Exclusive: Breaking Waves Chapter 8

What Lies Beneath

Well if this hasn’t been a slap of the thigh, yee-haw exciting weekend I don’t know what is! My proof copy of ‘Breaking Waves’ arrived in the post - and on a Sunday which is very odd. The postal service in the UK is currently…erm…dysfunctional to say the least, and I’ve gone from getting post daily, to very sporadically, and then something arrived on Sunday - a non-delivery day?!

Anyway, it had my publisher’s name ‘Icon Books’ on the cover, and it is…a PROOF copy of Breaking Waves. This is an ‘uncorrected proof’ so it has been structurally and copy edited, but not gone through the proofing process. It has, however, been sent out to journalists and reviewers, and is currently on the shelves of some of my favourite authors! I’m hugely grateful to

Beth Kempton

and

Suzy Walker

for their gorgeous endorsements already, and to

Anna Wharton

Clover Stroud

and

Emma Gannon

amongst others for agreeing to receive a proof copy - the writing community is just so generous.

Here on the Lemon Soul sofa, I continue to share excerpts from Breaking Waves as the months towards publication fly by. I really hope you’re enjoying them so far. I have previously shared excerpts from Chapter 1: The Shape of Water, Chapter 2: The Taste of an Iceberg, Chapter 3: Drowning, Chapter 4: The First Breath, Chapter 5: The Body Keeps the Score, Chapter 6: Tits, Bums, Lumps and Bumps and Chapter 7: Come Dive with Me. Today I would like to introduce you to Chapter 8: What Lies Beneath.

This is for you 🌊💕

Chapter 8: What Lies Beneath

Chapter 8 is all about FEAR…well, really, about overcoming fear. Getting into the open water taps into some really primal limbic system responses, regardless of whether you are of the ‘Jaws’ generation or not. In this excerpt I talk about visceral fear in the open water, during a night swim…in the dark…on Halloween. What was I thinking…?

Even though I swim in open water all the time, swimming in the dark takes me right back to my teenage horror film days where we would gather to watch ‘Friday 13th” (the original one - I am that old) and scream at the terrors hidden within ‘Camp Crystal Lake!’ This chapter explores the power of overcoming fears - rational and ‘irrational’, literal and personal - such as the fear of not being good enough, the fear of failure. It contains the stories of some of the bravest women I have ever come across.

For now, I’m going to take you to that lake swim in the dark, as we approach Halloween. But it’s ok because nobody goes missing when…

I hope you enjoy it, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🫶

[Note: ‘Soft bap’ is one of my besties - you’ll get to know the breadbasket of love that is ‘the baps’ when you read the book ❤️. My nickname is ‘Floury bap’. The ‘SHAC’ is the Surrey Hills Adventure Company where I regularly swim - my happy place and a truly safe space, which will also become familiar to readers!]

“Once Soft Bap and I had become regular lake buddies, we saw a night swim advertised at the SHAC, on Halloween. I had only ever swum in the dark once in my life prior to this, and that was a night dive on the Great Barrier Reef in my early twenties, which was terrifying enough, with oxygen, torches and us all attached together on the same rope. Soft and I had done a kind of ‘night’ swim the year before at another lake we visit, although that was twilight, and there was still full visibility the whole way around. This one was actually going to be in the dark. We arrived excitedly at the lake to see pumpkins carved out on the beach with flames glowing through their jagged teeth.

The course was marked out by faintly glowing buoys and the water and the sky were black. We giggled nervously as we approached the edge, and then we were in. We chatted a bit, and then decided to brave putting our faces down, into the black. I find it almost heart-stoppingly terrifying to put my face into dark water. This has nothing to do with sharks – I don’t remember Jaws attacking anyone at night – but it is a deep, subconscious, primal fear of the unknown. I keep my eyes firmly shut. There is no way on this earth I am opening my eyes into black water, because if I see anything, anything at all, I will probably spontaneously combust. It’s like the fear I feel when I see films of astronauts staring out into space; on the one hand it’s the vast unknowable nothingness, and on the other, it’s the total and utter vulnerability.

Once we had established our ‘heads down’ rhythm in the water, Soft Bap started to pull away from me. I am not just Floury Bap, I am also the slowest bap, the tortoise of our group. At the furthest point away from the shore, Soft was on a different part of the circuit, and I was crossing the middle of the black lake, on my own, at night, on Halloween. The watchful lifeguard had temporarily turned back to shore to attend to something, and that was it. I knew I would never be seen again. Of nothing had I ever been more certain.

I could not open my eyes under or even on the surface of the water, because if I did, I would see the ghoulish white hands reaching for my ankles. My breath started to become rapid and shallow. I could feel my heart rate going through the roof. Terror started to consume me, the limbic brain overtaking any sense of logic whatsoever. I actually started crying a little bit, anticipating the pull from below. In that moment, from the perpendicular side of the lake, Soft Bap intuitively raised her head, looked back at me and shouted: ‘You okay?’ ‘Bit panicky’, I breathed back, ‘but yes’. She waited in situ. I could see her, and more importantly, she could see me. She was watching me, and so the danger had passed.

No one ever disappears in the films when someone can see them.”

Chapter 9 excerpt next…if you like this please do share or even better pre-order Breaking Waves on the links below 🙏

As always,

Love & lemons 💕🍋

Em xx

If you want to learn more about the book publication process (what it’s REALLY like) then you can read all about that on my dedicated Book Deal Diaries series. This includes the ultimate VIDEO MASTERCLASS ‘From Book Inception to Book Deal Moment’. Paid subscribers have access to all of it.

You can pre-order BREAKING WAVES here: