Coming Soon: New Equestrian Fiction "Show Barn Blues"

by Natalie Keller Reinert

At last, a reason to blog! I posted over at nataliekreinert.com for the first time since spring, and now I'm going to share it over here with all you fine Equestrian Ink readers, because good news! A new book!

It's been a long, hot summer, readers -- or has it? I've been working so much this summer, it went flying by like one of those particularly deranged dragonflies that goes right past your nose and scares you to death and you shriek and wave your hands in your face and everyone turns around and stares at you and you say "did you SEE that thing?" but nobody did...

Oh wait, that was me the other night at work.

I'm telling you, that thing was HUGE.

Anyway, it's been busy. Working at Walt Disney World by day (well, really, by night) and working at my computer by night (usually by day). It's a wonderful balance, when it works -- working at Disney lets me get out from behind a screen and chatter with people from all around the world, and working at my computer lets my voice (and my brain) recover from eight hours of all that chattering.

It's great, but summertime can be challenging at one of the world's most popular vacation destinations... long hours, late nights, and a newly rediscovered penchant for sleeping until 11 AM can all take their toll on one's writing goals.

However, I set myself a goal of finishing Show Barn Blues by the end of August, and I'm happy to announce that I've achieved that goal! Fully edited and ready to go, all we need now is the final cover design and internal formatting, and we will have ourselves a new novel!

One of my favorite characters is Ivor, a sassy gray stallion.
Photo: Serge Melki/flickr

I'm excited to bring you this story, which has some characters and horses I just love, including Grace Carter (her name might be different in previous blog posts, this has been a long process), who is a been-there-done-that barn owner; her sassy gray stallion, Ivor; a former dinner show/hunter princess named Kennedy; and a cast of grooms, working students, and boarders who keep life interesting.

One challenge that I'm having with Show Barn Blues -- how to categorize it on Amazon. You might notice that on Amazon, the books in a series will show up on the same page. Look at Turning For Home's page and you'll see the other novels in the Alex and Alexander series right on the page, listed numerically. Nice, right?

Well, Show Barn Blues is technically part of the Eventing Series, which begins with Ambition. The Eventing Series was plotted out as a trilogy, and the next novel, Pride, will follow Ambition. So that's logically Book 2.

However, we're going to meet the characters from Show Barn Blues in Pride. They're important to the story. They just don't fit into the trilogy. They're like a bonus novel. Does that make Show Barn Blues "a novel of the Eventing Series," perhaps?

It's a shame that Amazon doesn't allow "1.5" as a volume number, because I would just use that -- but I've already tried that particular scheme before and it doesn't work.

Other than that conundrum, the writing life is good. I have all the tools I need for my final draft of Pride. Barring work insanity, I should have the next Jules novel to you by the end of the year. I'm rereading Ambition to make sure I have her snotty voice in my head, although Jules is softening... a little. She's still prickly, but life with Pete is starting to sand down those rough edges... a little. 

Maybe it shouldn't take me two years to bring out the sequel to a book as popular as Ambition, but it really does take me that long to write a book. I found notes the other day for Turning For Home, and they were dated 2013. I released TFH in 2015, so there you have it -- that's just the way I write!

So get ready for Show Barn Blues. I'll have it out for you soon!

Outlines: A Writer's Training Calendar

by Natalie Keller Reinert

Setting up a training calendar is easy, right? You pick a horse show date and you move backwards, working out a nice hypothesis of where you'll be in training each week running up to the show. Nothing to it, because predicting how quickly and how competently your horse will pick up your training (to say nothing of staying sound and keeping on his shoes) is just easy-peasy. Right?

Of course we know that's nonsense. Horses look at calendars and laugh. They observe our ambitious plans and then they go out and look for a nice, innocent stick that they can use to injure themselves in astonishing and previously unbelievable ways.

Getting to a horse show takes planning. Writing a book is much the same!
Photo: flickr/dj-dwayne

In the game of planning for horse shows, the beginning is easy to see, and the end is fun to predict. It's the middle part that's hard.

Writing a book can be an awful lot like setting up that oh-so-charming training calendar. I like to outline, because I know my book's beginning, and I know my book's intended ending, but the middle part always bogs me down. You know, all that stuff that makes up the story? Moves the plot along? Gets the horse from green-broke to jumping courses? Yeah. That can be challenging.

