Almost Double Digits: My 9th Equestrian Novel Arrives

by Natalie Keller Reinert

UPDATE! TURNING FOR HOME IS NOW AVAILABLE! 

Next week, I send my ninth book into the world.

My ninth. Book. What? That's madness. But there they are, lined up on my author pages at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, my own website... nine books!

Turning For Home - my newest release

I started this craziness in 2011 with the publication of The Head and Not The Heart, but of course there were years worth of books written before this. Notebooks and floppy discs and CD-Rs full of other books. From the moment I could put words down on paper, I was writing stories. I remember writing a very detailed anthology of Black Beauty family stories in a pair of three-subject notebooks. That might have been fourth grade? I remember writing a full-length novel set on a farm in Virginia in a heavy early-model laptop that subsequently died, taking my first novel with it. That was the summer I turned sixteen.

I'm so lucky -- we're all so lucky -- to live in an age when publishing's gatekeepers are falling to the wayside, and anyone who wants to tell a story, can tell a story. I don't know about you, but I was getting pretty tired of what passed for horse stories not too long ago. In mass-produced fiction, horses always seem to be background noise to a love story or a murder, and they always seem to be doing the same thing -- colicking, foundering, winning the Triple Crown despite incredible odds.

Now we have a thriving world of equestrian fiction written for equestrians, where horses are stars in their own rights, not some pieces of landscaping in the background. This is exactly where I want to be -- right smack in the middle of a publishing revival, writers writing about what they love, connecting to readers who feel the same way.

Telling stories is my greatest pleasure. I don't try to write difficult, trendsetting, culturally subversive works that make readers change the way they look at the world. I'm not going after literature prizes here. Don't get me wrong -- I like literature. I like difficult, trendsetting, culturally subversive works. But my job is to tell stories, mainly about Thoroughbreds, because I love them, and I want everyone else to love them too. (Is that so much to ask?)

I guess in that, I'm riding a trend a little bit. After all, retired racehorses are coming back in a big way! Look, they're even getting their own magazine!

Photo: Retired Racehorse Project

Retired racehorses have always been my passion, but this is the first book I've written about the actual moment of retirement, and the question of "What do we do with this horse now?" Turning For Home centers around Tiger, the horse that gave Alex new hope in The Head and Not The Heart, and the challenges surrounding his retirement from the track.

Turning For Home also takes a look at the good, and the bad, in both racing and Thoroughbred aftercare.

I don't know if Turning For Home answers any questions, or if it is culturally subversive, or any of that previously mentioned literary gobbledegook. I do think it's a good story, and a story that so many equestrians like me can relate to.

What happens to our horses? Where do they all go? How can we protect them? When Alex asks those questions, I know she's not alone. I know there's a chorus of us out there, those words echoing in our brains.

In my acknowledgements, I thank a couple of retirement organizations for their help, whether they inspired scenes in the book, or have been an integral part of my writing career. Here's a shout-out for them now:

The Retired Racehorse Project, who seemed to rise up just as I was getting out of the training business, and their Thoroughbred Makeover. I want to do a Thoroughbred Makeover so bad. I have to be content with inventing one for Alex.

Thoroughbred Retirement of Tampa (T.R.O.T.), who helped me with my very first author event, right at Tampa Bay Downs. Their volunteers inspire me every day.

Hidden Acres Rescue For Thoroughbreds (HART), whom I see a lot less often than I would like. Just a few miles from the woods and fields where I used to ride my first Thoroughbred, they're busy bringing in Thoroughbreds who need help, teaching them manners and jobs, and finding them forever homes. I promise I'll be back really soon!

And before I go, a shout-out to my wonderful cover designer, who created Turning For Home's striking cover image, and asked that I make a donation to an equine charity in lieu of payment. You're amazing, and I'm making that donation to HART, my hometown's Thoroughbred aftercare heroes.

Turning For Home will be released in digital format everywhere you buy books on March 3rd is now available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Scribd, Page Foundry, and elsewhere, with a paperback edition coming soon. You can read the first chapter here at my website, and order a Kindle edition at Amazon from the link below.

