The book has been sent to the publisher!  

It should be available for purchase in a few weeks!!

Walking to Class

Below is another preview of The Graceful Art of Falling- due out Fall 2013!

    Lynchburg didn’t get much snow, which was good for me.  Unfortunately, I didn’t realize how much freezing rain and of course, ice, Virginia gets.  We didn’t have many winter weather days either, classes were only canceled a few times throughout my four year stay.  What was frustrating was that classes would be canceled for an inch of snow, but not when the entire campus was a sheet of ice.

    Ice and I are not friends.  When it was bad enough, I would skip class, sometimes just my morning classes until they could get the sidewalks cleared up.  I don’t know why I went to class at all on one particular day, maybe I had a test, but I can’t remember my reason for trekking out.  I only remember this day because something mortifying happened to me, and at the age of twenty, it may as well have been the end of the world.  

    Our campus had a main section called “the dell.”  This was in the center of many of the main buildings and dorms.  In the center of the dell was a circle of benches and flowers where all the sidewalks which extended from the buildings met.  This convergence of sidewalk was about half way from my dorm to the building I had class in.  Not a long walk by any means.  It was a small campus.  

     I bundled myself up and put on my winter boots which I didn’t often have to use at school. They were heavy duty boots, my parents wouldn’t have it any other way, they had a thick rubber sole with strong grips meant for walking on ice and snow.  I stepped out the front door of the third floor in Tate Hall and noticed that everything was covered in ice.  Wonderful!, I thought.  It was obvious that someone had made a pretty feeble attempt to throw sand down.  I can’t explain my annoyance with places that use sand as a means of melting ice.  Sand gives a little bit of traction, but it quickly is washed (or wiped) away after a few people walk through it.  Being from New England, I know that the only thing that works on ice is SALT. 

    I started to walk to class.  So slowly you would think I was 110 years old.  I realized about ten feet from my dorm steps that walking in the grass would be a better idea.  Grass doesn’t usually form a solid sheet of ice like sidewalks, so I moved into the grass and continued my slow and steady pace.  When I got to the center of the dell I had to cross to the opposite length of sidewalk- there was no way to stay on the grass.  I needed to go straight across and the benches were in a wide circle around the outside.  There was nothing for me to hold on to.  I paused for a second weighing my options.  I decided to go for it.

The book is now in the design and layout phase.  Within 3 weeks the proofs will be done, and the design can be finalized.  So exciting!