Every book I've written since Other People's Horses has had an outline, and every subsequent time I write an outline, I find myself a little more dependent on it. That's because my desire to wander from the set course never, ever wanes. Like a horse bound and determined to lose his shoe before the schooling show on Saturday, I am absolutely hell-bent on diverting from my intended story with wandering trail rides, unplanned-for barn drama, and completely unpredictable bucking incidents.

And while this sort of convoluted wandering story process seems to work for some writers (George R.R. Martin of Game of Thrones fame comes to mind), I really don't want to write 500 page door-stops that are meant to be set during one fateful summer in Saratoga, or wherever. That's why I have to force myself back to the outline. Because every wandering trail ride has to expose a new question in the plot, every unplanned-for barn drama has to be resolved, and every unpredictable bucking incident has to involve sorting out what set off the horse, and how to fix the horse's problem.

That's a lot of extra writing for me, and a lot of meandering "what happened to the plot?" for you, the readers.

So funny story, haha, you guys are going to love this, I wrote a masterful outline for Pride, which is the sequel to Ambition.

Sidebar: Originally Ambition was supposed to be a stand-alone novel, but I've gotten so many requests for a series that I had to cave to pressure. Readers have power! When you like something, say something! 

Anyway, I wrote this wonderful outline for a book which can stand up as the second novel in a trilogy about Jules, Pete, Lacey, Becky, and of course Dynamo and Mickey, plus a host of new riders and horses. It was here to make my life easier, this outline. To keep me on track and stop me from taking three years and half-a-dozen drafts to write, the way that Ambition did.

And I got midway through Pride, to about 45,000 words, which when you consider Ambition is about 111,000 words, you can see is that all-troublesome Middle Part that confounds both trainers and writers when we are making our plots and plans... and I started to wander. I quickly realized I was inventing some barn drama which was good, but which would need to be resolved or things were going to get way off track. I decided it was time to consult my written outline, since at this point I'd just been writing off memory of what I'd planned.

This was when I realized that I had lost the outline.

Oh jeez. 

Well, I stumbled about for a little bit, figuring I could find my way through without the outline, but the thing just started keeping me awake at night. What if I had lost my way? How was I going to fix this? What was the best use of my time? I'm on a tight deadline to get Pride finished and my work schedule outside of house is about to ramp up considerably. If I let this plot wander too much, I was going to be months behind.

Something had to be done.

I knew the ending still (that horse show date that I had selected months before, right?) and although my middle part had changed a little bit, that's just what horses do. It was time to be agile. I sat down, opened my writing program, and started creating chapters.

In Scrivener, which is the program I use, each folder becomes a chapter. And there's a little box where you can type out a synopsis. I'd never used it before, but there's a first time for everything. I typed a synopsis for each chapter I had yet to write, creating a little guide-map to every single folder, so that no matter when I opened up the manuscript to write, there would be no excuse -- the next step in the story was right there, ready to be fleshed out.

I created fourteen chapters in all, assuming that each one would balance out at about 2,000 words, and then on the edit/rewrite I would elaborate on them until they had more substance. Then, I started work on the first one.

That chapter stretched out to 5,000 words.

Outlines. The more detailed they are, it would seem, the easier my job gets.

It reminds me again of that training calendar -- on a good day, I can look at the calendar, assess where my horse is vs where I thought my horse could be, and then reassess. Once that's done, I can see what I want to do for the day, then get out there and make it happen... much more successfully than if I'd just mounted up without a plan, wandered out to the arena, and started trotting around waiting to see what would happen next.

That's good news for me as a writer. It's good news for everyone waiting for the sequel to Ambition, too. Hold on kids, Jules and Company are coming back for more!

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

What Do You Give a Horse For Christmas?

by Natalie Keller Reinert

I don't have many Christmas traditions.

In fact, I think the only one I keep up with are the Happy Hippos in our Christmas stockings, and that one is only a few years old!

Source: flickr/vintagehalloweencollector

The thing is, I didn't grow up celebrating Christmas, so it was basically an opportunity to have some time off of school and, once I had a horse to occupy me, extra barn-time. At some boarding stables, every horse got a stocking filled with treats from the barn owner -- that was the extent of my Christmas celebration, and that was fine with me. Hard to miss what you don't have, right? As a manager at an equestrian center, I carried on that tradition, making sure every boarder horse had a stocking full of horse cookies.

