New Equestrian Novel, Turning For Home, Now Available!

by Natalie Keller Reinert

I'm happy to announce that Turning For Home (Alex and Alexander Book 4) is now available!

This new installment of these "Horse Books for Grown-ups," which began back in 2011 with the publication of The Head and Not The Heart, then continued with the 2014 Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award semi-finalist, Other People's Horses and the holiday short Claiming Christmas, returns to the dark bay beauty that Alex fell so hard for at Aqueduct Racetrack, The Tiger Prince.

Because grown-ups deserve pony stories too!

The charismatic Tiger has run his last race, and it wasn't pretty. Alex is faced with an agonizing decision: how can she retire a hot-tempered gelding who has no place on a breeding farm, but is such a pet that he can't be sold or adopted out?

Then, as if life wasn't complicated enough, another scandal is breaking over the racing industry. Racehorses are found abandoned and starving in the Everglades -- and a radical animal rights group pins the blame on Alex. Hate mail and death threats, plus a mysterious new neighbor who is making life downright dangerous, throw Alex's training career into a tailspin.

Stuck on the farm, exiled from the racetrack, angry and shell-shocked,  Alex and Tiger have more in common than ever. When a Thoroughbred Makeover event is announced for late spring, Alexander and Kerri both encourage Alex to seize the opportunity and show everyone that she's fully capable of responsible racehorse retirement. It's a move that could make -- or break -- her training career. 

Turning For Home returns to some of my favorite places: the rolling hills of Ocala, the small-town feel of Tampa Bay Downs. And it takes on one of my favorite subjects, racehorse retirement. That's actually what got me started in this whole writing game, you know -- writing Retired Racehorse Blog back when I had a little Florida farm, some broodmares and foals, and one wonderful gelding that I'd gotten off the track and was training to be an event horse.

I actually trained that horse, in part, to prove to myself that I still could do it. I guess in that way, I'm a lot like Alex in this story. Is retraining a racehorse like riding a bike? At some point, muscle memory kicks in, right? It seemed that way for me, when I was out riding Final Call. I used the memory of those rides to write about Alex as she rides Tiger.

I hope that helps the story ring true for equestrians -- that's always my number one goal as a writer! And according to this review at Amazon, looks like I have...

"I've always known Natalie Keller Reinert is one of the rare authors who truly understands the ways of the Thoroughbred horse (and of the people who love them), but either she has truly outdone herself here, or else I just love this book because it's more about retraining an Off-The-Track Thoroughbred ("OTTB" for short) once its racing days are done, and that end of a Thoroughbred's life is much more familiar to me than the racing side. Ms. Reinert is fortunate enough to have had plenty of experience on both the racing side and the sport horse side, and she brings it ALL to this book. Her writing is confident, her perceptions accurate, and her characters are so alive that I found myself mentally arguing with them over their choices as I read. :-) I really could not recommend this book more highly for horse lovers!"

Enjoy Turning For Home, and be sure to let me know what you think! You can read the first chapter at my website, nataliekreinert.com, or check out the previews available wherever you buy ebooks. The paperback is also available from Amazon.com.

Links:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble.com

Kobo

iTunes

Scribd

Images From the Belmont Stakes

by Natalie Keller Reinert

Well, we had to go to the Belmont Stakes this year. It really wasn't negotiable, was it?

What we actually thought of Belmont Park on one of its most crowded days in recent history was another story (and the focus of a blog post here) but hey, we gave it a shot. And no matter how crazy Belmont Park was, I still managed to capture a few images of a what remains a very photogenic place to watch horses run very fast.

Fashion Plate before the Grade 1 Acorn Stakes, for three-year-old fillies. 

Sweet Whiskey before the Grade 1 Acorn Stakes. She'd come in second behind Sweet Reason.

Calvin at the paddock, with those ivy-covered Belmont walls in the background.

The Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance had a large set-up, which included green screen photographs with California Chrome, plus these I SUPPORT OTTBS bracelets for free. 

