible becomes visible as humans with loves and ambitions uniquely theirs. We see the poorest of the poor, the homeless as nonentities with no resolve or ambition, with is not true. The struggle is the greatest when all the odds are against you, when the hill you climb is covered with mud and the then it rains.
HYBRID: The style of writing is split between the creation of a personal narrative that connects the reader to the Coates family, to a descriptive analogy set against a historical backstory. The generational dysfunction that is fueled and maintained by poverty and the lack of resources, especially in a city as large as New York, sets the perfect stage for understanding what a child like Dasani Coates experienced growing up poor and homeless. Hope is cultivated in the Coates children, but it hangs by a thread. The family is under attack from all sides, and the core anchors are two broken parents who struggle with addiction. The odds are stacked against the family from the inside and from all arenas. The question that permeates the story from beginning to end, is will the large family survive? Will Dasani, our real-life hero, survive?
to a descriptive narrative of the societal and the political ambitions that impact the lives of the Coates family, and the millions of other families rooted in poverty.
Society viewed through the lens of the Coates Family:
The failings of a system as seen through the lives of a child exposes the weaknesses of children’s protective services in a large city that works according to the devices of politicians. Generations of family struggle is lost because the system designed to strengthen families, weakens them instead. The life story of a young, gifted Black girl is told through the broader lens of the family structure that produced her; through the strength of the family bond, Dasani is rooted, although the family is homeless more times than not. Most people never think about the specific degree of stress that is case upon homeless families through the psychological turmoil, and anxiety that pervades every day of their lives; nor could the average person comprehend what a homeless child experiences. Through the pages of this book that was the result of a years long study by journalist Andrea Elliot, we can see through the lens of one Invisible Child: Dasani Coates.

It is s different world, a social underworld that Dasani lives in, with different rules of survival than the normal society that exists aboveground; but it is the rules of this society which govern the family. The homeless are viewed as weak and helpless with no strong ties to society, which is disproven via the story of Dasani.

The writing focuses on the plight of one family and the fortitude of the central figure, young Dasani. The overwhelming obstacles and pressures encountered by the family as a unit, is powerful enough to destroy the family bonds. The Coates family fights to survive while living under the radar, like an invisible tribe that society has forgotten.

Review of 'WILL' by Sara Niles

Will Smith is internationally well known as possibly THE greatest Movie Star of all time; definitely one of the best and most successful. The television series The Fresh Prince was partly autobiographical in context; however nothing in The Fresh Prince denotes the true backstory of family strength and unity amid abuse. The internal conflict Will Smith portrays throughout the book is the secret to his fame. Nothing drives a person like conflict and a desire to rise above it; especially when that conflict is your life.

The story Willthe perfect title for the book and description of his life. The humor within the pages is sublimated underneath the pain. The pain is what created one of the world's funniest humans, and one of the world's best actors. The earliest memories of Will was in his role as family comedian and actor, which is the epitome of Dysfunctional Family Systems in which Roles are assigned for the sake of family survival.

Educational and informative, but always entertaining, because Will IS the entertainer extraordinaire. Within the travels of Will Smith, we will meet some of the greatest humans every to walk the earth, and see them through the eyes of The Fresh Prince of Belair-and later through the eyes of merely 'Will'. The life story is Will is a Quest, you will find; like the Quest of Homer's The Odyssey

The story travels through unusual territories and terrains, provides insights into human nature, and culminates with the seeking behavior that all humans engage in: the search for happiness and inner peace.

Did Will Smith find himself? You

Extreme Child Abuse

Extreme Child Abuse produces Extreme Distortions in Child Development.

I am Sara Niles. I worked for a decade with trauma victims and their children.

The Boy Broken was one of the worst cases I encountered.
Available Free for two days. Taken from Amazon:

Memoir Narrative
Extreme Child Abuse

Children who are raised like savage animals often act like savage animals.
Reactive Attachment Disorder

Boy Broken was excerpted from my Memoir, Out of the Maelstrom, and expanded upon to form a standalone narrative. The setting for the story is work at a Domestic Violence Agency, in the Domestic Violence Shelter for Victims of Abuse. In the small town in which I lived; the hundred-year-old two-story house was called ‘The Battered Women’s Shelter.’
I am Sara Niles, and I spent most of my life, either experiencing abuse firsthand and researching dysfunctional behaviors and dynamics while living the aftermath of abuse. I escaped from a dangerous abuser and disappeared in 1987; I later became a Domestic Violence Trainer, Counselor and Expert.