Sometime in my mid-teens, I decided I should have a tradition for my birthday and Christmas (two holidays I still didn't celebrate, mind you!) and naturally centered it around my horse. On those days, no matter how bad the weather or how busy my life, I'd have a fun ride on my horse. And for a while, I managed to carry on my personal little tradition, whether I was riding through scented orange groves in Central Florida or around the taxis and carriages of the lower loop of Central Park. No training, no tough work. It was time to hang my feet out of the stirrups and leave a loop in my reins.

Which was nice for both of us, naturally, so I suppose it might have counted as a present for my horse. But really? I never did much by way of Christmas presents for my horses. But I'm getting a little softer and nicer as I get older, so it's possible that someday I'll cave and shower every horse in my vicinity with gifts.

So I decided to ask the Internets: hey, horse-people, what do you give your horses for Christmas? I asked the question on two of my Facebook pages (Retired Racehorse Blog and Natalie Keller Reinert: Equestrian Fiction) and got lots of answers. Presents for horses seem to fall into a few key categories: horse clothes, horse treats, and yay toys!

Here are some responses:

• "This year it is a new halter, lead rope, horse cookies, angel mints, carrots and apples."
• "Every year they get an Xmas morning bran mash. Candy canes, apples, carrots, molasses, and banana chips." (yum!!)
• "About 25 boxes of candy canes as soon as they go on sale after Christmas."
• "Treats, new blankets- turn-out and fleece."
• "My gelding is getting some gingerbread cookies, candy canes and a tin of Werthers -- his most favourite treats!"
• "My horse gets toys, he got a Jollyball sidekick companion, football, stackers and chew toys to go on his crossbar in his stall!"
• "Starlight mints, of course! Also a new turnout halter, carrots, candy canes, and tub of Nicker Makers. Spoiled much?"

I adore all the love that goes into Christmas for these horses. One horse literally gets toys under the tree like he's a little kid! I am imagining a pony pushing around a fire engine.

So now I want to know: what do you give your horses for Christmas? Or is it just another day at the barn, business as usual (no shame in that!)? Share in the comments or over at my Facebook pages, and if you're running a little late with the shopping, maybe you'll get a few ideas!

Merry Christmas, all you pony people!

Finding Equestrian Inspiration - When There Aren't Any Horses

by Natalie Keller Reinert

Write what you love, they said. Write what you know, they said. It will flow, it will be authentic, you will never want for inspiration.

And all those things are true, except that sometimes life takes you on a strange ride and the things that you know and love might not be in front of you all the time. Or at all. And you begin to forget things -- gossamer little threads that are essential to bridging the gap between what is imagined, and what is real -- and sometimes the sentences become harder to craft, the scenarios harder to picture, the reactions of the horses and the humans harder to judge.

For the past year and a half, maybe longer, I've been living horse-free. It wasn't by choice, just the way things turned out. I've tried to live it up, these days without the restriction of being back to feed or worrying about the weather. I've done a lot of traveling that wouldn't be possible if I had horses to think about, for one thing. And everywhere I've gone, I've looked for horses to inspire me.

Sometimes it's as simple as laying a hand on a hot neck, bursting with veins on a summer's day. Sometimes it's as subtle as watching dark eyes following the paths of tourists on a busy evening in Times Square. Sometimes it's as immersive as wrapping my arms around a horse's neck and just hugging, hugging, hugging.

Every little interaction is the fuel I need to keep writing about horses and horse-people. My next Alex and Alexander novel, Turning For Home, is almost there. I couldn't have done it without these horses.

To the horses that I met in my travels this year: thank you for the inspiration. I'll keep on remembering, and I'll keep on writing.

Unnamed beauty in the paddock at Del Mar, July 2014

I don't know this roan lovely's name. I was taking pictures of his glorious bare feet. July 2014.

That time I spent a half hour snuggling with a pony at Saratoga. August 2014.

Another mystery draft, this one at Walt Disney World in Florida. April 2014.

Sure, they're statues. But something about their pricked ears and bright expressions really spoke to me.
Terra-cotta horses at Epcot, Walt Disney World, October 2014.

Visiting with NYPD Mounted horses is always a highlight of any trip.
The Fountain of Planets, Flushing Meadows Park, July 2014.

Reminding me of what a racehorse in her glory should look like.
Belmont Park, June 2014.

