Moving forward

For the last two years I’ve been working at the Cumberland Times-News as a police reporter, where the press releases that cross my desk continually remind me why I wrote Sister Of Silence. Violence against women shows no sign of slowing, with more children sexually assaulted by their neighbors or even killed by their parents, and more women being battered in their own homes or even (more and more, it seems) in public during broad daylight. And the cases of teen or adult women who are raped remain an unending problem.

But it’s not just a problem in this small Western Maryland town where I work: it’s a national problem. And that’s why people need to know how to change their behavior, saving themselves and loved ones in the process. So the time for Sister Of Silence has arrived. While I continue working in the newsroom, covering these serious problems, I can only hope it helps others as much as the processes and knowledge it contains helped me.

During the past eighteen months, this site was down, and for that I apologize. Sometimes the daily business of making a living just gets in the way. But now it’s back up and ready to go. Read, enjoy and learn – how living life differently is its own reward!

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My next book, Guilt by Matrimony, about the murder of Aspen socialite, Nancy Pfister, comes out November 17. My memoir, Sister of Silence, is about surviving domestic violence and how journalism helped free me; Cheatin’ Ain’t Easy, now in ebook format, is about the life of Preston County native, Eloise Morgan Milne; The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese (a New York Times bestseller, with coauthor Geoff Fuller) and Pretty Little Killers (also with Fuller), released July 8, 2014, and featured in the August 18 issue of People Magazine.

You can find these books either online or in print at a bookstore near you, at BenBella Books, Nellie Bly Books, Amazon, on iTunes and Barnes and Noble.

For an in-depth look at the damaging effects of the silence that surrounds abuse, please watch my live TEDx talk, given April 13, 2013, at Connecticut College.

Have a great day and remember, it’s whatever you want to make it!

~Daleen

Editor’s Note: Daleen Berry is a New York Times best-selling author and a recipient of the Pearl Buck Award in Writing for Social Change. She has won several other awards, for investigative journalism and her weekly newspaper columns, and her memoir, Sister of Silence, placed first in the West Virginia Writers’ Competition. Ms. Berry speaks about overcoming abuse through awareness, empowerment and goal attainment at conferences around the country. To read an excerpt of her memoir, please go to the Sister of Silence site. Check out the five-star review from ForeWord Reviews. Or find out why Kirkus Reviews called Ms. Berry “an engaging writer, her style fluid and easy to read, with welcome touches of humor and sustained tension throughout.”