Author

Racing the Clouds was born in Dec. 2001, when Sunshine MacGregor Ferrell opened her diaries from the Continental Divide Trail and started to dream. Day by day, she reconstructed her entire journey, spinning streams-of-consciousness into shareable words. Every sensation of downpouring rain, majestic sunlight, and human conversations needed to be so tangible that readers could feel themselves hiking the trail, in real time.

It took seven long years for Sunshine to complete her first draft of Racing the Clouds. She was qualified to pioneer a new breed of non-fiction, but this groundbreaking trilogy stretched her far beyond the limits of normal book writing.

Sunshine’s interest in storytelling began at UCLA, where she studied Creative Writing in conjunction with earning a B.S. in Atmospheric Sciences. During her senior year of college, she contributed a variety of freelance articles to Windsurf magazine, building a resume that eventually landed her a job screening manuscripts for a small book publisher. The next decade saw her career shift into video production, but she did not stop writing. While directing live music videos and documenting corporate events, she fortified her writing chops by drafting three movie screenplays and a vegetarian cookbook. Nobody (including Sunshine herself) could have foreseen that all these pursuits were going to get shelved, when a certain book would persuade the young woman and her boyfriend to backpack across America twice within three years. 

After returning home from the Continental Divide Trail, Sunshine got right to work drafting Racing the Clouds. She expected to write daily for, perhaps, one solid year. Her hope was to finish the book within two years. Instead, she spent seven long years just completing the first draft, whose vision grew from one book into a trilogy of three. Meantime, fresh opportunities arose which necessarily slowed the book’s progress. For instance, Sunshine got married and had two kids. She also found herself spearheading a World Fusion band, which meant gigging weekly, composing original songs, and producing two music albums, while also establishing herself as a solo Scottish bagpiper. Eventually, Sunshine’s friends and family began to worry that she might never finish Racing the Clouds. 

Here, it becomes relevant to mention author Robert Moor’s observation about long-distance backpackers rarely writing epic books. He points out that few fitness fanatics are eager to sit around all day, typing, like most bestselling authors have done for years. Sunshine experienced this clash firsthand, when Racing the Clouds grew into a twenty-year project. The worst phase was watching Cheryl Strayed’s book Wild spark a thru-hiking frenzy, long after Racing the Clouds could have been finished, and long before any of the books were ready for publication.

Sunshine often felt ready to burst from waiting. Fortunately, one upside was that 20-years of ripening helped Racing the Clouds grow sweeter than anything this author could have produced in her thirties (when she did the hike) or in her forties (if she had published the trilogy sooner). After successfully funding the books on Kickstarter, now this author is proud to deliver some happy news.

Book 1 has finally been published. Book 2 will appear shortly after Christmas. Sunshine is having her day in the sun. And, best of all, Racing the Clouds has finally solidified into a splendid celebration of weather, people, places, and serendipity.