Tom Cladis lives in Denver, Colorado. He graduated summa cum laude from The Colorado College in 1978 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration. At 21 years of age, he was not ready to drop anchor, however, so he joined United Airlines as a flight attendant and traveled around the world for five years. Based in Cleveland, he was named Flight Attendant of the Year in 1981, and discovered his passion for writing while sitting around crew lounges and hotels in between flights. He won a short story contest staged by a local magazine with his entry, "Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Flying But Were Afraid To Ask," and his mind was made up.

        A funny thing happened on the way to his writing career, though. As the airlines wrestled with deregulation, he was laid off from United in 1982, coming up one month shy of the seniority needed to avoid the temporary duty interruption. Back in Denver, and in one place for more than four days for the first time in almost five years, a relationship ensued with the girl who would become his wife, and when he was called back to United – on his wedding day, coincidentally enough – he eschewed the wild blue yonder for the button-down world of investment banking. It paid the bills and helped him to raise and provide for his family of five, but he never lost focus on his passion.

        Today, his mind is ever open to the possibility of all things, he steadfastly refuses to accept any "thing of man" as inviolable – including time and gravity – and he believes in only two absolute Truths: God and Love. He still is in investment banking, he is married to the same girl, and he continues to push the envelope, living large on the edge…of cliffs, hot air balloons and airplanes, off of which and out of which he regularly jumps to satisfy his need for the most that life has to offer. And, now, he is ready to jump again – into the career that has beckoned for the past twenty-five years. How To Lift Cars Off Your Face And Other Tips For Living Forever is his first book, yet, only the first chapter – his sail remains permanently set for the far horizon, as he thrills to the splash of seawater across the bow in staying the course of his anchorless journey.

"There is inside each of us a passionflame - and whether or not it consumes us or fires us in the direction of our dreams is purely a matter choice.

And the choice - to succeed or to fail, to walk on water or to sink, to lift cars off our faces or to die - is ours."

- Tom Cladis