A gorgeous TAA Thoroughbred Incentive Program ribbon decorates a drab steel support in the grandstand.

Quotes from Todd Pletcher and Mark Taylor at the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance booth.

The other racecourse. We saw this sign walking to the Queens Village train station, after it was evident we weren't going to catch a train anytime soon at the Belmont Park station.

 And so ended our Belmont adventure. It was a little too full of boozing college students to really be enjoyable, putting the Belmont on par with those combination drinking holidays/horse races Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes.

In other news, Ambition, my eventing novel, has been out since May 20th, and the reviews have been stellar. Jane Badger, best known for her pony book site JaneBadgerBooks.co.uk, reviewed Ambition here, saying "In Jules Natalie Keller Reinert has created a barbed-wire heroine."

At the Equine Insider, where there is also a lovely review, I gave a 5 Questions interview, talking about writing equestrian novels and training horses.

And at Horse Junkies United, the reviewer calls for a sequel (and she's not the first!). I never planned a sequel for Ambition, but this review makes me consider the possibility.

Ambition is available on Amazon, BN.com, Kobo, and iTunes, with a paperback available by mid-June.

And Alex and Alexander fans have something to look forward to: I'm well into Turning For Home, the next novel in the series, and we should see it available before autumn!

It's Possible That I'm Terrible at Naming Horses

by Natalie Keller Reinert

This is not the blog post I set out to write this morning.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not even sure what I was going to write. I think it was something about how I'm terrible at naming books. That's mainly because I've been editing my forthcoming novel, about a three-day-eventing rider, and I feel like the title is a terrible mistake in this age of Google and online searching and accidental anonymity through uncreative titles. (The title is Ambition, by the way, which sums the book up perfectly, so if anyone would like to comment on that, your thoughts are welcome.)

But it somehow morphed into a post on naming horses, and the realization that as bad as I am at naming books, I might be worse at naming horses. I might have the worst taste imaginable. Possibly.

Read on, fearless equestrians, and tell me what you think.

It feels like this great, grand responsibility, granting a name to a horse. And in a way, it is -- especially if you subscribe to the superstitious belief that changing a horse's name is bad luck. I definitely agree with that superstition, as long as the name isn't too stupid.

But on another level (also, possibly, spiritual in nature) I've always had this grand idea that you're  bestowing an identity on an animal for the rest of his or her life. Be it grand, or be it comical.

It's always a wonder to me when a horse with a name like Cocoz Lil Zipper or DivorceLawyerWins or something horrid like that wins a race. I think "Wow, horse, way to overcome the total lack of self-respect you've been awarded by whoever named you." And then I think of a much better, more high-minded, literary/lyrical/literal name that I would have granted that brave, persevering horse, had I but been given the opportunity.

Princessforaday, Dayjur-Gallapiatsprincess. My husband named her.

 

And then, in research for this blog post (yes, "research"), I was glancing down a 2008 entry at New York Times' horseracing blog, The Rail. The 500 worst-named racehorses of all time! This is perfect. I'm scrolling through, chuckling, shaking my head, and then...

I see it.

My favorite racehorse name of all time. 

I Died Laughing.

Seriously?

Oh, the heartbreak.

I Died Laughing was a 2000 bay filly by Montbrook and out of Regal Ties, by Regal and Royal, according to pedigreequery.com. When I was frequenting the pavilion at Ocala Breeders' Sales back in my Florida days, I Died Laughing's name was one of those Florida-bred regulars in the catalogs, showing up time and time again in different listings and sales.

So obviously, I Died Laughing's name had zero-zip-nada to do with her breeding, but I didn't care. I loved it. I said it aloud. I giggled. I pointed it out to people. Her name it's so awesome.

(My husband agreed. My husband humors me, though. I know this.)

I began to think a little more deeply about my taste in racehorse names. And another favorite came to mind: Enjoy the Silence. Another broodmare regular, her foals going through the sales at various ages, I fell in love with her from afar. When she finally went through the sale herself, I hurried to the walking ring to see her. At last! Enjoy the Silence! I'd been loving her in print for years, now I would see her in the flesh.

