HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY.
This would be mum, me and baby brother (little sister still just a gleam in the parental eye) circa 1968, Natal south coast, Africa.
We’ve come a long way, and it’s been a good ride. Thanks mom. You remain my earthly judge, a guiding star.
Here’s to mothers.
Methinks I should finally let the shoes go. Holes and all. They did the Honolulu Marathon, and they did the Victoria Marathon, and all the training in-between — and that’s asking a lot of a pair of runners. We traveled good roads, hot roads, snowy roads and dusty roads. We strapped on Yaktraks and snowshoes, we suffered and triumphed. And learned a ton. Now it’s time for a new season, new roads. Change.
So why is it so hard to let them go?
You think a new pair might make me run a little faster?
My news today, as reported in Publishers Marketplace:
Fiction:
Women’s/Romance: THE HEART OF A RENEGADE author Loreth Anne White’s two new books, to Susan Litman at Harlequin, by Jennifer Jackson at the Donald Maass Literary Agency
My two most favorite people today: Jennifer Jackson, my brand new agent; and Susan Litman my fabulous editor who rescued me from the slush pile a few years ago, and who has stuck by me ever since.
My Path: 7 km Valley Trail to Rainbow Lake.
My Beat: Mary Chapin Carpenter — I Feel Lucky.
Going, going … gone. The ice on our valley-bottom lakes has melted, but there remains hard-packed snow on my Lost Lake trails. Green-up is otherwise fast and fierce. I had a hummingbird at my window today, and I swear if you sit still long enough … you can watch the budding leaves unfurl. Or perhaps even hear them grow. The energy in the earth is tangible. I hope it translates into my writing …
They’re out and about now. And I find myself jumping at any dark blot that sifts into my peripheral vision as I run my woodland trails. I wonder if my heart will always quicken at a black spot in the landscape now, my body somehow registering for flight before my consciousness tells me it’s a rock, or an old rotting stump. I’ve become conditioned in some primal survival sort of way — in the same way my entire body stills if I catch sight of a long wiggly thing on the trail, before my brain actually processes what it is — an old shoelace, a piece of string, or common garter snake. That indelible response comes from childhood. I grew up with snakes — nasty ones that could take your life.
It drives home just how much we are all a composite of our past experience. I also grew up with some nasty cops during the apartheid era. I still, irrationally, grow anxious at the sight of a yellow van (the kind the police took people away in never to be seen again). My Zulu nanny used to threaten me with this possibility whenever I misbehaved — the cops were the evil tokoloshe, the monster under the bed come to spirit you away. Whoda thunk a bright yellow vehicle could instill fear for life 
As a writer I find this rich territory. Backstory shapes character, and it drives current reaction. I’m thinking about this as I try to feed my character’s past into my story while still moving the plot forward. Perhaps it’s as simple as a heart stalling at the sight of a yellow van.
Welcome to my slice of life in B.C.’s wild and wet coast mountains. This ’running commentary’ offers a small window – often visual — into the life of a romance writer, on the run. Or on skis …
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