Do I need more horse-time in my life? Absolutely -- and I have some in the planning stages. But in the meantime, these horses have been a big help to me.

Have you ever been separated from horses for a long period of time? How do you handle the time apart?

The Horse Books That Meant The Most

by Natalie Keller Reinert

A few weeks ago, the latest Facebook fad seemed to be "post the ten books that matter the most to you." You weren't supposed to give it a lot of deep thought or anything, just post the ten books that came to your mind first. 

I gave it a shot. And here's the list that happened:

1. Emily's Quest, L.M. Montgomery

2. Rilla of Ingleside, L.M. Montgomery

3. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley

4. The Black Stallion (most of the series), Walter Farley

5. Horse Heaven, Jane Smiley

6. Light a Penny Candle, Maeve Binchy

7. Eureka Street, Robert McLiam Wilson

8. The Enchantress of Florence, Salman Rushdie

9. The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern

10. The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis (every single one)

And then I sat back and looked at it. Wow. There were not a lot of horse books on that list. (Although my copy of The Mists of Avalon does have a horse on the cover.) 

Instead I had two fairly bleak turn-of-the-century Young Adult stories, two extremely different Irish novels, a Young Adult horse series and an adult horse book, and a whole lot of magic. (Like, seriously, a lot of magic. Who knew that fantasy was so important to me?)

But in the grand scheme of How My Brain Works, it all started to make a lot of sense. Most of these books seriously informed my writing in some way. Emily's Quest is about a young woman embarking on a writing career and coming face-to-face with the loneliness and self-doubt that such a calling entails on a daily basis. Rilla of Ingleside was about the upheaval and change that The Great War brought to a happy-go-lucky family who already had six books to their name -- it's the last of the Anne of Green Gables novels -- and what an incredibly bold move for a writer to make with such beloved characters! Light a Penny Candle is another big saga, about two best friends surviving all sorts of trauma (they come together through World War II), which, again, it's hard to believe the writer was so willing to dish out to such lovable characters.

Eureka Street, well, that might be my favorite book of all time. I adore everything about it: the vain, hapless, soul-of-a-poet repo-man Jake; the rambling and unapologetic passages exploring the terrible beauty of Belfast; the harrowing and yet lyrical descriptions of violence that leap out of previously tranquil pages as surely as The Troubles could instantly cloud a sunny day--and of course a cast of characters who were as funny and as flawed as any in literature.

And then all that fantasy! I'm still surprised by it. The Mists of Avalon probably is the least important to me as a piece of literature, but was a huge part of my adolescence, so I can't leave it out of any list. The ones that got me: Narnia, The Enchantress of Florence, The Night Circus -- oh, those really got me. Rushdie taught me that prose can be poetry if you decide it can. Morgenstern taught me that reality can be fantasy (and vice versa) if you choose it to be. Lewis taught me to talk to trees and animals without feeling embarrassed, and how many stories of my childhood did that inform? Countless.

What of the horse books, then? What are the horse books that meant the most, and why are they so few?

To be fair, there are twenty installments in the Black Stallion series, so that's twenty books right there that I stuck on my top ten list. Those books were my lifeline as a child, to a world I knew existed and that I wanted to be part of so very, very much. I put on my velvet hunt cap with one hand and I turned the pages of The Black Stallion's Courage with the other, imagining myself on The Black as we came down the long homestretch at Belmont Park; then I went out and used the mounting block to mount a school pony and get down to the business of staying on.

Horse Heaven was a lifeline as an adult, because it taught me a very important lesson: horse books for adults can work. This book was a massive seller. I should know--I was working part-time at the Barnes & Noble in Ocala, Florida when it came out. When HITS was going on, riders in breeches and boots were literally coming in and asking for it by name. We had it stocked behind the counter to save time. Horse Heaven changed the way I looked at horse books. And it changed the way I looked at what I might write someday.

When I started writing contemporary fiction for equestrians, it was with the success of Horse Heaven reminding me that people wanted books like this, about characters they recognized -- adults living their lives with horses.

I've read dozens, or hundreds, who knows, of pony books and horse books over the years, but these were the true game-changers, that helped decide the course of my entire life. From my years with Thoroughbreds to my current career as a novelist, those were the horse books that meant the most.

What are yours?

