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!

St. Patrick's Day with Mounted Police Horses

by Natalie Keller Reinert

St. Patrick's Day... so that just happened.

I just finished a breakfast of warm buttered soda bread (and I'm about to have second breakfast, of more of the same) and thinking about my St. Patrick's Day past. A lot of snow, for some reason, despite the fact that I've lived most of my life in Florida. Snow at horse shows, snow at work, snow when we all thought we could reasonably expect something more like spring. And last year's snow, at the New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade.

Riding home on Apollo with Sgt. Besom (on Teddy, left).  Central Park, St. Patrick's Day 2013

Always snowing. An Earstagram view.

Readers might remember that this time last year, I was working for the New York City Parks Department's Mounted unit. Here's something readers might not have known: St. Patrick's Day is apparently also the annual New York City Regional Suburban Teenager Day of Public Drinking. 

I don't think this holiday is recognized by any municipal laws, but it's definitely observed. It seemed like every teenager from every bedroom community in New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut hopped a train with a 64-oz Gatorade bottle filled with liquor-cabinet contraband, and came to Central Park to get drunk and puke in public. Like you do.

And it's the charming job of the Mounted unit to chase the drunken teenagers out of the park! 

A rare snow-less view of the Pond, Central Park

So there I was, on the back of a spotted draft horse, snow flying in my face, using my horse to move a group of about a hundred inebriated high school students out of a charming rustic gazebo along Central Park South, listening to glass shatter and what were essentially children screaming obscenities, all to the soundtrack of bagpipes and drums and brass bands, and all I could think was, "Thank God for this horse."

Perfectly adorable Apollo.

I was riding a truly amazing horse. His name is Apollo, and his stoic gaze and striped forelock are still a fixture in the mounted unit. Massive, spotted, and resembling nothing so much as a pinto army tank, Apollo might be the most wonderful horse in the world. Solid and bombproof, he also has a naughty side, and when he decides to play a trick on his rider and spook at a squirrel or start a quarrel with his partner on patrol, he'll do it so covertly that you'll never be able to blame him for it. 

Mounted police horses are truly the most amazing of horses, right up there with hippotherapy and therapeutic riding horses on my equine deity list. Last night, I read this article at The Atlantic Cities: "Are Police Horses a Dying Breed?" Despite its negative, click-bait title, the writer points out many of the ways in which police horses are not anachronistic, and are being reintroduced in some departments which had previously phased them out. It's worth a read, and a share, to support our working horses.

Oh look. Snow. Central Park 2013

I'm endlessly thankful for my year with the Parks Mounted unit, for the experiences, the people, and the amazing horses I met there. Working horses are a breed of their own, to be treasured. I hope someday to write about mounted police work in my fiction.

And before I sign off, let me share a few things. I have a new Facebook page: Natalie Keller Reinert: Horse Books for Grown-Ups, where I will be sharing lines and sneak peeks at my upcoming eventing novel, Ambition. Come and like that if you are so inclined! 

Gina McKnight was nice enough to post an interview with me at her blog Riding & Writing. In this interview, I discuss scintillating topics such as the use of butter in mashed potatoes, and being boring and making outlines of your work. You should totally read it. 

And finally, I'd like to publicly thank Castleton Lyons for continuing to sponsor the Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award. Other People's Horses was a semi-finalist in the 2013 book competition, which honors horse racing in full-length literary works. To have my book selected as the only fiction semi-finalist was an incredible honor. I wish the finalists all the best, and hope to see them again with a new horse racing novel in the future!

A Full-Time Writer, Again!

by Natalie Keller Reinert

Good morning! I write this blog post from my sofa, instead of where I usually write them: sitting on the subway, typing into my iPhone.

This is a nice change!

I recently went back to the full-time writing life, after spending a year with the mounted unit of the New York City Parks Department. It was an absolutely incredible experience, and I'm so happy to have had it. I mean, how else can you get pictures like this?

Oh you know, just patrolling Columbus Circle, like you do!

But a lot of factors came together all at once, and it became apparent that I was going to have to leave the day job... and go back to my old job.

You know, that one where I sit at a desk all day and make things up. Not the worst fate in the world.

