American Classic Pedigrees - Horse Tales

Once Again, Copy Editing

10/23/2025

Having gotten back from a pleasant vacation, I'm having to turn around and plow into one of my less-favorite chores---that of going through the copy editing process with my latest book-in-progress. This isn't my first rodeo with the process (see "Copy Editing" in this blog, October 5, 2023), so at least I'm on familiar turf.

As previously noted, it's easier to get through this if I remember that the copy editor and I are on the same team, with the mutual goal of producing the best book possible. That said, I still don't enjoy the corrections and wordsmithing. Some things just have to be endured as best one may to reach long-term goals.

On the brighter side, I've submitted another book proposal based on previous correspondence with the "Racing Royalty" editor. Wish me luck in getting my new project started!

The Power of Words

9/25/2025

I can't help but think about a lot of the things that have been splashed around all over social media and the news. I honestly hope that the most vitriolic and ugly were spewed in the heat of the moment by people who, maybe, were a bit ashamed of themselves the next day for things they put out that they would not have said face to face to much of anyone. But words do mean things, and even those who regret the things they have said can't take them back. Which perhaps means that we--all of us---need to think more about the things we say, especially online.

There are words, and there are words.

Words can divide us. We can use words to polarize an issue, to rally our “tribes” around us, to signify solidarity and belonging with a particular group, to lash out at “them.” Such words grab attention. Latching on to systems in our brains that are hard-wired to respond to possible threats, they provoke immediate responses of defensiveness, fear, anger, and virtue signaling—words that widen the rift between “Us” and “Them.” Every issue becomes a shibboleth used to separate the “righteous” from those who fail to support this identity or that cause.

Those who create the algorithms that drive our digital world know this. Remarks and posts that play to anger, fear, self-righteousness, and envy draw far more clicks and likes than those that show more nuanced views. They are also more likely to show up on your feeds and searches, fueling the cycle of threat-response. Lash out with ugly epithets and accusations against someone you don’t agree with, and your status will shoot up with others who hold similar positions; you might even go viral and be considered an “influencer.” Attempt to be a peacemaker and you pay both with less exposure and with attacks from both sides from the sort of people whose idea of “toleration” is 100 percent support for their position and who will accept nothing else.

Bluntly, it is far easier to make profits of whatever kind—money, power, social approval, or attention—from vice than virtue. Whipping up an argument or a mob takes far less effort than holding a reasoned discourse; calling on others to exercise disciplined thought and emotional self-control is never popular. Grasping on to a label or some small facet of human experience, making that an “identity,” and using it as a ticket to a sense of importance, belonging, or “specialness” is an easy way to define one’s own worth and that of others but is ultimately destructive to both the self and society. Seeking to develop oneself as a complete human being who can work, play, love, and worship freely—what used to be called “character building” or even “soul making”—is much harder, requiring reflection, self-examination, honesty, and humility.

Ultimately, we are imperfect creatures and will always communicate imperfectly with each other, at least in this life. But we can choose our words to build bridges instead of factions. We can choose to ignore “microaggressions,” freeing ourselves from the burdens of carrying a chip on our shoulders and maintaining a constant lookout for offense. (As one person wiser than I said, “Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to ignorance.”) We can look for healthier ways to create our own self-images than clinging to stunted “identities” requiring constant “validation”; sometimes, the most loving thing another person can do for us is to apply a kick in the pants instead of a pat on the back when it comes to self-centered or self-destructive behavior. We can choose to acknowledge that we aren’t all-knowing gods, to extend goodwill, and to agree to disagree—maybe even to say, “you know, you might have a point there”—instead of demanding 100 percent compliance with our own views. There are some things worth defending at all cost, but the great majority of things we quarrel and spew venom over don’t fall in that category. Isn’t it better to seek peace and wholeness, even if they are costly, than cheap wins at someone else’s expense?

“Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus said. I don’t know that I’m very good at it, but I think at least trying is worth a lot more over the long haul than counting up likes and views. How about you?

Racing Royalty Is Off and Running!

9/4/2025

It's now 100 percent official---the "Racing Royalty" series from the University Press of Kentucky has a May 2026 launch date, which means my book on Holy Bull will at last be taking wing. I will still have to plow through copy editing and final proofs, but the goal is finally in sight. The really tough part will be deciding which horse to go with next before making my pitch to the editor for the next project.

I've finally finished plowing through the Daily Racing Form archives in quest of Chief Johnson, so it's back to Newspapers.com at this point. I should be able to target my searches much more effectively now, though, which will be a considerable blessing.

