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!

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!

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

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.

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!

Horse Books for Horse People

by Natalie Keller Reinert

We've all read them.

Books that have a horse on the cover. Purport to have a stirring equestrian background. A title with a horsey term, something like, oh, I don't know... Flying Changes. 

(I'm sorry, it is a beautiful term. But I have read at least three books with that title and there are more than half a dozen different books by that title on Amazon. I think it's been done.)

Anyway, books that supposedly have an equestrian bent, written by equestrians, but which are, in fact, written so that a person who has never been inside a barn and wouldn't know a poll from a stifle can enjoy them without having to look up a conformation chart.

I'm sure people who have never been inside a barn and don't know basic equine anatomy can be nice, but their idea of a "horse book" and my idea of a "horse book" are awfully different.

As different as a poll from a stifle.

Every now and then I come across a book that just passes my strict "horse book for horse people" test. Sara Gruen's pre-Water For Elephants books. (One of which is called Flying Changes.) Barbara Dimmick's In the Presence of Horses. 

For some reason I can't nail down, both of these are really melodramatic over-the-top emotional roller coaster books, but I enjoyed them, not least because they contained horse-people-only words like "Kopertox."

And that small little shout-out, that "Hey look I know horse things too!" cameo appearance of horse-centric words, was just the reality for a long, long time. If you were looking for a book that only appealed to a small, niche audience -- and shocking as it seems, I guess equestrians are a small, niche audience, maybe because most of them don't have time to read because horses -- then you just took what you could get and tried not to get overly annoyed with books that routinely described twelve-year-olds in red coats showing their ponies over fences or horses who were tied up by their reins while their riders picnicked or did a million other completely wrong things.

But e-publishing has changed things. E-publishing, and self-publishing, and tiny independent publishers have changed things. Now you can publish a book for the fraction of the overhead that the great big machine of agents and editors and illustrators and designers and printers and shippers and retailers and etc. etc. etc. have created for themselves. Less overhead means less investment is required. It means less sales are required to make it out of the red. It means the audience can be tighter, more defined, and, in the case of horse-people, more awesome.

Now we can have nice things that aren't for everybody. They're just for us.

Just for horse people!

Hurray!

Now: an example.

I spent the weekend with two teenagers.

 

And their hot young trainer.

I was reading the first two books of the Bittersweet Farm series, by Barbara Morgenroth: Mounted and Joyful Spirit. I was really, really enjoying these books, not just because they are clever and witty and beautifully written, but also because horse people were doing horse things and they were doing them right and there wasn't a hastily written explanation for every least little thing the horse people were doing.

A horse could be put on the cross-ties, and that was that. I didn't have to slog through a paragraph about what a cross-tie was, or what it was for or why it was safer or anything like that. The book hadn't been dumbed down and over-simplified. ME GUSTA. 

Horse people are happy, Natalie's happy, everyone's happy. If they're reading on an e-reader, they're even happier, because then if there is a term that they don't know, they can just look it up. On their e-reader. It's the magic of the Internets. They can look it up in 15 seconds, and they know it. Let reading be an educational experience (gasp!) and stop explaining everything. They'll figure it out and be smarter for it.

(Just ask my nine-year-old, who reads so many British books on his Nook, looking up the words he doesn't know as he goes, that he now gets notes on his spelling tests: "Please use the American version of the word.")

So hurray for horse books for horse people! There are more of them now than ever before. Maybe we can all live in a world safe from twelve-year-olds going to horse shows in red jackets forever more.

Reading horse books on the subway

by Natalie Keller Reinert

I get two hours of reading time to myself per day, which is more than most parents with a full-time job and a writing life can boast of, and I owe it all to the subway. I know I’m lucky, but then again, that’s also one of the reasons I live in New York City—no matter where I live, I have to commute, and being able to read a book and let someone else do the driving every day makes a heck of a lot more sense than my driving myself everywhere! 

I love peeking at what other people are reading, but it's getting harder and harder to do. E-readers are insidiously making my book-peeping more difficult, although I’ve been known to read them from over other people’s shoulders on crowded trains. (OMG I totally read a page out of Fifty Shades of Grey the other day and I still feel dirty. On the other hand I got to read a page out of High Fidelity the other day that I just loved: "She loved me. She loved ME. SHE LOVED ME.")

E-readers are making it more difficult to get a grasp of the amazing cross-section of people and the books they choose to bring with them on their commutes, but there are still a lot of titles being clutched in one hand (or two, if you’re one of the other hardy folks like myself who dragged a hard-cover of A Dance With Dragons around for a week) and so book-peeping remains a viable hobby.

This is totally what I look like on the train. Photo: wvs/flickr

Sometimes you really can match a person up with the book they’re reading. Guy with skinny jeans and relevant indie band t-shirt, how is that David Foster Wallace working out for you? Chick with the long bangs and the oversized vintage glasses, I like your glasses and I like your Brooklyn Bridge totebag and I loved A Visit From the Goon Squad, so I know you’re going to love it, too. 

And you can usually match me up, too. I’m the girl with the thick Bavarian braid, dressed in jeans, paddock boots, and a Saratoga ball-cap, reading a horse book.

I’ve read so many great horse books on the subway lately. I was prepping a reading list for Dappled Grey and the subway was my primary research site. The Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss. A Year at the Races by Jane Smiley. Falling for Eli by Nancy Shulins. I’m a little book-proud over them. I know my fellow book-peepers (they’re all around us, you know!) are glancing over and seeing the fabulous covers: the galloping cowgirl silhouette on the first, the bright-eyed racehorse on the second, the adorable begging chestnut on the third. 