During the decade that I worked with abuse victims, I encountered the most damaged children imaginable; this is one of those stories: Boy Broken.

From the 'Flower Bed of Eden'-to Hell

Arkansas, 1962
"You are living on the Flower Bed of Eden" my Cousin Andrew said to me when I was five years old.

Arkansas, February 13, 1987

Thunder rattled the windowpanes two stories high, and lightning split the sky; it was as if the whole world was in turmoil that night. My nerves were keyed up as tight as piano strings, and in a sudden moment of stillness and silence it felt as though my heartbeat was amplified ten times over. He was over a hundred pounds greater than I, nearly a foot taller, and I knew he could move his muscled body into unbelievable sprints. Rain started falling in torrents, while the storm raged outside. I was not afraid of the storms of nature; it was the storm inside this night that I knew I might not survive.
Anticipation was so great that I wanted to scream at him to get it over with, and true to my expectation he lunged for me, and my body did not disappoint me, I flew down the stairs two at a time in my bare feet. He stalled for mere seconds to enjoy his pronouncement of a death sentence upon me:
“I AM GOING TO KILL YOU—YOU GOOD FOR NOTHING BITCH—STONE DEAD!” He screamed.
It was February 13, of the year 1987, the night that I disappeared into a February rainstorm with five children and no place to go. I was twenty-nine years old.
FROM: Torn From the Inside Out

The Story of Sara Niles

Chapter 1: The Garden of Eden
Sara Niles

From: Torn From the Inside Out

Thunder rattled the window- panes two stories high and lightning split the sky; it was as if the whole world was in turmoil that night. My nerves were keyed up as tight as piano strings, and in a sudden moment of stillness and silence it felt as though my heartbeat was amplified ten times over. He was over a hundred pounds greater than I, nearly a foot taller, and I knew he could move his muscled body into unbelievable sprints. Rain started falling in torrents, while the storm raged outside. I was not afraid of the storms of nature; it was the storm inside this night that I knew I might not survive.

Anticipation was so great that I wanted to scream at him to get it over with, and true to my expectation he lunged for me, and my body did not disappoint me, I flew down the stairs two at a time in my bare-feet. He stalled for mere seconds to enjoy his pronouncement of a death sentence upon me:
“I AM GOING TO KILL YOU—YOU GOOD FOR NOTHING BITCH—STONE DEAD!” He screamed.
It was February 13, of the year 1987, the night that I disappeared into a February rainstorm with five children and no place to go. I was twenty-nine years old.

Many people asked of me since that day, many ‘whys’ and I gave many answers. It takes a lot of ‘why’s’ to make a life, mine being no exception. Maya Angelou said ‘you can’t know who I am until you know where I have been’; until you know the circumstances and people who contributed to the making of me, you cannot know me. We all are complicated mixes of many other people and life events. We are all of everything that has ever happened to us. If we suddenly got amnesia, we would cease to exist as who we were, except in the memory of others. My pain is me, and thus my life that once was, is what made me now.

I am the hungry little girl who sat in the sand over fifty years ago waiting to be rescued by an ancient old man, I am Sara Niles, and this is my story.
***
The Deep South, 1957
***
I was born in the bowels of the South where willow trees hang low over ponds and creeks surrounded by the lush growth of woody fern. My beginnings were in a place where knotted old oaks twisted their knurled boughs upwards, their majestic leafage allowing slithers of light to penetrate the shadowy forest floors to lend peeks upon the backs of huge Diamondback rattlesnakes; their gargantuan size owing to seldom meeting the sight of the eyes of man, if ever at all. I was born where the bottomland hoarded teems of wild boars known to rip hunting dogs open from end to end, and where the narrow little graveled roads twisted and wound their way past humble mail boxes, usually the only evidence of the habitations miles into the forest. These humble country homes were usually only accessible by traveling down dirt, tire-rutted roads with strips of ragged grass running down the middle, like frazzled, green ribbon. This was oil country, so oil wells were scattered every few miles, their slow prehistoric movements signaling that the owners were receiving money. Neighbors lived far apart on beautiful little farms or in ragged shacks, with a Cadillac and a television, or neither plumbing nor electric power lines. Depending upon which neighbor you were, you had plenty or nothing at all.