Juggling a couple of different book ideas (and trying to decide on a third!), putting more material together for the website here, the occasional article or book review, and taking care of everyday life---sometimes I don't know if I'm coming or going!

On the Trail of Chief Johnson ... and Baba Yaga?

8/21/2025

As previously anticipated (see "The Challenge of the Ordinary," May 29, 2025), Sam "Chief" Johnson has not been an easy person to track across the years. I am slowly building quite a profile on him now, thanks to the online Daily Racing Form archives. While these don't provide all the details I might want, the references there do help me pin down where he was active at a given time. Trying to find material on someone with so common a name as "Sam Johnson" in the huge Newspapers.com database is like trying to find particular snowflakes in a blizzard; being able to apply filters as to the cities/regions and times likeliest to yield references to the correct Sam Johnson makes a huge difference. So, I am making progress there.

I also finally got back to writing a little on the Firebird idea last night and am pondering on how best to handle an encounter between the heroine and Baba Yaga. This is challenging because Baba Yaga has plenty of surface familiarity for those even slightly acquainted with Slavic legend and mythology but is a figure with a thousand faces when you go below that surface. I don't want her to be just a stock figure of the Evil Old Witch to be gotten around somehow, like a boss in a video game. At the same time, she has to present a serious challenge for the heroine on a number of levels, one that should draw on the heroine's unique gifts and have a significant impact on her character arc. That means I have to come up with a fresh way of presenting elements that could otherwise fall into one of several pretty tired tropes. Which may force me to grow as a writer as much as the fictional Vasiliya does as a person.

In the Age of AI, Why Write?

7/24/2025

In the age of AI, a question does come to mind: Why write at all? After all, a computer can pull information together in seconds that would take me months or years to compile, and it can then put that information into a reasonably coherent form. So why bother with the long-term effort of putting a book together, especially when that effort gets little respect from many people (especially those enamored with AI's potential for producing content cheaply) and sees very little in the way of financial reward?

Don't get me wrong; AI is a marvelous tool with tremendous potential. But AI has a number of serious limitations. Its performance depends on the parameters built in by its basic algorithms, which were put together by brilliant but fallible human beings; even though AI systems can evolve and adapt without further human input, they remain limited by their basic design. AI's accuracy and reliability depend on the data it is able to access, and most of the AI systems available to the public do not limit their data sources to experts or foundational source materials; thus, they run into the same limitations as crowdsourced content, which provides a vast array of information drawn from a population's collective knowledge and experience but is all too often woefully short on even basic fact-checking and proofreading. Anyone who has spent time swearing at Wikipedia, Pedigree Query, and other open-sourced encyclopedias and databases for egregious errors that could easily have been caught with a bit of cross-checking knows what I mean. Even more exasperating (and sometimes rather frightening) is AI's tendency to "hallucinate" material to fill in what it doesn't actually "know"; these "hallucinations" are different from the types of errors introduced by failures in human memory and for that reason are difficult to predict or avoid.

Perhaps AI's greatest limitation is this: it does not know the difference between information and knowledge, let alone information and wisdom. Information, even when 100 percent accurate, is a collection of facts. Knowledge encompasses much more; it is facts plus meaning, which requires context, comprehension, experience, reflection, and sometimes insight. Wisdom adds another layer, that of the ability to consider consequences against transcendent standards and so to make moral choices regarding the use and application of knowledge, or to counsel others regarding those choices. Information by itself cannot build a civilization or a culture; transmitted knowledge and wisdom are part of the fabric that defines a society and binds it together, and that transmission requires caring about what gets passed on. AI doesn't care about anything; it just does what it does.

And that, I suppose, answers my question. I write because I do care: because I am a storyteller at heart and hope that something in the stories I pass on will resonate with others. Other writers, I suppose, have their own reasons for persevering; this one is enough for me.

Dealing with Disappointment

7/3/2025

The list of semifinalists for the Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award for horse-related books published in 2024 is now out. The Kentucky Oaks: 150 Years of Running for the Lilies didn't make the cut.

I can't say that I'm not disappointed. The inevitable question of Why? comes up, along with the insidious self-doubt: maybe I'm just not that good a writer. It doesn't matter how many books and articles you've had published; rejection is a bitter pill to swallow, no matter when in one's career it occurs.

