ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen Mitchell lives in a remodeled Victorian in Helena, Montana with Beverly, his lifelong companion. He has been a sales trainer, Wall Street trader, builder/developer/contractor, cowboy, skier and sailor. A lifetime student of the human condition and a professional neurotic, Mr. Mitchell is one part novelist, one part investigative journalist; a teller of wild-ass tales, most of which are true.

The Gift of the Pain

Every day of my life the need to write had burned in me, an ache so deep it hurt…and every day I ignored it, choosing instead to immerse myself in my addiction. My drug of choice at the time was skiing.

Short skis were new and everybody was using them to get airborne. The day was gray and frozen and the three boys had gone far to the left of the main runs where they could shoot the mountain and jump the cat track without getting their lift tickets pulled. The one that hit me was out of control and doing about 25mph. Among other things, the impact nearly broke my back; an injury that would lie dormant for decades, waiting for the time when I would need it most.

In the years that followed I would make and lose three fortunes: one in television syndication, one in the building and development business and a third trading the markets. I would eventually make the money back and keep it, but the effort almost killed me…and still I kept my writing at bay, promising myself that someday I would get around to it.

By the time I sold my last business, I had used up my knees, mountain biked most of the deserts and single-track of the West, and sailed and scuba dove half the oceans of the world. I was desperate to find a new sport. I had always wanted to be a cowboy…and that is what I became. My cutting trainer was a Mormon from Utah and I went to live among those good-hearted, closed-minded people, working cows with the best and the worst of them. With the fervor of a practiced addict, I substituted horses for skiing and the years flew by while my word processor gathered dust.

Then one day I took the horses away from myself by activating my old back injury. It erupted, it flared; the pain flowed into my ass like molten lava and wouldn’t stop. For the next year I was in so much agony that all I could do was sit. I sat in front of my computer. And that is how “A Cure To Die For” got written.

I still didn’t get it. I had economic security, I had written what many say is a thrilling and important novel. So why was I still crippled with pain; why did my butt, my sciatica, hurt so much I could barely walk? And then I got the gift; the reason I had created the injury so long ago that had flared up now with such a vengeance. It was so I would sit down long enough to write my book. If I could have gotten out of my chair, I would never have become the thing I was meant to be: a writer. In the months that followed, with the help of some amazing non-traditional healers, the pain left my body. Miracles can sometimes be a pain in the ass.