My mother had nothing at all, except seven hungry mouths to feed. She was by everyone’s opinion an exceptionally beautiful woman. Her mother before her was a French white woman from New York, and her father was a black and Indian man; born, bred and still living in the same area. I never met my maternal grandmother, I strongly suspected that she mated with my grandfather on a purely business level. A business that is considered to be one the oldest vices, the one I have to thank for my very existence. My mother was a prostitute. I was an accident she had with a client, a rich white oilman who found her little shack a convenient stop on his trips from town, and she found in him food for her children. Things may have been different for my mother, if a white man, living in a racist time, had not shot her first husband in the back for the unforgivable crime of stealing gas- gas that he swore to pay for that evening when he left the billet woods. It was a time when racism ruled, a ‘cold war’ between blacks and whites established the climate, and therefore no trial ever took place.

It was the year 1957, a date that became a famous marker in the racial history of conflict between Blacks and Whites; when The Little Rock Nine were escorted to school by Federal troops under the order of President Eisenhower to counteract the attempt of Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus to prevent it. Southern racial tensions produced a supreme irony: Federal troops against the National Guard. This visible strife between state and nation was one of the evidences of the racial turmoil of the times. The line of demarcation between Blacks and Whites was decided by color, and I was born on the centerline. My bright light skin marked me as a product of the enemy, the White man in the black community. Black women drawled sweetly to my mother that my long wavy brown hair was so pretty in tones meant to be a reproof to her. I was unacceptable, too white to be black… too black to be white.
We lived in what our relatives fondly called ‘the old homestead’. It was the home built by my great- grandparents, a newly freed slave by the name of Henry Howell and his wife, a full-blooded Crow Indian bearing the European name Charlotte. Henry and Charlotte had twelve children, each born in the front room of this now dilapidated old house. Great old cottonwoods rattled their leaves noisily in the wind in front of the house and massive oaks guarded the back, dwarfing the little outhouse with its pitiful ‘croker sack’ door, made of rough burlap. The exterior of the house bore the aged gray look of hardwood that had never been painted in its century of withstanding the pelting rains and the great extremes of heat and cold. It was a tough, neglected old house, abandoned to my mother to house us in rent-free. She could ill afford to care for the ancient structure that needed attention so badly, or us. The job of watching and caring for us fell to my oldest sister, Francine. She was thirteen years old at my earliest remembrance of her, my brother was twelve, and the rest of our ages ran closely behind. I was 3 1/2 years old.

The house had three entrances. The front and back doors we children were allowed to use freely, but the side door facing the setting sun was off limits to us. It was the ‘business’ door, the door that the strange men used; some used it so often they even knew our names. On a rare occasion when my mother was absent, I was molested by one of these men while the noon-ish sun shone through the window. I knew nothing of what he was doing, he sounded friendly. Something was wrong, I felt some odd shame and my heart pounded with relief when my tigress of a sister burst through the door demanding that the ‘no good son of a dog’ take his filthy hands off me in a voice strong with authority and rage that was strange to hear in the voice of a child. He unhanded me without a word and fled as all my siblings ran up to flank her in the ranks. I remembered that incident, though I never once mentioned it again until three decades passed. I merely held my head self-consciously tilted to one side when I walked.

Nothing stood out in my early childhood worth remembering until the fateful day when the world kindly changed for me. My great uncle and aunt lived on a farm a mile’s walk through a wooded trail. Robert Howell was born in eighteen eighty-three to Henry and Charlotte Howell in the very same curtain-less room that my siblings and I slept in, on the pallets and old mattresses. Although my mother was treated as an outcast in the family - never visited and quietly talked about by the conventional ones who may have feared their heavenly reservations may have been cancelled if they dared come near her- my uncle Robert visited us daily. He cared little for convention and hated hypocrisy; he would not permit either to stifle his compassion for us. We looked for uncle’s visits just as faithfully as we expected the sun to rise, and just as faithfully, he always came. I never remember his coming unheralded by our squeals of delight because we knew he had candy or fruit, if not both. Our yard’s stingy spattering of trampled grass wore a distinct trail that led to the east corner where a roof-covered water well crested the top of a steep, red clay hill. Uncle Robert’s head would always appear first, and on hot days his hatless bald head would bloom at the top of that hill prettier to us than any flower, because he not only brought us gifts, he luxuriated us in his time.

End of Sample
Read and Share
Torn From the Inside Out