Horse Tales - American Classic Pedigrees

Storming Toward the Finish

10/3/2024

If there's one thing a writer doesn't need as a deadline closes in, it's a major interruption. One week ago, Hurricane Helene slammed into northern Florida on its way to a destructive rampage through Georgia and the Carolinas.

I'm going to put things into perspective quickly. I was without power for four days, without Internet service for five. I have one trunk of a shattered water oak down in my front yard. I lost the contents of my refrigerator and freezer. Inconvenient? Yes. Extra expenses involved? Yes.

Big deal.

My loved ones are accounted for and all are well. My pets are safe. My house and cars are intact. And I will make my deadline, though I'll have to push a bit harder to get there. (A shout-out to Bill Denver, BTW, for agreeing to license some of his beautiful photos of Holy Bull and friends that are part of his Equi-Photo collection.)

Those of you who can, please pray for those who are still awaiting word on whether loved ones have survived, those who are grieving deaths, and those who are now homeless or living in homes that need major repairs that many cannot afford. Pray for the volunteer organizations---the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, Samaritan's Purse, the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief Organization, and others---who are on the ground in the worst-hit areas and helping to provide basic supplies and recovery services. Pray that the volunteers will avoid injury and sickness as they clear yards; remove mud, soaked carpeting/flooring, and damaged drywall from homes; tarp roofs to prevent further damage; and provide evidence to storm victims that they are not forgotten.

If you are able, please consider providing financial support for storm relief as well. Times have been getting harder for most of us; for some, times just went from hard to horrible. (That being said, look out for scams; if you want to donate money, do it through a reliable organization, not something that you never heard of before that suddenly sends you a text or email.) No money to spare, but you're healthy? Blood banks are in great need of donations, and the process isn't all that painful or time-consuming. If you're in or near an area where power is still down and you have power, offer to let friends or neighbors who are still doing without come over to get a shower and do laundry. Small kindnesses mean a lot.

God bless and help us all.

Perks and Profits

9/19/2024

Those who go into the business of writing with the intent of making a lot of money are more often than not going to be disappointed. The cold facts are that the Tom Clancys and the J. K. Rowlings are few and far between; in fact, the people who seem to be making money most often are not talented artists but celebrities and politicians who are cashing in on fame that they already have by selling their autobiographies and their formulas for fixing whatever they see as wrong with the world. The fact that most of these books are at best unmemorable and at worst self-serving drivel matters not a whit to the publishers who put them out; they know that they will sell a ton of books regardless based on name recognition. They're in the business of making money, after all, not producing great art or even good reading; that some truly excellent books get put out anyway is more or less incidental.

That being said, there are still some perks to the writer's life that may not put much money in one's pockets but are of value nonetheless. You get to meet some pretty interesting people along the way, and if they share your passion for a particular topic, the conversations you have are both enjoyable in their own right and good for adding fuel to your fire. Even better, sometimes you make a real friend, which is always worth cherishing. And you get the chance to become part of cultural and social events that broaden your own horizons and give you an opportunity to enrich others' lives.

Tomorrow, I'll be off to the Dunnellon Public Library in Marion County, Florida, for "Cooks and Books," a program that celebrates literary, performing, and culinary arts in North Central Florida. Now, for those of you who haven't heard of Dunnellon, it's a tiny town about 24 miles southwest of Ocala, sitting on US 41. Its economy is centered on the local springs and rivers, which offer a variety of outdoor activities as well as some truly scenic places for dining experiences. As in much of Marion County, the surrounding area is decidedly horsy, with a good many farms dotting western Marion and Levy counties. I'm looking forward to a unique experience that will let me share my own passion for horses and learn more about the area's music and culinary scenes. Should be a blast!

Health Check

9/5/2024

Pushing to get a book written can be hard on a writer's health. You tend to stay sedentary for long periods of time; you often let yourself get dehydrated; and the temptation to snack at your desk is pretty high. If you're truly in the throes of creativity---or pushing a tight deadline---you may also be shorting yourself on sleep.

I've fallen prey to all these temptations, and the result has been packing on a lot of pounds I don't need and am having a lot of trouble shedding. If you'd like to avoid the same fate, try these tips:

