Horse Tales - American Classic Pedigrees

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!

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?

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!

Moving Again ... at a Crawl

3/13/2025

Good news and bad news this week. The good news is that my editor is really enthused about the Holy Bull book and wants me to go ahead with updating the manuscript based on the readers' suggestions. She also wants me to go ahead and get the abstracts and keywords done, a task that involves developing a brief summary of the book as a whole followed by a similar summary for each chapter, along with selecting 5-10 keywords for the book and for each chapter. The work is tedious, but it's part of progress, so I suppose it still falls under the heading of good news.

The bad news is that review of the manuscript by the editorial board has been put off until April, since they weren't able to have an in-person meeting until February. At this point, there's very little reason to fear that the book will be rejected, but the board will be hammering out some of the details of launching the series so that there will be uniformity in cover design, layout, and so on. Back to the business of learning patience, I suppose.

As for the Firebird concept, I continue to hammer away on it a little bit at a time in between other things. I intend to keep pressing on with it as I have had a lifelong ambition of publishing a fantasy novel that has yet to be fulfilled, but I am certainly far, far away from having a finished product.

The Dead Zone

3/6/2025

In every author's life, there are times when nothing seems to be moving on multiple fronts. Your editor isn't answering calls or emails, your ideas for something new are progressing at a crawl (if that), and you either have no real idea how your previous works are doing or you're pretty sure that they're a long way from living up to your hopes. Welcome to the Dead Zone.

Editors, of course, get busy, and unless you're a superstar, the chances that they're going to drop everything to get back to you are pretty low. Unless the matter is of critical importance, they'll get to you when they get to you. Fallow times for ideas and writing progress come with being human, and building a reputation and a writing career is seldom accomplished with just one or two books.

As with so many things, patience, perseverance, and a healthy belief in oneself are the keys to getting past these frustrating times and continuing to write. The first two, I'll admit, are not qualities I particularly enjoy exercising. Nonetheless, they are necessary and part of my journey. And should you also be stuck in the Dead Zone, don't give up---you, too, have a journey to make and a story to tell.