American Classic Pedigrees

Critical Reading Is, Well, Critical

2/12/2026

From time to time, I have been asked to read a nonfiction manuscript and give a professional opinion of its strengths, weaknesses, and suitability for publication by the assigning publishing house. At least to me, this is not a light task, especially since it is always understood that my review will be both read by the assigning editor and forwarded to the writer as feedback. On the one hand, I want to encourage other writers and help their growth along, and I don't want to crush someone with harsh criticism. On the other hand, I have a duty to the publishing house to provide an honest assessment as to whether the manuscript is worth persevering with and what changes need to be made to produce something worth the house's time and expense; they aren't paying me to be wishy-washy.

At this stage of the publishing process, it's not my job to help the writer clean up punctuation, spelling, and grammar; that will come later, at the copy editing stage. What I am being asked to do is to assess how well the manuscript answers a number of questions related to writing quality and the needs of the publishing house. They include but are not limited to the following:

Does the manuscript shed new light on a topic, address a new subject, or otherwise fill a niche in the publisher's lineup and the larger market for similar books that has not previously been done? Most publishers aren't in the market for a book that essentially rehashes other works that are already out there without finding a new angle.
Does the manuscript fit into the types of books that the house normally produces and the target audiences that the house appeals to? This is not simply a matter of genre or subject matter, which will get a great many books weeded out without ever needing to get to the beta-reader stage; it can also reflect the level at which the book is written and the type of treatment the subject matter is given. A university press, for instance, usually expects a solid level of research and scholarship in the works it presents even if they are intended for a popular-level audience; a publisher of books suitable for middle-school children needs less academic detail and a writing level that can reach children without talking down to them.
Speaking of writing level, is it suitable for the target audience? Is the vocabulary appropriate? Does the writer use technical terms clearly and appropriately, without either talking down to the audience or assuming greater knowledge than the audience possesses?
What drives the structure of the manuscript? Is it thematic, chronological, topical, or organized around some other principle? Does it remain self-consistent?
How well does the manuscript's structure support its purpose? Is it logical and easy to follow? Should the material be rearranged to improve reader interest and/or comprehension? If so, how?
How well does the manuscript engage and maintain reader interest? Ideally, if there is an introduction or prologue, it should establish three main points: what the topic is, what makes the topic interesting or important, and why the reader should care about it. After that, the book should deliver on what the intro promises. If it doesn't, where is it falling short? How can the problem or problems be corrected?
Do subtopics support and enrich the main narrative/subject without becoming rabbit trails? Are they adequately developed without becoming places where the manuscript bogs down?
How are historical figures treated? Are they developed in a reasonable and interesting way that is consistent with the source materials?
If citations and notes are part of the manuscript, has the writer used credible sources and documented them appropriately? Has eyewitness material been cross-checked with other types of evidence? (While eyewitness information is invaluable for addressing emotional issues and the human side of a narrative, human memory is notoriously fallible---and the reasons why an eyewitness's account doesn't match other evidence can be very interesting in themselves.)

Obviously, there are other questions that could be asked, but these are some of the major ones. For those of you who are engaged in writing, considering these questions in advance of submitting your manuscript and answering them to the best of your ability can save both of us a fair amount of trouble.

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In Process ....

1/15/2026

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Having just finished the proofs for my new book on Holy Bull, this seems as good a time as any to review the steps it takes to get a book to market through a traditional publisher. If any of you have ideas about writing a real book (and not AI slop), this is the gauntlet you'll run.

1) Get an idea that's worth developing. Honestly, this is the easy part. If anyone out there has the notion of "I've got a great idea! I'll give it to an author, s/he can write the book, and we'll split the proceeds," please don't bother; most authors have more ideas than they can ever write up, and most also know better than to commit themselves to a deal that leaves them doing 99.9 percent of the work for what will probably be very little return. (If you haven't read my August 17, 2023, post, "So You Want to Write a Book," I'd suggest doing so to get some grasp of the work involved and the likely returns.) Besides, if you don't feel passionate enough about your idea to put the work of writing in, why should someone else?

2) Research, research, research. If you are writing nonfiction, this is an absolute necessity. Remember, you're trying to sell to an audience with an interest in your topic, and that audience is going to include some people who aren't going to be fooled by blowing smoke. If you count on AI summaries to do your homework, you deserve what you get. Fiction writers also do more research than you'd think; it's part of creating believable fictional worlds in which suspension of disbelief can operate.

3) Create a manuscript and/or a book proposal. This is where the road forks between fiction and nonfiction writers. Generally, fiction publishers want to see a complete draft accompanying your cover letter and proposal. Nonfiction publishers vary more; some will be content with an outline and synopsis, while others will want to see sample chapters. Find out what the requirements are for the publishing house you are targeting and follow them religiously, especially if you have no prior history of working with that house.