And it's excellent timing, as I have quite a few projects to come, including the third novel in my Alex & Alexander series: Turning For Home. 

I wrote here about how I never expected The Head and Not The Heart, my first novel, to turn into a series, but that it just sort of happened. That's exactly what happened with this new project. Right after I released Other People's Horses, the second book, I was heading into Manhattan for some reason and rejoicing in my freedom from writing, however brief. It gets exhausting, writing a novel, when you are also working full-time with horses and trying to be a functioning member of a family besides.

So I was sitting on the train, and I pulled out my phone, and it didn't have anything I wanted to read on it, and then suddenly I was typing furiously and I had the first chapter of Turning For Home written before I got off the train.

What's that about, right? I don't know. Books just happen to you, with enough practice, I suppose.

I won't say too much about Turning For Home right now because it is in its infancy and anything could happen. But I wanted to touch on racehorse retirement and retraining Thoroughbreds, the subject of my website Retired Racehorse. So that's in there.

Besides the latest Alex & Alexander, I have two more novels to release this year. Both are already written and are waiting for me to dust them off and do final edits already. And when I say "written" I mean "written and then re-written five or six times."

The first one you'll probably see is Ambition, which follows a ruthlessly ambitious young eventing rider who is out to make her name whatever the cost. She'll steamroller anyone in her way in order to get to the top. This is a girl who has been the working student all of her life, watching the rich kids go on trail rides while she stayed behind to clean stalls, and consequently has a chip on her shoulder the size of Montana. When an apparently wealthy rival trainer offers her help, she brushes him off with no uncertain words. But everyone needs help eventually, and she finds herself in so deep that all she can do is give up her prejudices and trust in her enemy.

The second one is The Daughter of Horses. This novel is a completely new direction for me: fantasy, and follows a fairy tale that I've already been slightly obsessed with: Beauty and the Beast. Loosely set in England in the early nineteenth century, The Daughter of Horses features magic, romance, a traveling circus, and angry villagers. Oh, and horses. So many horses!

So there you have it. My summer is going to consist largely of getting these books out to you. Turning For Home, Ambition, The Daughter of Horses. So here's my question to you: which one should I concentrate on first?

Oh and by the way, The Head and Not The Heart is currently 99 cents, if you haven't given it a try yet, and all of my books are currently available for free lending via Amazon Prime. If you have a Nook HD, you can download the Kindle app and read your Amazon purchases that way. You can also check out the beautiful paperbacks if you're an old-fashioned kind of reader! Thanks, and keep it horsey!

How a Series Happens

by Natalie Keller Reinert

Hey guess what, I know how a series happens now.

When I was a kid, I really wanted to read either A) crazy long books or B) absurdly long series of books. I needed my stories to go on and on and on. Walter Farley received gold stars for his twenty-odd  Black Stallion books. Even the Island Stallion. And, grudgingly, The Horse-Tamer. I guess.

Black Stallion illustration. Man. Now I wish my books had illustrations like this.

Now most of the books I read are one-time-only deals. Literary fiction authors tend to write a book, finish the book as tidily or as untidily as they please, and then close the door behind them when they leave. Lights out. On to the next project.

I always assumed I'd do that, too. I have a list of book ideas, and they all contain new characters and settings that I haven't written about yet.

But... but... I like these characters.

Maybe it's a detachment problem, but I don't want to leave Alex and Alexander, the stars of The Head and Not The Heart, behind. What happens next? 

So... I wrote another book about them. Other People's Horses deals with what happens next. It's taken care of, right? Alex goes to Saratoga, she becomes a full-fledged racehorse trainer in her own right, she deals with some grimy characters, she makes some unlikely friends, she has some nice horses. Excellent. Good night.

But...

What happens next? 

Sigh.

This is going to become a problem for me.

I'm just completely invested in Alex and Alexander now, you see. And their farm. And their horses. After all, for two books now, that's more than two years of my life, I have thought about what would Alex do? I went to Saratoga last summer and walked around the beautiful town and thought, Alex would love it here. 

I want to write about Alex in Saratoga.

And so I did. And it became a daily obsession. Alex in Saratoga, lucky girl! Or was she?