And she was a chestnut.

And, I mean, I love chestnuts. So much. But her name was Enjoy the Silence. That's an awesome Depeche Mode song. Obviously she would be black, or at least dark bay, and she would look around the walking ring with an air of haughty disapproval, as if all of us humans in our stupid uniforms of blue jeans and polo shirts with our logos embroidered on the chest and our stallion-show baseball caps were the lowest of the low.

But she really just looked like the nicest ol' broodie you ever saw in your life.

Which probably shouldn't have been a come-down, but it was, after all I had built up in my mind for a mare called Enjoy the Silence.

So maybe it doesn't matter what a horse's name is. Maybe I've been wrong all these years, with my high-minded notions and superstitious suspicions about the value of a name. After all, of my two favorite names, one is apparently the worst name ever and the other gave me a completely mistaken idea of what the horse was actually like.

Or maybe I'm just terrible at horse names.

It's possible.

So here is a little exercise for you. Here are several names of horses from my books. Which ones do you like? Which ones don't you like? And what, in your opinion, makes for a great horse name?

Can't wait to see what you think on this one! (And if you like, I'll tell you where the inspiration for the name came from.)

A few racehorse names from "The Head and Not The Heart," "Other People's Horses," and "Claiming Christmas":

-Shearwater
-Luna Park
-The Tiger Prince
-Virtue and Vice
-Idle Hour
-Personal Best

And here's that list of the worst-named racehorses of all time.  "I'm Ugly But Fast" really does belong on the list.

 

Claiming Christmas: a New Holiday Read

by Natalie Keller Reinert

Happy Thanksgiving week! I hope everyone has already cleaned their houses from top-to-bottom, gotten all their groceries ready, and is preparing to strap on an apron and get cooking bright and early Wednesday morning.

(Oh, wait, I'm talking to horse-people here. I hope everyone is excited to have Thursday off for extra riding time! Don't forget to pick up some take-out for dinner on the way home!)

Of course, last year I was in the barn on Thanksgiving too, prepping the NYC Parks horses for their march in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I marched in it too, but I'm very happy to be spending the holiday indoors this year! It's supposed to be frigid and blustery. This year, I'll be doing the cooking thing in my warm kitchen, and thinking of all my chilly friends out there on horseback. I'm from Florida, people. I just wasn't built for cold weather. I hibernate, I write, I cook. See you in spring.

And so it's probably inevitable that as the leaves fell and the temperatures dropped, my thoughts turned to the greener trees and balmier climes of home. Most holiday stories concern themselves with sleigh bells and snowfall, but when I wrote Claiming Christmas, my new holiday novella, all I had on my mind was a mild Florida winter. No snow need apply, and the only sleigh bells are on carriage horses trying to look Christmassy on an eighty-five degree afternoon.

Claiming Christmas is an Alex and Alexander novella, picking up where Other People's Horses left off. It's late October, and the Christmas songs are starting to play in the stores, but Alex is on a self-imposed vacation from the world, only paying attention to her horses. Then she's tapped to fulfill a Christmas wish for a local girl with a tragic past and a future that's less than merry and bright. Grudgingly, Alex takes on the job -- and finds herself ready to do anything to give the kid a merry Christmas at last.

Writing this story reminded me of some of the dedicated riding instructors I had as a child, and the relationships we developed. I was a determined rider without a huge bank account to fund my ambition; along the way I met trainers who saw how hard I was willing to work, and they found ways to see me through tough times and keep me in the saddle. Alex has never had that interest in people (or children) but in this story, she finds out what it feels like to be a role model, and to hold the key to someone's happiness -- and she likes the feeling.

And so as we descend into the madness -- I mean the spirit -- of the season, I hope you all have people (and horses) in your lives that remind you of how much you give every day.

Claiming Christmas is available for 99 cents as a Kindle or Nook ebook, or in virtually any format your heart could desire at Smashwords.