Monday, September 16, 2013

While you weren't looking...I wrote a horse book

If you know me in real life, you'll know that horses are a big part of my life. Growing up I wanted a horse more than anything in the world and I drove my parents crazy about it. It was the wish I made every birthday and the only thing I ever asked Santa for. But I didn't get my own horse until I was old enough to get a job and from that day on, horses consumed me. I ate, slept and pretty much spent every waking hour with them. I rode, groomed, trained and in return they filled a hole in my heart that had been empty a long time. Then they almost killed me. But that is a story for another time.

Even though I can't ride anymore, I still have a horse. His name is Merlin. He is a bay thoroughbred with four white socks, a blaze and a heart of gold. He nickers when he hears me arrive at the barn and he bows for his carrots. He still fills part of that hole in my heart and now I fill the rest of it with writing.

When I was young and horseless, I spent hours in my room reading horse books. There were never enough of them but I read the same books over and over again. I wanted to be the girl who rescued the Arabian from the circus or the one who bought the scruffy Fly-By-Night and kept him in her back yard. These books gave me hope that one day I would have my own horse. And now I pass that legacy on.

The Secret Rider is the book we all read as horse mad girls. The one where the heroine needs to ride more than anything in the world and yet the world is conspiring against her to make sure that doesn't happen. Show Jumping Dreams is a series that is very close to my heart. It is the book I've been trying to write since I was ten years old, sitting in the English garden with my typewriter and my hopes and dreams. It is the life I would have had if things had turned out differently and though most of the books I write are for others to enjoy, this one is for me.



Click here to buy The Secret Rider on Amazon