Riding on the subway, staring out at the graffiti on the tunnel walls, wondering how Alex was going to fix a problem horse. Walking through Midtown, drinking coffee and dodging tourists, wondering how Alexander will react when Alex tells him about her new horse she bought without telling him. These people are in my head, you guys.

So (Alex and Alexander), as Amazon denotes my series title, is going to become a thing. There will be a third one later this year. I strongly suspect there will be a fourth one. So I hope there are other adults out there who never lost their love of a long series of books, who always want to know more, who always want to know what happens next. 

Other People's Horses is now available as a paperback and an ebook from Barnes & Noble and Amazon. The GoodReads giveaway for a paperback continues through April 4.

There's also an interview with the photographer who provided the image for Other People's Horses at my blog, Retired Racehorse.

Saratoga Dreamin'

by Natalie Keller Reinert

I'm writing tonight about summer-time.

It's seventeen degrees in Brooklyn this evening and summer-time couldn't seem much further away. I've been outside nearly all day, and I'm warm for the first time in thirteen hours -- because I just got out of a scalding hot shower. I've turned up the radiators and I've stolen my husband's flannel PJ pants (he never wears them anyway) because I want to write about summer and I can't do that without bursting into tears unless I'm warm.

Oh summer. I spent all my time thinking about you. I've actually been writing about summer since... last summer. That's because I was working all autumn on my new novel, Other People's Horses, and it's set in the most wonderful, summery-est place of all: Saratoga Springs, New York.

One of Saratoga's perfect, cute, adorable, wonderful signs.

Does it get any better than Saratoga in the summer? Probably not, or I wouldn't be dreaming of it every day. The leafy streets, the gaudy Victorians, the red-and white awnings of the grandstand... and all those horses.

Thoroughbreds everywhere.

Heaven.

There's even a barn named Horse Heaven. Genius!

Look, I know Ocala is the Horse Capital of the World (TM) and I know that's probably disputed by Lexington. I've lived in one town; I've visited the other. But Saratoga, graceful beautiful historical Saratoga, truly wears the crown. Saratoga is like Racehorse Disneyland. It's so perfect you have to suspect the hands of masterful Imagineers must have put it together; a shimmering illusion of what the racing life should be.

I conceived Other People's Horses while sitting at an outdoor cafe in Saratoga last summer. It was scorching hot and the sun kept finding me no matter how I wriggled around the table, trying to use the umbrella for shade and failing. I pulled my straw hat down to shield my eyes and flipped open my Fasig-Tipton catalog to the blank pages reserved for notes. Instead of jotting down observations about the yearling Thoroughbreds we'd seen at the sales pavilion earlier, I jotted down the plot of a story.

The story of Alex, the star of my first novel, The Head and Not The Heart, set loose upon poor, unsuspecting Saratoga.

Jumping in head-first at the most prestigious meet in North America, Alex, an inexperienced groom, and six horses journey to Saratoga and find that pretty is as pretty does, but one can't account for how people will behave, even in the most beautiful surroundings. There's a whole new cast of characters, including Leading Trainer Ken Doll (not his actual name), and some fun new horses, each with their own quirks and personalities.

Concept cover art for Other People's Horses

In the end, some of my favorite parts of Saratoga made it into the novel. The horses crossing the road with a horsey crossing guard to block traffic. The wonderful bars and restaurants tucked into the stately brick buildings downtown. The riots of flowers and brightly colored buildings that make up the sprawling grounds of the historic racecourse. The modern glitz of the sales pavilion where baby racehorses sell for the gross national products of small European nations.


And of course, some horses that I've loved, or lost, or met along the way.

Everything comes together under one of the hottest, driest summers Saratoga has ever known. Which, I might add, is the exact opposite of tonight. It's probably snowing up there right now. There's a reason why Saratoga is only a heavenly vacation spot for racehorse groupies in the summertime. That joint is really, really far north. 

But tonight I'm dreaming of summer-time. It's almost here again, right? I can see it, I can feel it, I can taste it now. Green trees, blue skies, soaring temperatures. Cold drinks and melting ice cream. And, oh look! There's me in my straw hat, leaning on the white rail of the paddock at Saratoga.