Excerpt from the Manuscript

This is a brief peek at the book I'm working on. This is why you never hear from me:

Somehow, everyone reaches that point in their lives where they realize one very profound and important truth: there’s only so much schnitzel a person can eat. Unfortunately, Elsa—God love her—refused to stop bringing me food until I could convince her that I was once again capable of feeding myself. Back home, this wouldn’t have been a problem. I could’ve just jogged on down to the Grower’s Market and picked up some fresh fruits and veggies and presto: a salad would magically happen.

But Elsa, with her German Voodoo Magic, had somehow figured out my deepest and dirtiest secret. I absolutely cannot cook worth beans. I’m serious. I literally do not even know how to heat up beans from a can. Not that I would want to, because beans are gross.

In Vail, this presented a serious problem. Because, in Vail in the middle of winter, there aren’t any Grower’s Markets, and everything within Vail’s tiny—and horrifyingly expensive—grocery store that was even remotely easy to prepare (besides cheese and bread) was of the “instant food” variety, which meant that it was packed with processed chemicals and preservatives. Which, though delicious, are prone to cause weight gain and subsequent death in lab animals. Not to mention depressed twenty-something women.

This left me with only about thirty restaurants in the area that made whole meals to go—most of which were four-star caliber restaurants where a single plate was, yikes, upwards of forty quid. The other options were bars-slash-restaurants that came complete with huge crowds of people.

Being a newly committed hermit as I was, I found myself struggling between a desire to not die of starvation and an almost stronger desire to not meet any new people, ever again.