Meet Christine Meunier

by Linda Benson

Christine is a young horsewoman from Australia. She's already had a varied and broad career with horses, as well as authoring (for now) three books about them. She also has a wonderful website called EQUUS http://equus-blog.com/ where she not only highlights careers with horses, but does horse book reviews and blogs about horse-related information in general. So much talent and diversity, and I'm  happy to share with you her books (below.) But first, in Christine's own words, please read how a very close call with a horse almost caused her to lose everything. She is, indeed, a survivor.

One of my most favourite things to do with my time is writing.  One of my favourite topics to write about is horses.  I’ve been blessed so far with an interesting and varied career with horses and have found that being able to write about what I’ve done, seen and dreamt of doing has formed into stories to inform others.

This is how my debut novel Horse Country was formed and finally released (after over 10 years of writing!) in July of 2013.

More recently, it has been my pleasure to create a horse series for pre-teens and release the first two in this series this month!  The Free Rein series focuses on three 10 year old girls who are horse crazy, but don’t yet have their own horses.  As well as exploring horse care and learning to horse ride, it looks at the Christian faith.

Over my horse career I have been blessed to work with racehorses, stud horses, riding school horses and trail and endurance horses.  My travels with horses have been interstate in Australia, over to Ireland and France and then on to South Africa.  These opportunities to travel and learn about many different breeds and disciplines have helped me to further create realistic situations that arise with people learning about horses.

In July of 2012 I experienced something unusual whilst working with racehorses in my local town.  I went to work at 5.30 on a Saturday morning at by 7.30 that same morning, my husband received a call that he needed to come to the hospital.  I had been kicked in the head by a horse and was unconscious.  I was then induced in a coma, flown a few hours away to a hospital in Melbourne and in a coma for the next four days.

This experience is one that I am still recovering from – my memory isn’t as good as it should be, and my stamina to work for extended periods of time (even a full day’s work) aren’t yet back to what they were prior to my accident.  This accident has shown me how much I still adore horses, working with them and writing about them.

Although it has been a setback for my career, it has provided me time and opportunity to invest in writing about this incredible animal.  For this, I am extremely grateful.  Horse Country was able to be finished and published because I had a lot of time on my hands, and the Free Rein series has formed also because of extra hours that I find cannot yet be utilised for my normal 9 – 5 job of teaching horse studies.

It is my hope that through each of my stories, people will read, learn and be inspired to pursue a career – a life! – with horses.

 

 

If you’re interested in the Free Rein series, check out http://www.freereinseries.com/ and http://www.facebook.com/FreeReinSeries

 

Horse Country follows the lives of four women working in the horse industry and can be found at http://www.horsecountrybook.com/ and http://www.facebook.com/HorseCountryBook

Thank you so much for stopping by the blog, Christine, and we are very glad that your close call turned out okay. Best of luck with your writing and publishing career, and of course, with all your horse activities in the future!