Local Author's Book Explores 'Collision Course with Death'

A local woman has published a book about her long and emotionally-trying fight with chronic myeloid leukemia in the hopes that others facing "excruciating pain" and doubt can find persevere after finding strength within themselves and faith.

Life changed almost immediately when Stacey Blake, a winner of the Ronald Reagan Gold Medal for Leadership and two-time New Hampshire Businesswoman of the Year, received her diagnosis in 2001.

What ensued was a series of immeasurable personal challenges, tests, setbacks and a near-death experience, all of which Blake said she was able to process and overcome through prayer and support from loved ones.

Blake was inspired to publish her struggles and triumph in her first book, a memoir titled "A Soft Landing: How One Woman Survived a Collision Course with Death," to help others going through a similar loss of identity.

"What I hoped to achieve in publishing 'A Soft Landing' is that in some small way, tenderhearted hope... is found within anyone who reads my book and is themselves facing fear and crisis," said Blake, who co-founded and ran a popular frozen food company for over 28 years. "Every person has within their own hearts all that they need to survive anything life throws at them. If by reading my story, just one person in deep pain finds their own courage... then I have done well I believe."  

Blake wasn't originally "sure" if she "had the courage or the ability" to write about her trying battle with leukemia and her revelatory near-death experience that Blake said included visitations by angels, although the memoir quickly came to fruition after Blake pitched an idea for a series of children's books to a publishing company.

The company's acquisition editor, impressed with her children's book concepts, asked Blake if she had any other ideas, and encouraged Blake to explore writing the book that became "A Soft Landing."

What started out with hesitance quickly gave way to free-flowing ideas that just "flew" out of Blake "in a voice and with a feeling that felt authentic, smooth and comfortable."

"A Soft Landing" and it's "raw and deeply personal" experiences came together in just six weeks, and sharing early drafts of the work proved to be incredibly "cathartic," according to Blake.

"During my illness with leukemia I had become quite sheltered here at home and I was not sure whether I was physically and/or mentally up to the challenge of actually publishing a work that is so intensely personal in nature," said Blake, whose spirituality is a central theme of her memoir.  "But as the months passed, I allowed one or two family members and friends to read the manuscript.  The response I got was so positive, that in a short period time I grew confident that publishing the book would be a rewarding experience, not only to me, but to others."

"A Soft Landing: How One Woman Survived a Collision Course with Death" is published by Inkwater Press and is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell's Books, and InkwaterBooks.com.