A short note on giveaways and signings:

I'll be at Equine Affaire this November! I'll be with Taborton Equine Books on Saturday, November 15th from 4-6 PM, and on Sunday, November 16th from 12-2 PM. Come and visit me and the other awesome equestrian authors who will be there! You can add it to your calendar with this Facebook event: 

https://www.facebook.com/events/496418717161243/

The Big Giveaway from Equestrian Culture Magazine is on throughout October. I'm so happy to be part of this gorgeous glossy magazine's giveaway this fall, which includes prizes from Goode Rider, Ariat, Dubarry, and plenty of other big names in equestrian apparel and supplies. Check out the website at http://equestrianculture.com/giveaway/ for details on how to win different prizes, including a set of my paperback novels. And if this is not a magazine you're familiar with -- it's time to pick up a copy! It's for our kind of people!

Images from Saratoga Springs

by Natalie Keller Reinert

Is summer really over? Saratoga's 2014 racing season is over, so for a whole lot of racing fans, the answer is yes.

I'm hopelessly in love with Saratoga Springs, New York--with its landscapes, with its architecture, with its people, with its obsession with horse racing that cannot be equaled. The original lovely little town with a Thoroughbred problem, Saratoga has been my muse in the past, and I have no doubt she will continue to inspire my writing in the future.

My husband and I were lucky enough to spend a few lovely days at Saratoga this August, during Travers Week, when the excitement for the "midsummer derby" is reaching its fever pitch. We didn't stay for the Travers, but we had plenty of excitement with the weekday racing, along with plenty of time for dining, shopping, and just plain wandering Saratoga's graceful streets.

I wrote a short primer for visiting Saratoga over at my travel blog, but for you, my equestrian readers, here is just a collection of some of my favorite images from Saratoga Springs. 

Horse racing is literally everywhere - this is the grocery store.

Is this a house made out of a little barn? If so, can I have it immediately please? Just a block away from the racecourse, and practically perfect in every way.

The Jim Dandy bar, which Alex visits in "Other People's Horses." I tend to selfie a lot.

Admiring the very gorgeous Bossman, who won his race despite an extremely lengthy inquiry that kept him walking in circles while the stewards pondered the video.

I am not convinced that this building is real life. It's too perfect. It's a miniature. Right? This is the Canfield Casino, home to the Saratoga Springs History Museum, right in the middle of Congress Park.

More random horse racing murals! This one is in the gorgeous post office on Broadway.

Tale as old as time? Girls and their horses. The winner's circle between races.

Best sidewalk decoration ever? Obviously.

I met a pony. He was the best pony ever. He luffed me.

THESE ARE PAINTINGS. I am forever obsessed and want them both.

Would you like some delicious water little girl? One of the many springs in Congress Park shows off its mineral content.

Note: we drank from all the springs in Congress Park. The best-tasting water comes from Columbian Spring. This is because the water in Columbian Spring is CITY WATER. There is a little sign nearby indicating this. The rest of the water is varying degrees of ick, from "wow this isn't the worst" to "OMG VILE." The award for most vile also goes to the most lavishly landscaped, and I do not think this is a coincidence, but an EVIL PLOT. I'd upload a picture but Blogger is being ridiculous so just be warned -- stay away from Hathorne Spring. It tastes like sulphur soda. You don't want that.

Visit my travel blog at ThatDisFamily.com for more on Saratoga Springs (and pictures of the evil spring). Have you been to Saratoga? What do you think of it?

One last thing - while I was there, Cory and I were lucky enough to attend a media picnic at Abigail Adsit's training barn. We met up with the folks from Talk of the Track, who ended up interviewing us about the books, particularly "Other People's Horses" and "Ambition." I haven't watched the interview, because the idea of watching myself in a video is just the last word in horror, but if YOU want to know what I said - some things about Saratoga, some things about Thoroughbreds, some things about myself, I guess - it's at my Facebook page, Natalie Keller Reinert: Equestrian Fiction. I can't say that my first time on camera was a completely terrorizing experience, but I did require several beers and a whole lot of french fries to recover, so... be nice!

Summer Vacations: Disneyland to Del Mar

by Natalie Keller Reinert

Real life? What's that? Summer vacations have me way too busy, running off my feet, to stop and think about real life. I'm just flitting between airports, train stations, hotel rooms, and my desk, catching up on all the work I've missed while on vacation. The bonus of this is that my apartment is nearly always clean, because I'm hardly ever anywhere in it but my office.