In truth, both the quality and quantity of horse-related books that have come out in the last few years have been high, and I'm sure that the selection panel for the Dr. Tony Ryan Award had to make some very hard decisions. Certainly, it's nothing personal. My challenge now is not to take it personally, and to continue trying to make each new book the best it can be. God willing, I will keep improving until the day comes when I set my last word to paper.

Buried Treasures

6/19/2025

There's nothing like a trip to Lexington to have me appreciating anew what a rare gem the Keeneland Library is. There's far more to this wonderful place than the books and magazines on the main floor. Their basement is a storehouse of treasures that otherwise would mostly likely have been lost forever. Thanks to the Keeneland Association, generous donors, and the hard work of Library staff, they are preserved.

The importance of the Library's holdings cannot be understated, for while the collections are primarily dedicated to the history of Thoroughbred racing and breeding, the history of the horse is deeply tied in with the sweep of human history. One cannot delve into the accounts of great horses of the past without learning something of the world that they and their human associates lived in. Cultural shifts and attitudinal changes on everything from animal welfare to the role of women in society to the evolution of an agrarian society through the Industrial Revolution, the two World Wars, and the Information Era can be discerned in the stories of those who have gone before us, both two-legged and four-legged. thus, the Library is not only a repository of equine history; it is a storehouse of our own.

I had only limited time to stop and research on this trip and added only a few fragments on the story of Chief Johnson to the material I already had, but the Library staff outdid themselves on something else: they found an unpublished master's thesis on Colonel E. R. Bradley in their holdings, and (thanks to the efforts of Library Project Curator Sarah Cantor), I now have a digital copy of same in my possession. The unlikely friendship between Chief Johnson and Bradley is a topic I'd like to explore further, and this thesis at the very least may be able to point me in some new directions for research. And that leads me to a final point: the greatest treasure the Library possesses is its people, who are preserving the past, making it available in the present, and holding it in trust for the future. If you ever have the chance to stop by and say hello to Library Director Roda Ferraro and her team, do so. They are some amazing folks!

The Challenge of the Ordinary

5/29/2025

Having gotten a bit stuck on the Firebird story, I've turned to a back-burner project that's been simmering for a little while---a history based on the life of Sam "Chief" Johnson. Readers of my Dream Derby: The Myth and Legend of Black Gold will probably recognize the name as that of a friend of Hanley Webb's who helped break Black Gold to the saddle and served as the colt's exercise rider for much of his career. There's a lot more to Johnson, though. Half white and half Cherokee (hence his nickname, "Chief"), Johnson was one of the most colorful characters ever seen in American racing. Active as a jockey from around 1880 up until about 1930, he rode mostly on the fair circuit and at minor Western tracks. Cat-quick, tough, and fearless, he crossed paths with any number of mavericks, rogues, and rascals, both equine and human, and was as known for his ready wit as for his riding skills. Given his long career and the wide geographical scope of his involvement with racing---he appears in records of meetings from Emeryville, California, to the Maritime Provinces of Canada and from Juarez, Mexico, to St, Paul, Minnesota---he looks like an excellent focal point for a narrative presenting the great sweep of Thoroughbred history in what moderns would call "flyover country" in the era between Reconstruction and World War II.

The problem with centering a major work around someone like Johnson is that, as history goes, he was a small fish in a huge pond. Histories and major newspapers tend to concern themselves with the big names and great events; the doings of what are considered "ordinary people" are usually passed over with little notice. Likewise, the small tracks at which Johnson plied his trade for most of his life left little trace in the record books and periodicals of the day, With luck and patience, some information can be gleaned from local newspapers that have found their way into online archives and perhaps from historical societies. Much else regarding these modest venues and their activities will have been lost to time as the last living memories of them passed away.

Recreating a world that is long gone will not be easy. Reconstructing Johnson's life may be at some points impossible. I expect that if I ever make it happen, it will take years, especially given that I will probably be interspersing work on his story in between the demands of other projects---not least the Firebird, which is a tale I certainly don't want to abandon. There are undoubtedly other horse biographies in my future as well, and I've put out some ideas before my editors; any of those could become a major focus of my attention without much notice. Still, I think Johnson's story deserves to be told, perhaps as much for all the "little people" whose lives shape an era as for the man himself. The stories of the already famous are told and retold ad nauseum; in taking up the challenge of tracing the life and times of an "ordinary" man, at least I will be taking a different path, and who knows what may lie at the end?