And maybe it gives me a little validity, too, reading a horse book on the subway on the way home from work, wearing my dusty Ariats and my lime-smudged jeans and smelling of Bigeloil. I feel like I’m holding up my horse book like a sign: “I swear I’m not a dirty smelly person all the time; it’s just for work.” 

But let’s admit it, my ultimate dream is to end up on Underground New York Public Library, the fabulous Tumblr that was written up recently in the Wall Street Journal, where a book-peeping photographer goes to extremes profiling the reading habits of the subway-commuting public. Just imagine, a horsey girl in horsey clothes reading a horsey book on the subway! I wonder which illustrious equestrian author I shall make famous with this achievement?

Maybe I should just always read a copy of my book on the train, come to think of it.

Which book would you most like to be photographed reading? Relevant literary buzz book, horse book, or would you hide your dirty secrets on your E-Reader?

Books and Horses and Other Things I (We?) Love

This fall I have doing lots of riding and reading and tons of promotion (but not much writing). I just came back from the Kentucky Book Fair, where I was surrounded by horse-loving authors--and readers! 210 authors to be exact, and around 4,000 attendees, and too many horse books to count (or buy!) I twice drove down the Old Frankfort Pike, home to some of the grandest horse farms I have ever seen. I also visited two elementary schools were "The World of Horses" was their theme for the year! So for four days, I was in horse-heaven.

Since I have been guest blogging a lot to help publicize my latest books, I have also gotten to know and love many horsey/booky blogs that I never would have discovered if it weren't for my promotion push. I'd love to share them with you because as readers, writers and horse lovers, we need to support others who are as passionate as we are. I will also shamelessly mention that some of these links go to my guest blogs or my book giveaways on these sites. Hey, I did say I was trying to promote!

For a good belly laugh and some tart musings on life, head to Crazy Texas. Crazy Texas Mama is not just funny and smart-mouthed, she's also attending graduate school to become a motivating and motivated reading teacher (which I discovered through our many e-mails) While you are there, enjoy my guest post and enter a giveaway for Whirlwind and Gabriel's Horses.

For more literary fare, go to http://www.greatbooksforhorselovers.com This site has reviews, writing tips and information on The Literary Horse Exhibit.

If you go to Great Books for Horse Lovers Alison, you'll find reviews of Whirlwind and Shadow Horse plus an interview.

For the young reader, writer and rider in your life, the Girls Horse Club  site is terrific with a capital T. Right now the site has a giveaway of many different horse books, CD's etc.

For some of the pithiest reviews of horse books, don't miss Whitebrook Farm. Here I learned that the 2010 National Book Award Winner is a horse book--Lord of Misrule-- from a small press! It's hard to get on Amazon, so I'm ordering early.

Last but not least, don't forget our own Linda Benson's blog where she's hosting a book giveaway. Add your own favorite book/horse blog to comments and share these blogs/sites with other book and horse crazy folk and let's keep the love going.

Secretariat - the movie

I saw the movie Secretariat last night, and it was grand. Not only does it showcase our greatest horse athlete of all time (winner of the 1973 Triple Crown -set track records for Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes that still stand - appeared on cover of Sports Illustrated, Time Magazine, and Newsweek) but the movie is a great human interest story and great family entertainment.



The actors are wonderful and I really enjoyed watching Diane Lane portray Secretariat's owner, Penny Chenery, as she stood up to the "good old boy" fraternity of horse racing and gave us all something to cheer about.









Five different horses, four thoroughbreds and a quarter horse, portrayed "Big Red" during the film, although none were quite so magnificent as the actual horse himself (pictured above.) The racing scenes are quite thrilling, with up close photography that brings you right into the action.

There may be a few horse people that have tiny quibbles about the accuracy of a few scenes, but this is not a documentary, but instead a warm and rousing movie that had the audience at the edge of their seats.

For people who would like to know more about this great horse, I highly recommend the book by William Nack (who shows up, Bill Nack, as a character in the film.)

SECRETARIAT - The Making of a Champion, Wiliam Nack, Da Capo Press

Secretariat died at the age of 19, suffering from laminitis, and his autopsy revealed a heart twice the size of a normal horse.

Some reflect this may have led to his greatness.

Go see this film. Take the family. You won't be sorry.

Recommended Equestrian Books for Christmas

I promised a post listing recommended reads for horse-related books for Christmas. This list does not include all the fabulous books by the authors on this blog.

Some of you alread added your favorites in a previous post. I hope you don't mind adding them again here. (I borrowed the covers from Amazon so the "Click to look inside" doesn't really work.)

Here are a few of mine:

That Winning Feeling by Jane Savoie
Non-fiction--Even if you don't show, this is a great book for improving your attitude and changing your life.

Horse Play by Judy Reene Singer

Fiction--This is a great read by someone who has obviously been there.

Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss

I found this book in a bookstore in the San Juans. It's a wonderful story of a determined young woman with a gift for gentling horses, set in 1917 Eastern Oregon.

Believe by Buck Brannaman

Non-Fiction--This book chronicles Buck's life with horses. Very good read.

Taking Up the Reins

By Priscilla Endicott

Non-Fiction--The author's year in Germany with a dressage master.

What are your favorites?