This Week's Featured Author: Sara Niles

Sara Niles

Sara Niles is the author’s pen name, chosen for Torn From the Inside Out, The Journey, Out of the Maelstrom, the three books of The Torn  Trilogy. Not only did Sara Niles live the TORN experience, Niles spent almost a decade, obtaining the necessary degrees, training and experience to enrich the pages of Torn with psychological accuracy, and the depth of emotion needed to convey a powerful story. Niles has also been a longtime domestic violence Trainer and Counselor for a nonprofit domestic violence and sexual assault prevention and intervention agency, and served a brief stint as a drug and alcohol counselor. 

Niles loves music, athletics and art, especially the music of the Greek composer Yanni, and the German composer, Hans Zimmer, whose bold and flowing compositions provided the inspirational background for Niles as she wrote the Torn Trilogy while wearing headphones.

Sara's Book: Torn From the Inside Out (The Torn Trilogy)

In 1987, Sara Niles was forced to flee for her life with five small children, during a cold February thunderstorm.

Excerpt from 'The Beginning'

The room was small, and the courtroom-grey walls created a slight echo, or perhaps it was just my imagination. I had to go so far back into my mind that the present environment closed in on me. Of the five people in the room Kathryn Shipp was the most imposing: she was 6 feet tall, stood military straight with sharply cropped blue-black hair. and blue eyes that were intense. She needed everything from me, she had to have the ‘feel’ of the whole story, not just the facts, so she demanded more than just a story, and she wanted a recreation of my life. Kathy Shipp was one of the best attorneys in the state and her client was a domestic abuse victim who had snapped and killed her abuser, so Kathy Shipp needed me to show her why a good little girl could empty a gun on a man with his back turned. I knew why she did it, I knew what she felt, and if it took revealing my soul to help, I would. So I went back to the images of my beginnings and the people and events that shaped my life to make me who I am. There were many forces that forged me, some gentle and kind, and some harsh and violent; there were also many people who contributed to the final product that I call me.

In the process of my evolution, I became a victim of domestic war, an emotional casualty for a major portion of my life, entwined, entrapped and emotionally involved, until I learned how to become free. Freedom has never been easily gained and has often come at high cost throughout history, but one thing I will always know is freedom is worth every fight, and all pain. 

In every life there is a timeless and unforgettable minute or day that will be forever etched into our mind’s memory. I have unforgettable memories that are so vivid that I see them in Technicolor, and I hear them with surround sound. Long after I am dead, I believe, I will remember. Two of those memories were the days of my escape to freedom…twice.

 Get Sara's Books