Scene Selection

5/8/2025

One of the challenges facing any writer is this: You have developed a scene, and it is really good. It is riveting, solid, and well written. Interesting characters move through it in believable fashion; you can practically see it playing out on screen. There's just one hitch: somehow, it doesn't quite do what you need it to do in the context of the entire manuscript, and you're not sure what to do about it.

Sometimes, painful though it may be, you may need to delete it from the manuscript; a scene that does not advance the story in a satisfying manner cannot be allowed to remain, no matter how excellently it is written. But very often, such drastic surgery isn't necessary. Answering a few basic questions and revising the scene accordingly can heighten its impact and make it a more dynamic part of your completed work.

First, does the scene's beginning pull readers of the previous scene further into the story? At its end, does it push them to move into the next scene? If the answer is "no," or "I don't know," you may want to consider how the events of the previous and subsequent scenes tie into your problem scene. Sometimes you may need to move material between scenes for greater effectiveness; for example, perhaps a bit of exposition regarding the resolution of some conflict or tension in the previous scene needs to be moved back into that scene, letting you jump into the new scene with a growing problem or a piece of action that is a logical development from the previous scene's resolution. Sometimes the ending to your scene needs to leave the reader realizing that while the scene's main conflict has been resolved, another conflict or problem is now rearing its head---not quite a cliffhanger (although that can be a useful device when not overused), but enough to keep the reader moving into finding out how the new area of tension is going to play out. There are exceptions to every rule, but generally, don't begin a scene with a lot of exposition if you can move quickly into action of some sort, and don't end a scene with the feeling that everything has been wrapped up neatly with a bow on it.

Second, does anything grow or change during the scene? Is there development of a character arc? Does the scene drive toward a protagonist's choice that has real stakes attached? Does the world around the character grow in some way, pushing the character to change in response? If nothing happens during the scene that really matters to the overall story, then the scene isn't carrying its weight.

Third, does the scene carry out multiple purposes in the narrative? Ideally, the scene will develop or advance several things at once, whether it's the overall plot, a subplot, a character arc, world development, character relationships, or a theme. If the scene only serves one purpose, that may explain why it isn't meshing well with other scenes weighted more heavily toward other aspects of the story. A scene that works on several areas is less likely to end up seeming flat when considered in the context of the rest of the story.

Fourth, does the scene grow organically from what the story has already revealed? Plot twists and unexpected developments are fine, but they still need to have some logical or emotional continuity with what's already been going on. Throwing in a scene that mostly supplies shock value often leaves readers feeling cheated---as in a detective story, it's not fair to your readers to leave them without any hints of what might be coming down the line. A development that in hindsight gets the reaction, "Now why didn't I see that coming before?" is fine; a narrative sucker punch is not.

Five, is the scene providing value in developing something significant to the overall story, or is it heading off down a rabbit trail, chasing some minor event or character that will have very little influence on your narrative when all is said and done? Minor stuff can add a lot of richness to your story, but don't give it more space than it deserves based on its overall importance. Scenes that are chasing rabbits probably need to be cut, no matter how fine the writing within the scene is.

Now, if your review indicates that drastic surgery is necessary and a scene needs to go, that doesn't mean you should discard it entirely; as many an author has found, such scenes sometimes carry the germ of a whole new work in them, so there's no harm in stashing them in a file somewhere and letting them percolate in the back of your mind. Just make sure that the scenes you do keep are pulling their full weight in moving your story along, and you'll probably be much happier with both your end results and their reception by others.

Happy writing!

On the Move Again!

4/24/2025

Having reviewed some YouTube videos and articles on the art of writing, I think I have found a solution (at least one that works for me) to the problem of writer's block with the Firebird. I now have a partial framework laid out in scene-by-scene fashion, along with a summary of what each scene is meant to accomplish. When I get stalled on that, I work on one of the scenes. When inspiration for a scene plays out, I go back to the framework.

I am finding that this has two benefits beyond that of my writing something---anything---to keep moving forward. Having a framework at least partially done prompts me to consider how whatever scene I am currently writing will fit into the overall movement of the story and how it will move plot and characterization forward. In switching over to work on the framework, the developing scenes cause me to consider whether the framework needs revision---a character's arc and growth as explored in a scene may cause me to realize that events need to move in a different order than originally planned to best develop the overall idea and the emerging subplots.

With a half-finished framework and a bunch of undeveloped scenes, I'm still a long way from having a finished manuscript. But at least I'm enjoying myself and making progress again. Don't know if this will help the writers among you, but I hope it's at least worth considering. Happy writing!