Now, most horsepeople do not get to go on vacations, so let me explain how they work. In short, a vacation is when you go somewhere without your horses and immediately seek out other people's horses to look at/pet/mentally compose careful conformation critiques of/take pictures of.

In the early part of our summer, we went to California, where we found horses in all the right places: in theme parks and at racetracks. You know, where anyone can find them. I am a working horse's biggest fan, especially when they are in places where non-horsepeople can get up close and personal and be taken with a horse's startling mixture of strength and gentleness (something that we tend to take for granted after years working alongside them).

Here are some of my summer vacation OPH (Other People's Horses) snaps:

This gorgeous roan Clydesdale at Disneyland had just finished a big slobbery drink from a bucket and was getting ready to head back to Sleeping Beauty Castle.

A lovely Belgian walking the horse-drawn trolley around the Hub and towards Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland.

A close-up of the Clydesdale to prove the rumor... Disneyland horses are barefoot! How amazing is that!

Del Mar Racing on the turf. This track makes great use of its infield, allowing for some amazing views like this.

And of course for the perfect selfie. New author photo?

A schoolie in the gorgeous paddock at Del Mar.

I am obsessed with Del Mar's palm trees. What a racetrack. A palace for racehorses.

PALM TREES.

This gorgeous reproduction of a cavalry recruitment poster is hidden away on the walkway between Frontierland and Fantasyland in Disneyland.

That was Summer Vacation Part 1. Summer Vacation Part 2 starts in a little less than two weeks when Cory and I hop a train for Saratoga. We missed Saratoga last year and I can't wait to get back to the Spa!

So before I sign off and get back to the mountains of work that taking vacations saddles one with, don't forget... you have a few more days to enter to win a signed paperback of Ambition. I'm so happy that Ambition has been hanging on tight to that top three position in horse books at Amazon (right now it's number one!) and that it has been resonating with horsepeople -- because that's who I wrote it for, after all! Please go over to Goodreads and enter to win -- there are four copies up for grabs!

And now... I have to get back to writing!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Ambition

by Natalie Keller Reinert

Giveaway ends August 11, 2014.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Horse Book Review: The Riding Doctor Helps Us Keep Riding!

by Natalie Keller Reinert

Aches. Pains. And bad, bad balance.

Sometimes climbing into the saddle feels like a mountain I must conquer. And sometimes it feels like I never quit riding those ten horses a day. Both versions kind of hurt. As a not-so-frequent rider, and one that has taken a pretty significant break from the farm life in order to pursue my desk-based career as a writer, I've found that one ride's form is rarely like another these days.

A little bit of that "Career Gap" equestrian trouble has gone into my current novel-in-progress, Show Barn Blues, which features a jumper trainer trying to keep a barn full of adult amateur riders in the show-ring and out of trouble. Grace has made a living out of supporting the teenage dreams of affluent women like Missy, but her young working student, Anna, can't imagine a day lived without horses.

“You rode as a kid?” Anna started to knot up a slipping hay-net along the trailer’s wall. “Like, you showed?”

“Oh, I did it all.” Missy paused and focused all her effort on getting the slim boot on. She might have to give in and get new ones soon, I thought. Nothing lasts forever, especially not pencil-thin calves. “I showed, I hunted… I wasn’t afraid of a thing back then.”

“And you stopped? What happened?”

“The usual,” Missy laughed, but it sounded rueful as well. “College, love, marriage, work, babies. And my horse died, and I never found another one I was so comfortable with. So I stopped riding, and then eventually I realized how much I missed it, and then, years after that, I finally had a little spare time to start taking lessons again. And then Grace helped me find Maxine, and here we are. But I’m definitely not the brave teenager anymore.”

If you'd said to me as a teenager that I'd totally identify with that passage as I was typing it, I would have laughed. I mean, I even found ways to ride horses for a living in the middle of Manhattan. But then I started writing full-time, and lo, the Career Gap was suddenly Real Life.

Dr. Beth Glosten, author of The Riding Doctor.

So it felt like amazing timing when a new book, The Riding Doctor, arrived in the mail. This large-format paperback, featuring colorful, glossy photos and illustrations, was written from one Career Gap Rider to all the rest of us. The author, Dr. Beth Glosten, MD, is a doctor who understands how our pieces stop working in perfect tandem once we spend a few years (or decades, heaven forbid) out of the irons.