I'm so excited to share this one with you! Be sure to keep in touch and let me know what you think. I'm writing these for all of us. And I'm about to get busy on book number ten...

Writing about racehorses, and their retirement

Retired Racehorse: 19 year old broodmare Wicket

by Natalie Keller Reinert

I started writing about racehorses in 2009, living on a farm surrounded by retired racehorses.

Their past lives fascinated me. Every retired racehorse, young and old, calm and spooky, silly and mature, carries with them a remarkable story. I mean, have you been to the races? Have you seen the massive scale of the architecture, the tracks that dwarf humans, the tunnels lined with windows that horses march through on their way out to the race? It's about as far from farm life, the life we associate with horses, as anything could be. And racehorses, from a young age, live with that kind of crazy every day.

And they just live with it. They eat their hay and they beg for peppermints and they go out for rides just like any other horse, in any other place, in any other life. Some thrive on the fast pace; some are just waiting until they can slow down on the farm again. But they are capable of great tolerance for things that many horses would simply freak out over.

As horsemen we ask our horses to do things that make them react as if we're delusional fairly regularly.

- Step up on that rubber mat for a bath. What, are you crazy? That mat is obviously going to eat me! 

- Hop over this cross-rail of plain brown poles. And risk being devoured by a cross-rail of DEATH?

- Stand still for a second while I run these tiny buzzing clippers around your ears. UM LOL ROFL!

- I swear that tortoise up ahead isn't going to hurt you. Can't hear you running the other way too fast!

Seriously, horses are all about every day drama. Even retired racehorses. And they're really just playing with you, because they've seen it all, and done it all. They've stepped on rubber mats and they've stepped over poles and they've been clipped and...

Well, they probably haven't seen any tortoises.

Although they may be pretty familiar with goats and pigs from their racetrack lives. And with roosters, and cats. With bicycles and motorbikes. With rumbling commuter trains and crackling loudspeakers.

It's a funny life, the racetrack life.

So I sat and I thought about their past lives, and wrote about them, for years. I wrote The Head and Not The Heart, which goes from the sweet country life in Ocala to the gritty racetrack life in NYC, then Other People's Horses, which takes place in that happiest of happy mediums between farm and races, Saratoga Springs.

Maybe it was inevitable that after writing those books, and living in NYC myself, I started craving a slow-down. Time for a lay-off, a little time back at the farm. I wrote Ambition, about eventing with retired racehorses, about farm life, about working hard for what you want, come whatever odds.

And then I decided to concentrate on those uncertain days between a horse's last race and a horse's new career. The retired racehorse, at the moment he's retired -- that's the subject of my new book, coming this spring: Turning For Home. 

How does a racehorse feel, when he's suddenly taken home and turned out? How does a racehorse react, when he's laid off from the only job he knows? How does a trainer feel, when her horse leaves her barn? What does the horse do next, and who is going to teach it to him? What happens to a retired racehorse?

First ride off the track on an OTTB.

Alex is retiring Tiger -- you might have met Tiger and Alex in The Head and Not The Heart, a few years ago -- and nothing about it seems simple. He knows everything about being a racehorse, and nothing about being a riding horse. Together, they have to figure out how to live and work in a new world.

I wrote about retired racehorses long before I wrote The Head and Not The Heart. Before I was writing back-stories, I was writing their current stories. In my old blog Retired Racehorse (archives are at RetiredRacehorseBlog.wordpress.com, but with lots of broken links - you've been warned), I wrote about retraining a racehorse, fresh off the training center, into a successful sport-horse. I also wrote about my broodmares, themselves retired racehorses, and all their quirks and sillies and moments of brilliance.

Turning For Home is a return to those retirement stories. What happens, when you retire a racehorse?

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While I'm preparing Turning For Home for publication, I'm sharing retired racehorse true stories at my Facebook page, Retired Racehorse Blog. Have a horse you're prepping for the 2015 Retired Racehorse Project Thoroughbred Makeover? Share your website or FB page with readers there. Have an OTTB with a story you've just got to tell? Post over at Retired Racehorse Blog and share your story. That's Facebook.com/RetiredRacehorseBlog.