4) Prepare to be hit with a lot of advertising for publishing opportunities once you start marketing your book proposal/manuscript. Most of these will be for self-publishing or vanity presses; some will be outright scams. If you do want to go the self-publishing route, do your due diligence about researching how best to go about it. (While my crystal ball may be no better than anyone else's, I think it not improbable that the current flood of AI-generated books hitting the market may actually lead to a resurgence of more traditional publishing in some form as readers look for books that have actually been written by humans and have passed some sort of quality control prior to going to market.)

4) You've been accepted and you've signed a contract! Congratulations! But now, the grunt-work really begins. If you haven't already come up with and submitted a complete manuscript (including any illustrations called for in the contract), you will have a deadline for doing so. If you have, your next step will be copy editing and revisions. The exact stages will depend on the house you're going through. At my current publisher, the University of Kentucky Press, two or three readers will go over a manuscript first, giving feedback and suggesting areas for improvement. After any revisions have been made, the next step is copy editing. That means a copy editor goes over your work line by line, looking for everything from punctuation errors to unclear writing, and you will need to review and respond to every suggested change (though you need not incorporate every change if you feel you have good reason for standing pat; it's your manuscript, after all). If any major changes need to be made that haven't already been taken care of, this is your last opportunity to make them.

5) Review of the proofs is the last major stage before publication. At this point, you will be looking at your manuscript pretty much as it is going to appear when printed. You should read it over carefully and make sure any typos or mistakes haven't managed to sneak through the earlier editing, but suggesting major revisions now is a good way to have your editor frothing at the mouth. Even if the revisions are accepted as necessary, they will result in the entire manuscript having to be set up anew for printing and may well delay the release date, which will not make the publisher happy.

6) If this is a nonfiction work, you will probably be asked to create an index for your book, making it easier for readers to locate specific information. (If this is going to be done by the publishing house, count yourself lucky; it isn't a difficult task, but it is a bit tedious.) The reason this comes so late in the publication process is that you'll need to be able to link your topics to page numbers as they will appear in the printed book, and those numbers won't be available until the proofs are created. Get the index done on time in order to keep from delaying publication.

7) Your book is born! You will probably receive the author copies specified by your contract two or three weeks before the actual release date, but at this point, the writing work is done ... until the next book.

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A Word Spoken

12/25/2025

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Over two thousand years ago, a baby boy was born to a poor peasant woman in a village called Bethlehem. At the time of his birth, it had been four hundred years since God had spoken through Malachi, the last of the post-exilic prophets. Now the divine silence had been broken, but in a completely new way. In the infant born in Bethlehem, the eternal God was manifested in a human body and joined to a sinless human nature. Jesus became the perfect expression of both everything God is and everything that a human being was meant to be. In the words of John, he was the Logos, the “Word made flesh.”

Some four hundred years earlier, Plato had expounded on the logos as the principle of order and reason that governed the universe, but his logos was essentially impersonal. In his use of the term, John added a new layer of meaning, joining the Word that had spoken the universe into existence with the Hebrew concept of the Creator as personal, active, holy, and self-existent. He then linked this personal Logos who had spoken in creation with a new creation that had taken place in the womb of a Jewish maiden. The mighty God who had walked with the first man and woman in Eden during the cool of the day at the first creation had now descended in a new way, to live among the human race as a man while remaining wholly God. In his descent is our ascent, that by the sacrifice of himself for our sins—yours and mine—he could raise us up into a new life. He also answered forever the questions of “What is God like?” and “Has God truly spoken?”; all that we need do to know those answers is to look at Jesus and listen to him. As a former Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, said, "In God there is no unChristlikeness at all."

The Word has become flesh and dwelt among us. Merry Christmas.

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Little Things Mean a Lot

12/11/2025

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Regardless of the form of writing or its content, delivery means a great deal. For example, the choice of font can set mood and give some information about the writer's mindset before a single word of the content has been grasped. Times New Roman? That might communicate to a traditional book publisher that you're taking submission requirements seriously, which cues the reader that you'd like to have your manuscript taken seriously. But Times New Roman would be too staid for the menu screen of an edgy horror game and not elegant enough for invitations to a black-tie event. Arial (which I use here) is unfussy and easy to read, making it a good choice for easy-to-digest online text content, but it lacks the playfulness one might want to see in a greeting card or the captions of a look-at-the-cute-funny-animals video. The important thing is that the chosen font should complement and further the use to which it is being put, not work at cross-purposes with it. Likewise, color and background schemes furnish cues as to your writing's intended tone and audience, again before there is any conscious comprehension of the actual content.