“I wear the label ‘riding doctor’ when I work with riders and evaluate their balance and functional challenges on horseback,” explains Glosten. "My goal is to help all riders, but particularly those in midlife, understand their bodies and improve their function, so they can enjoy effective and harmonious riding, as well as other activities.”

Glosten's equestrian credentials are impressive enough without the "MD" attached to her name: She retired from medical practice in 1997 and pursued her passion for riding dressage full time, while also becoming Pilates Method Alliance certified. She is a USDF gold, silver, and bronze medalist, as well as a USDF 'L' judge training program graduate with distinction. But none of that came easily, as her bio explains:

The Riding Doctor by Dr. Beth Glosten

"After leaving horses behind for many years to pursue her medical career, Glosten decided it was time to ride again, only to discover that as a middle-aged woman, she struggled with tension, awkwardness, and an aching back. Glosten’s own frustration with riding prompted her to apply her clinical research skills to figure out what it would take to not only create the harmonious picture of horse and rider moving together, but also to feel good while doing it."

In a Q & A (provided by the author) Glosten explains what the book is all about, including the exercises, which are based upon Pilates:

"My instructions are designed such that each exercise or movement has relevance to riding skills. ...There are simple movements that show you how to control the position of your pelvis and rib cage; important determinants of posture. ...There are exercises that challenge correct posture in the same way that it is challenged in the saddle – using a single rein aid, a single leg aid, or even just turning. Balance is an important theme, as balance is key to success in the saddle."

Each exercise could benefit anyone, but Glosten's instructions are laced with real-life stories and examples of how they create a better, more effective equestrian. With sections on how our pelvis, spine, and abdominal muscles really work, plus photos of riders working in tandem with their horse and explaining the muscle groups that make it happen, The Riding Doctor makes me think of a more technical, practical Centered Riding: sort of a Centered Riding for the Rest of Us. You know, those of us who can't visualize ourselves into a perfect posture anymore!

Constantly looking for ways to keep myself (somewhat) riding fit, despite my current job as a desk-jockey (which requires very few muscles and a surprising quantity of snacks) I'm working my way through The Riding Doctor. I'm hoping that the next time I mount up, my horse won't think "Ah, the sack of potatoes has arrived for her yearly assault on my spine." Instead, maybe he'll think, "Better behave, this lady means business."

After all, I used to ride for a living.

I swear.

The Riding Doctor is available at Amazon, Trafalgar Square's HorseandRiderBooks.com, and at RiderPilates.com

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!

An "Ambition" ebook giveaway!

by Natalie Keller Reinert

Hurray! It's been a big week for me, as my newest novel Ambition, was finally released as an ebook. I wrote about Ambition here at Equestrian Ink last week, in "It All Comes Down To This."

Like my racing novels, Ambition is set in the rolling hills of Florida’s horse country, Ocala. But this time, I'm writing about the great sport of eventing.

Jules Thornton didn’t come to Ocala to make friends. She came to make a name for herself. Young, determined, and tough as nails, she’s been swapping stable-work for saddle-time since she was a little kid — and it hasn’t always been a fun ride. Forever the struggling rider in a sport for the wealthy, all Jules has on her side is talent and ambition. She’s certain all she needs to succeed are good horses, but will the eventing world agree?

Ambition is already getting great reviews: over at the popular website Horse Junkies United, a reviewer had this to say: "I couldn’t put it down! Her writing style is easy to read, and the pages flow effortlessly. Most of all though, I was thrilled with all of the horsey details that were not only abundant, but accurate! This is were you could tell that the author had experience in the sport that she was portraying, lending this to her storyline and characters, making them come realistically to life."

In celebration of Ambition's release, I'm going to give away three eBook copies here at Equestrian Ink. Just use the handy Rafflecopter doo-dad below and enter! I'll send the winners an eBook of Ambition in the format of their choice (PDF, .mobi for Kindle, or .ePub for Nook). The giveaway will be open through June 2nd at midnight.

Can't wait that long? You can always grab your own copy of Ambition at Amazon, BN.com, iTunes, or Kobo! And stay tuned for the paperback -- one thing I can assure you of, the paperback is gorgeous. 

Well, that's all from me. Good luck! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway