Blog Archives

Writers Up!

2/29/2024

For those of you not already familiar with the work of Jennifer S. Kelly, you owe it to yourself to read both the books she has released so far. The first, Sir Barton and the Making of the Triple Crown (2019, University Press of Kentucky), explores the career of a forgotten hero whose feats helped shape our modern racing landscape. The other, The Foxes of Belair: Gallant Fox, Omaha, and the Quest for the Triple Crown, details the careers of the only father-and-son pair of American Triple Crown winners and of their breeder-owner, William Woodward, who had a remarkable impact on breeding and racing on both sides of the Atlantic. Both are excellent, and Jennifer has also released some fine articles under her byline at America's Best Racing (www.americasbestracing.net) and in Blood-Horse magazine.

While writing is for the most part a solitary endeavor, keeping in touch with other writers and seeing what they're up to is one way to keep the creative juices flowing. (Though I'll deal with the dark side of this next week, for a dark side there is.) Fans, also, like to see what's going on with favorite authors. Accordingly, Jennifer is launching a monthly newsletter, Writers Up!, from her website, www.jenniferkellywrites.com, and I'd like to encourage fellow writers and fans alike to sign up. Jennifer is an engaging and enthusiastic writer, and I anticipate that the recipients of her newsletter will find it more than worthwhile in keeping up with a favorite author and the writing and racing worlds she moves in. I know I'm looking forward to it!

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A Priceless Gift

2/22/2024

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If a picture is worth a thousand words, award-winning photographer Barbara Livingston has just dropped a couple of billion words’ worth on the Keeneland Library. As many of you are already aware, she has gifted a collection of some two million—yes, that’s million—negatives from photographs taken by Jim Raftery. The Raftery Turfoto collection contains photographs dating from the 1930s to the 1990s and was acquired by Livingston from Raftery’s family some years ago.

Livingston’s gift to the Keeneland Library will help ensure the preservation of this matchless visual chronicle of racing in 20th-century America. Equally important from a writer’s point of view, it will be a godsend in finding illustrations for books focusing on people and horses who were involved in racing during this period. The Keeneland Library has always been extremely helpful and generous in working with writers and researchers, and this donation will expand the resources at the Library’s disposal.

The benefits of Livingston’s generosity will not be completely available for years and quite possibly decades, as the Library has much work ahead in processing the collection and preparing it for both preservation in climate-controlled archives and digitization to make it more widely available. Nonetheless, I cannot think of a better steward for the splendid body of work created by Raftery during his lifetime and carefully kept by his family and then Livingston, or a better group of people to perform the labor of love that making these photographs available to future generations will be.

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The Long Game

2/15/2024

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Writing books as a vocation is definitely not for the faint of heart or for those demanding instant gratification and reinforcement. The chances are that you will spend years in the process of writing a book and seeing it through to publication. From there, it will probably take several more years and probably several more books before you begin seeing much financial return---if then.

It's a hard lesson to learn, or relearn; with nearly seventeen years' hiatus between my third book, Gold Rush, and my fourth, Dream Derby, I find that I had forgotten much about how hard the waiting game can be---doubly hard, when even what I thought were modest expectations haven't yet matched up with reality. Those who have received a royalty statement far lower than hoped for, or who have been dropped with little or no explanation by one or more outlets that used to provide a nice extra income stream, know exactly what I mean. Add that to the discouragement of being contacted mostly by people who want me to spend money I don't have to spare on their workshops, website services, and canned optimism, and it makes for feeling pretty emotionally drained. I've had the experience of being victimized before by the kind of person who sells a "service" that proves to be nothing more than a means of preying on the discouraged and desperate; no thanks for a second helping.

In truth, I'm not desperate anyway, just feeling down because of recent events. This too shall pass, and my writing career will continue---not least because I have people who love me who are in my corner. They are the silver lining to my cloud. May you, the reader, be as blessed in the tough moments of your own journey.

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Book Review: No Snail (David Owen)

2/8/2024

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At first glance, the worlds inhabited by the American flat racer Seabiscuit and the Irish steeplechaser L’Escargot seem as far apart as the two sides of the Atlantic, with the width of North America thrown in for good measure. Flat racing is faster-paced in every way, with more speed throughout each race and, until recently, far more races packed into each season. When the flat racer is a prospective stallion, every race at the upper levels takes a chance with a horse’s reputation as well as with injury, and it is a rare entire campaigner that, like Seabiscuit, is still racing at the top level at the age of seven—an age at which steeplechasers, usually geldings, are often considered to be just coming into their full powers after several years of learning their business over long miles of fences.

As recounted in Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit: An American Hero (2001, Ballantine Publishing Group), Seabiscuit was the idol of his time in the United States. L’Escargot (“the snail” in French), though popular, never achieved the same level of acclaim, often seeming damned with faint praise for having toppled horses still dearer to the public’s heart. Yet these two champions share a common theme to their careers: the story of a quest achieved late in their racing lives. For Seabiscuit, it was the rich Santa Anita Handicap, a race that had eluded him by the narrowest of margins twice before and which he won on a comeback from potentially career-ending injury as well as disappointment. For L’Escargot, it was the Grand National Steeplechase at Aintree, perhaps the steeplechase world’s most brutal test and one he had essayed three times before coming home in triumph at the expense of the legendary Red Rum. This is the tale behind David Owen’s No Snail: The Story of L’Escargot, the Horse that Foiled Red Rum (2023, Fairfield Books).

I will confess right here that I am probably not the best reviewer for Owen’s work, being only loosely acquainted with European racing and scarcely acquainted at all with the world of steeplechasing. Although he has done a good job with the placement of notes to provide extra information, there are undoubtedly nuances in Owen’s narrative that someone familiar with English and Irish steeplechasing would catch and savor but that are lost on me. Nonetheless, there is plenty here to provide a portal to the world of jumps racing, so that the reader can sense something of the minds of those engaged in this demanding yet strangely unhurried sport. As an example, to someone familiar with American flat racing, a tenth-place finish in a major stakes race in a horse’s second or third season of competition would hardly seem encouraging; Owen shows that to a steeplechase trainer “across the pond,” the same finish might represent a good learning experience for the horse or even a triumph of sorts, depending on the experience and condition of the horse and the severity of the test. The narrative also brings home how much the life of an English or Irish jumps racer is at the mercy of the elements of winter and early spring, far more so than is generally the case here in the milder climates and more manicured tracks of Southern California and Florida; small wonder that the atmosphere of jumps racing seems pervaded with more patience and flexibility than often seems part of the flat-racing scene.

Owen does an excellent job of bringing the reader into the process of bringing a top hurdling or ‘chasing prospect along to championship level, and the story of L’Escargot’s rise to the top of his sport is nicely counterpointed by the story of owner Raymond Guest’s long-running campaign to capture a prize that had held his imagination for decades. Another compelling story within the narrative is that of Dan Moore in finally winning steeplechasing’s ultimate race as trainer after being narrowly denied the honors as jockey thirty-seven years earlier. If there is any disappointment to be found in the work, it is that L’Escargot himself does not emerge as a character in his own right to the extent that Seabiscuit did with Hillenbrand, though perhaps this reflects cultural differences in how animals’ personalities and mentalities are viewed as much as it does personal differences between the two writers. Still, that is a small fault (if fault it is) compared to the overall quality of the work. Overall, I found No Snail to be an interesting and well-paced read and one well worth adding to the library of any racing enthusiast.

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Writers Up!

A Priceless Gift

The Long Game

Book Review: No Snail (David Owen)

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