Enjoying the Calm Before the Storm

I am about half way through the editing phase with my manuscript The Killer Trail. As part of that process, I have been working to “get inside the head” of the main character Chris Ryder. Specifically, trying to imagine what life would have been like for Chris in the days before his fateful encounter with Ray Owens. In other words, the calm before the storm.

Chris was running on a trail in the moments before discovering the cell phone. At that time he was preoccupied with his crumbling marriage and job burn-out. In fact, it was because he had stayed behind at work to support a patient that he ended up arriving at the trail late in the day.

Running on that trail, Chris would have thought his life had hit an all-time low. But it was about to get a whole lot worse. Picking up the cell phone and attempting to reunite it with its owner would set him on a deadly collision course with Ray Owens, a man determined to kill Chris. There’s nothing like the threat of death to bring life into focus, he thinks to himself when he fully realizes the gravity of his situation.

That got me thinking about my own life and how easy it is to become preoccupied with day to day things that in the bigger scheme really aren’t that important. The reality is that life is fragile, which makes it all the  more precious. Instead of getting stuck in the past or caught up with grand schemes for the future, it’s probably a better call to focus on life right here-right now. Of course that’s easier said than done, but awareness is the first step in the right direction.

At least that’s what Chris Ryder tells me!