Excerpt:
It crept in as a darkness, a long shadowy dark spiral that pulled Chris downward and kept her there. A darkness that hurt. Burying, suffocating, shadowing all meaning, all hope. A lump in the back of the throat robbing food of all pleasure. A tongue so thick, so heavy, words were impossible, thoughts couldn’t form. Eyes that burned. A body that ached. A mind that wouldn’t slow down, stop, take a break.
She’d felt the darkness before,but never like this, never the inside of a coffin under six feet of heavy, damp earth. In the past, when the darkness came, she played mind games, the perfect death becoming more real than reality itself. But she still functioned. Got up, took a shower, ate breakfast. She put on a smile and went about her daily business. She even ran, but it was never a good run, a mind-clearing run, in that cloud of black…
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The rain hammered the windshield as she headed north on 35th Avenue, a road with a thirty-five mile per hour speed limit that everyone,cops included, ignored, even as the rain dropped like a curtain. Rain and the pulsating intervals of the dim streetlights: shadow-light-shadow-light. A Morse code of darkness. The arterial was undivided. The oncoming traffic came hard and fast. Rain and steamed-up windows in old junkers like her battered Toyota made the limited visibility even worse. She no longer paid attention to the traffic around her, to the rain or the slick streets. She accelerated, unaware, staring towards the golf course at the foot of a steep hill. She accelerated in the precise spot where most drivers had a foot hovering over the brake, coasting, ready to brake at any moment.
The space closed between her and the car in front of her. She accelerated, and in one swift movement, she pulled the wheel to the right. The car took flight, jumping the curb, grazing the concrete base of a tall Native American totem pole and plunging headfirst down a steep embankment into the northwest blackberry brambles that covered the hillside.
The noise, the crunch of metal and glass, shattered the darkness that was Chris’s mind. She felt a sharp pressure on her chest pinning her against the seat as the airbag inflated with the first frontal hit. The car rolled over and over and over again slamming her head back and forth into the side window until it dripped with blood. She rolled for an eternity, and then there was stillness.
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Leave a Comment! Enter to Win an ebook of Running Secrets!
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It’s always a treat to pick up a novel that’s so compelling one can’t put it down. That’s the case with Arleen Williams’ Running Secrets. It’s a great story, captivatingly told, full of secrets, surprises, and complex relationships.
Susan Knox, Author of Financial Basics, A Money Management Guide for Students
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Gorgeous Chris Stevens seems to have everything going for her except the will to live. In this delicately crafted story, Arleen Williams explores with sensitivity the inner life of an emotionally scarred woman—and the secrets that threaten to destroy her. Running Secrets is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand fear of one’s own past.
Laurel Leigh, Author of the blog Dear Writers
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Ms Williams has written a book of secrets—about life, death, family, and resurrection. As she works through the pain of the past, Chris Stevens, the protagonist of Running Secrets, uncovers the deepest of family secrets and in it finds something to live for. Williams is a writer who never gives you what you expect, but what she gives you is better than what you expect. This is a very American novel about race and love, about assimilation and reconciliation. As Chris discovers, you never know where you’ll find your mother.
Jack Remick, Author of Gabriela and the Widow and The California Quartet
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Some things I loved about Running Secrets: this buddy story features women–Williams pairs a young American with a middle-aged African immigrant, the direct discussion of race and identity through the characters and their trials, Chris Stevens’s ascent from despair to creativity, Gemi Kemmal’s transformation from rigid to adventurous, and a little romance for all the protagonists.
Pam Carter, Seattle playwright
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Coming off the success of her memoir, The Thirty-Ninth Victim, Arleen Williams has written Running Secrets, a novel of redemption, rebirth, friendship, and romance. When protagonist Chris Stevens goes wacko and tries to kill herself, helpers appear, bright as angels, to render aid and succor. The story deepens as each helper comes onstage, bringing a feeling of warmth and deep spirit—just in time for Christmas.
Robert J. Ray, Author of The Weekend Novelist and Murdock Tackles Taos
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Buy Running Secrets:
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About the Author:
Arleen Williams is the author of The Thirty-Ninth Victim, a memoir of her family’s journey before and after her 
sister’s murder. She teaches English as a Second Language at South Seattle Community College and has worked with immigrants and refugees for close to three decades. Arleen lives and writes in West Seattle. Running Secrets is her first work of fiction as well as the first book in The Alki Trilogy. To learn more, please visit www.AlkiTrilogy.com.
Arleen Williams holds a M.Ed. from the University of Washington and an English as a Second Language teaching position at South Seattle Community College where she’s worked with immigrants and refugees for almost three decades. Her published works include:
The Thirty-Ninth Victim (2008)
“The Supermarket,” Crosscurrents 2009
“The Promise,” In Our Prime: Empowering Essays by Women on Love Family, Career, Againg and Just Coping (2010)
“The Painting,” Crosscurrents 2010 (Best Prose Award)
“Letting Go,” “Writing at Louisa’s,” and “Spa Day – An excerpt from Moving Mom, a memoir in progress,” Sunday Ink: Works by the Uptown Writers (2010),
“Remembering Dad – An excerpt from Moving Mom, a memoir in progress,” Crosscurrents 2011
“The Painful Legacy of Gary Ridgway,” The Seattle Times (March 4, 2011)
She has has a collection of over forty personal essays at www.arleenwilliams.com.
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