Another area that can enhance or diminish the effectiveness of your writing is the attention given to grammar, spelling, and punctuation. At the risk of sounding like an old-fashioned schoolmarm, I cannot emphasize enough that sloppiness in these areas hurts you in two ways. First, it communicates a degree of laziness on your part and a corresponding lack of respect for your readers. It is one thing to make the occasional mistake or typo; we all do. It is another when you can't be troubled to clean up your writing and free it of potential distractions---and an egregious misspelling or obvious subject-verb disagreement can be more distracting than you might think. Second, these errors---particularly misplaced punctuation---can make your writing more difficult to understand than it needs to be or even convey a meaning that is not the one you intended. Don't count on an AI resource to bail you out of these sorts of mistakes, either; while AI can be useful for basic proofreading, it tends to be weak regarding words that can have any of a number of meanings depending on context, and AI does not usually handle the fine points of English usage any too well.

Finally, word selection can be critical in conveying shades of meaning, and this is one area where a background in poetry (an area in which I am admittedly no expert) can be of considerable help. Training in poetry helps one to consider not only the exact meaning and imagery one wishes to convey with limited words but also develops an ear for the flow and meter of one's writing even when composing prose. The noted Christian writer C. S. Lewis often read passages from his works aloud as he was writing them in order to assess how his writing might sound to a reader's inner ear, and this is not a bad practice to follow in improving readability.

One caution here: when it comes to word selection, avoid making choices based on whatever the current virtue signaling of the moment is. It will be out of fashion next year, if not next month, and will leave your writing feeling dated, tendentious, or both. Common sense and common courtesy, used together, will get you much further in appealing to as wide an audience as possible without giving unnecessary offense.

Happy writing!

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Book Review: Reinventing the American Thoroughbred (O'Dell)

11/20/2025

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Over the years, breeders have made various proposals for trying to improve the soundness, stamina, or speed of the Thoroughbred by outcrossing to other breeds. None were more dedicated to this idea than the nineteenth-century Kentucky horseman Alexander Keene Richards, who spent much of his life and his fortune in securing the finest possible Arabian horses in hopes of creating a better racehorse through judicious crosses to Thoroughbreds. In Reinventing the American Thoroughbred: The Arabian Adventures of Alexander Keene Richards, Gary O’Dell tells the story of Richards’s quest, which took him from the plantations of Kentucky and Mississippi into the deserts of the Near East to find the horses that could fulfill his dream.

Richards does not fit easily into the mold of twenty-first century sensibilities, and O’Dell does not shy away from the complexities of Richards’s life. He focuses more on making Richards understandable than on trying to fit him into any of the polarities so common in our own day. Using contemporary sources in outlining Richards’s background and education, O’Dell shows how he became the man he was. The author then follows Richards’s travels, which led him through the hardships and dangers of nineteenth-century international travel and of navigating unfamiliar cultures and customs in an area well known for tribal warfare. Richards spared no expense in bringing back the finest Arabians possible for his experiment with crossbreeding, and he also played a key role in furthering the career of his close friend and traveling companion, the artist Edward Troye, whose paintings of both Richards's cherished Arabians and of the scenes the two men encountered while traveling in the Holy Land and Syria helped cement his reputation as the most important American painter of his time.

Ultimately, Richards’s quest was doomed, both by his misunderstanding of the Thoroughbred’s origins and by the post-Civil War shift away from heat racing that mirrored what he had already witnessed while observing racing in England. Nevertheless, Richards was more than a failed visionary; he was an important player in both the development of the American Thoroughbred and in the explosive political and cultural developments of his time. As O’Dell portrays him, he was neither icon, saint, nor sinner; he was, in O’Dell’s words, “a fascinating man who led a remarkable life.” O’Dell’s account of that “remarkable life” is a worthy addition to the libraries of both equine historians and of readers interested in the expanding and rapidly changing world of the nineteenth century.

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Once Again, Copy Editing

10/23/2025

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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!

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The Power of Words

9/25/2025

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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?

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Racing Royalty Is Off and Running!

9/4/2025

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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!

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

8/21/2025

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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.

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In the Age of AI, Why Write?

7/24/2025

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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.

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<<Previous

Critical Reading Is, Well, Critical

In Process ....

A Word Spoken

Little Things Mean a Lot

Book Review: Reinventing the American Thoroughbred (O'Dell)

Once Again, Copy Editing

The Power of Words

Racing Royalty Is Off and Running!

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

In the Age of AI, Why Write?

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