About
Della was born in South Dakota and raised in the vastness and beauty of Montana on a farm. When she longed for the big city life, she moved to Texas where she attended college and received a PhD in nursing. When not nursing people back to health you can find Della huddled over her Mac writing the stories that have occupied her mind for so many years, or traveling with her best friends, the NOLA’s, riding bikes across the Golden Gate bridge or exploring botanical gardens. She is the proud mother of a champion triathlete, two aging dogs and 1 grand-cat. She loves to garden, run 5k’s and spend time with her friends. Della also is a hopeless romantic and a persistent optimist! She is a fanatic follower of Walking Dead, but scares herself by reading Stephen King. Della has admittedly confessed to her coffee addiction and swears that her two hour coffee crawl while on vacation in Seattle –was the best two hours of her life!
Learning to Breathe Fire: The Rise of CrossFit and the Primal Future of Fitness
Description
<p><b>The absorbing, definitive account of CrossFit's origins, its explosive grassroots growth, and its emergence as a global phenomenon.</b><br /> <br />One of the most illuminating books ever on a sports subculture, <i>Learning to Breathe Fire </i>combines vivid sports writing with a thoughtful meditation on what it means to be human. In the book, veteran journalist J.C. Herz explains the science of maximum effort, why the modern gym fails an obese society, and the psychic rewards of ending up on the floor feeling as though you're about to die. <br /> <br />The story traces CrossFit’s rise, from a single underground gym in Santa Cruz to its adoption as the workout of choice for elite special forces, firefighters and cops, to its popularity as the go-to fitness routine for regular Joes and Janes. Especially riveting is Herz’s description of The CrossFit Games, which begin as an informal throw-down on a California ranch and evolve into a televised global proving ground for the fittest men and women on Earth, as well as hundreds of thousands of lesser mortals. <br /> <br />In her portrayal of the sport's star athletes, its passionate coaches and its “chief armorer,” Rogue Fitness, Herz powerfully evokes the uniqueness of a fitness culture that cultivates primal fierceness in average people. And in the shared ordeal of an all-consuming workout, she unearths the ritual intensity that's been with us since humans invented sports, showing us how, on a deep level, we're all tribal hunters and first responders, waiting for the signal to go all-out. </p>
Story Behind The Book
The Spirit Warriors story evolved from a short story I wrote for a college English class in the early 1990's. The professor read it, loved it and asked me to stay after class and discuss it. During this discussion, he told me a "dark" story like mine that was written for older children would be unmarketable and unsaleable. The story kept floating around in my mind. Finally, J.K. Rowling, Stephenie Meyers and others stepped forward with amazing "dark" stories to create a new genre called Young Adult. The time was finally right for my book. I wrote book 1 in two weeks. It took another year and 1/2 and about a 150 queries all with an "not interested" for me to find a publisher. I found Booktrope and it's all history. :)
