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New Beginnings

11/30/2023

Making the decision to start work on a new book is akin to taking a deep breath before plunging into deep water. Once you're committed to the leap, pulling out mid-dive is not an option. Getting started on a new work is admittedly not quite that final, but the deeper you plunge in, the less easy it is to reverse the decision. There is something about already having put in a fair pile of work that breeds a major reluctance to shelve or abandon a project that's in the works.

For now, I am focusing on the dawn of international racing in the United States, long decades before the Breeders' Cup or even the Washington, D. C., International. At a time when horse racing received major coverage around the globe, so that even relatively small newspapers in Butte, Montana, or Terre Haute, Indiana might have news of the "doings" of major English or French horses as well as the latest Kentucky Derby winner or New York star, one of the hottest names of the mid-1920s was Epinard. After makiing a great name for himself in both France and England, he came to the United States to attempt what no horse from Europe had ever done before: to take on the pick of American racehorses at three separate tracks over three different distances. It was a challenge worthy of a titan of the turf, and a great sporting gesture on the part of his owner, Pierre Wertheimer.

Strictly speaking, Epinard failed; he did not win even one of the races set up for him. Yet so great was the attempt, and so close did he come to doing the nearly impossible, that he gained in stature even in defeat. His story will, I hope, be the center of a tale spanning the history of international racing across the Atlantic, which laid the foundation upon which the Breeders' Cup was eventually built.

It will be an interesting ride for me as I do the research and feel the strands of the story coming together. I hope that you will enjoy the journey also.

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Write, Write, Write

11/16/2023

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Over the last couple of months, I've put out a number of posts discussing the process of writing a book, from deciding whether you should write a book at all to going through the process of getting a manuscript ready for publication. But what if you want to write and to share what you write with an audience, yet you aren't sure you've got the material in you for a full-length book, or you don't want to tackle a huge long-term project? Or perhaps the issue is that you need to practice and polish your writing before taking the big plunge?

Reading as extensively as you can within your area of interest is always an excellent start, both for generating ideas and testing the ones you have. Sooner or later, though, you have to get around to actually writing if writing is what you want to do.

Many writers find that blogging and/or making regular posts on social media can provide an outlet for the desire to write about a particular topic; for those with interests in fiction, developing a fan wiki or writing fan fiction may be just what's needed. The key to making it work for you is discipline---both the discipline to write and post regularly, and the discipline to write those posts as well as possible. Learning to write well takes writing a lot, and there is no escape from this requirement. Likewise, you have to go through the slog of writing when you'd really rather not before you can learn the art of staying focused on your passion or interest even when the writing isn't coming easily and the metrics suggest that you're not generating much interest from whatever audience is there.

For those interested in testing the waters of whether an idea has book potential or pursuing the idea of blogging, I'm posting a link here to an article by Trevin Wax on building a blog and a platform for your writing: Is There a Book in You? (thegospelcoalition.org). As a Christian author, Wax writes primarily for a faith-based audience, but his advice on how to lay a solid foundation for both blogging and exploring whether your idea has book potential is sound for writers looking to explore almost any topic.

Happy writing!

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Book Review: Landaluce (Mary Perdue)

11/9/2023

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In 1982, a brilliant 2-year-old was lighting up the racing world with sensational performances and dreams of Triple Crown glory to come---not a colt, but a filly. A member of the first crop of Seattle Slew, she evoked memories of her sire and elicited comparisons to the magnificent filly Ruffian, still considered by many to be the best American filly or mare to ever race. Her appeal reached beyond American shores, to the extent that Europeans called her the "Wonder Filly of the West," and her career helped launch Seattle Slew to stardom as a stallion. Yet she never had the chance to reach her full potential, dying of a massive bacterial infection in November 1982, and in the forty years following her death had been largely forgotten except by serious students of racing history. She is forgotten no more, thanks to Mary Perdue's book Landaluce: The Story of Seattle Slew's First Champion (2022, University Press of Kentucky).

Writing as both a fan and an experienced racing journalist, Mary Perdue brings Landaluce back to life as a phenomenal racehorse, a distinct personality, and the focus of a special kind of love story for her trainer, D. Wayne Lukas. The filly's life story is intimately intertwined with that of Spendthrift Farm, where she was bred; with the hopes and fears surrounding the beginning of Seattle Slew's stud career; and with the lives and hearts of the people of Lukas's racing operation. Perdue's handling of the filly's relationship with her trainer is particularly deft and touching: Lukas has since trained other champions and has earned his way into racing's Hall of Fame, but as Perdue shows, Landaluce was a "once-in-a-lifetime" for him, a horse that deeply touched his heart and brought out the human side of the hard-driving, perfectionistic man called "Coach."

Landaluce's story does not have a happy ending, but Perdue's narration provides an empathetic look at the joys as well as the sorrows of the filly's brief life without ever descending to sentimentalism or making Landaluce something other than what she was: a horse. Her work is a worthy finalist for the 17tn annual Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award and a worthwhile addition to the library of any lover of the Thoroughbred.

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The Final Hurdles

11/2/2023

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It’s that time again. Not for the Breeders’ Cup—for proofreading and index construction, in this case for The Kentucky Oaks: 150 Years of Running for the Lilies. The good news is that these are the last steps before actual printing, at least on my side of the production process. The bad news is that they’re thoroughly tedious.

Reading the final proofs is a nitpicking task. The time for major revisions is long past, trying to make a major change now would jack up the expenses of producing the book and delay publication. This is the stage at which I’m trying to catch any typos that slipped by the first two rounds, fix any other errors (such as the spelling of a name), write in minor updates to make the text as current as possible, and fine-tune the writing that has already been done on a one-word-here, one-word-there basis. The keys here are concentration and attention to detail. Even with my best efforts, the text probably won’t be perfect, but my job now is to get it as close to that standard as possible.

Compared to constructing the index, though, proofing the text is a walk in the park. The basic rule of thumb is that if it’s a proper noun and appears in the text, it needs to be in the index as well with page references so that the reader can find every instance in which that name appears. Important concepts may also need to be included. If a particular topic is frequently referenced, subheadings may be needed. In a book like The Kentucky Oaks, in which the text touches on several hundred horses plus their owners, trainers, and jockeys, the index is by nature going to be extensive; add in references to other races run by the Oaks fillies, to racetracks, and to other significant people, locations, and institutions, and … well, I’m up to 43 single-column, double-spaced pages so far on my list and still have a third of the book to go through just to add all the needed subjects to the index. After that, it’s time to go back and add the page numbers on which those subjects are found.

Fortunately for the publisher and the reader, at least, the index as it actually appears in the printed book won’t take up so many pages; smaller font sizes and multiple columns will be used to compact the index while keeping it readable. And formatting, thank goodness, is not my job. Even so, a pretty fair chunk of my next three weeks will be committed to getting these final chores done. I hope the results will be worth the effort.

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New Beginnings

Write, Write, Write

Book Review: Landaluce (Mary Perdue)

The Final Hurdles

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