No matter how busy you think you are, get up from your chair every fifteen or twenty minutes to move around. Set a timer if you need to, but move! Walk around a little, stretch, do a light exercise or two. You'll feel better for it, and I personally find that my brain works better when I get my circulation moving regularly.
Keep a glass of water at your desk and keep sipping on it. This has three benefits. It will help you stay hydrated, which will keep you in a better mood and reduce the likelihood that you'll get a headache or wind up with constipation. As people also have a tendency to mistake thirst for hunger, drinking water will make you less inclined to snack when you're not really hungry. Good hydration will also force you to get up and go to the bathroom regularly, which feeds into the goal of getting out of your chair and moving around frequently.
Do not snack at your desk. This leads to mindless eating, which when combined with inactivity tends to fuel weight gain. The kinds of foods that are convenient for workplace snacking also tend to be highly processed and loaded with fat and sugar, none of which are conducive to good health. If you're hungry, get up, fix yourself something decent to eat, and eat it in the kitchen or dining room. Added bonus: if you reserve your work space for work only, you'll be training your brain to get down to business when you sit down at your desk.
As much as possible, keep a regular wind-down routine and regular sleep hours. Very few people thrive on less than seven hours of sleep per night, and you're not likely to be one of them; most do best somewhere in the range of seven to nine hours per night. Give your mind the benefit of sufficient rest and it will function much better; you'll also be less tempted to snack on calorie bombs to keep propping up your sleep-deprived energy level.
While we're on the subject of sleep, DO NOT take your computer, tablet, or cell phone to bed with you! It's best not to take your work into the bedroom at all. If you're the sort who sometimes has brilliant ideas hit you in the middle of the night, keep a note pad and pen on your nightstand so that you can scribble down those moments of inspiration without tempting yourself to keep going for hours.

If you're young, start proper habits now and you'll never regret them. If you're older, it's never too late to change. Happy writing!

Galloping On

8/15/2024

I'm pretty happy with progress this week for the Holy Bull bio. At this point, I'm getting ready to take a trip into the pressure cooker that surrounds a high-profile colt during the pre-Kentucky Derby runup and examine the Bull's Derby flop. It was a race that was simply too bad to be a true bill on his ability, but what led to his turning in such a horrible performance? That's the question I have to try and answer, or at least to present enough evidence on to allow readers to draw their own conclusions.

Pictures are probably going to be more of a headache than the writing. So far, the Keeneland Library has been able to supply some material, but I'll need more, and at a cost I can afford since I have to pay any licensure fees myself. Those who have read my previous post, "Picture This" (October 26, 2023), know that this isn't exactly a new gripe, but I'll say it again: tracking down photographs for books is a pain, and often an expensive pain. Like most writers, I'm far from rich, which leads to a dilemma; I want photographers to reap a fair return for use of their work, just as I'd like to receive a fair return for mine, but I do have to consider whether my personal budget can handle the required fees, especially given that there's no guarantee that I will ever see a profit from a book no matter how much effort I put into writing the best book I can and then marketing it. Those of you who are already published authors know very well what I am talking about. Those of you who aren't, consider yourselves warned.

Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award Finalists

8/1/2024

Three finalists were announced for the 2023 Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award on July 26. Alas, Dream Derby: The Myth and Legend of Black Gold didn't make the cut.

I can't say that I'm not a little disappointed. At the same time, it is an honor to have been considered alongside finalists Kim Wickens (Lexington: The Extraordinary Life and Turbulent Times of America's Legendary Racehorse), Kathryn C. Mooney (Isaac Murphy: The Rise and Fall of a Black Jockey), and Curtis Stock (The Turcottes: The Remarkable Story of a Horse Racing Dynasty). I've read the first two with considerable pleasure, and I have no doubt that Stock's work is up to the same high standard. 2023 was simply an outstanding year for horse racing literature in North America, and I am looking forward to more of the same in years to come.

Congratulations to the finalists! Whichever title wins, it will be a worthy addition to any horse lover's bookshelf.

You Learn Something New ...

7/11/2024

Having gotten into chapter five of the Holy Bull book (which will focus on his season-ending win in the In Reality Stakes and the transition to his 3-year-old season), I'm finding myself doing some extra research on what was going on in South Florida racing at the time. Turns out there were two scandals in progress. One, at Calder, involved the suspension of any access to Calder for seven jockeys, all of Venezuelan origin, who had falsified their previous riding records in Venezuela to qualify for apprentice status (and the accompanying weight allowance) in North America. It was big news at the time, particularly since 1992 Eclipse Award-winning apprentice jockey Jesus Bracho was among those accused. (After further investigation showed that he was indeed ineligible for apprentice status in the USA at the time that he was claiming it, he returned the Eclipse Award, which two years later was officially presented to Rosemary Homeister, who had been runner-up in the original voting and who then became the first female jockey to win an Eclipse Award.) The suspensions came through only four days before the Festival of the Sun and the running of the In Reality.

The other scandal didn't involve Thoroughbred racing but was instead centered at the Pompano Park harness track, where several driver-trainers, owners, and veterinarians were either arrested or lost their pari-mutuel licenses in Florida as the result of a year-long investigation into race fixing that made both the culprits and the local officials look woefully incompetent about either concealing or cleaning up the problems. Although there was no evidence that the dirty doings had spilled over to Florida Thoroughbred tracks, the bad publicity for horse racing of any sort, combined with the jockey scandal, left some heavy clouds hanging over South Florida racing in the public eye. No wonder Holy Bull was such a hero in his native state; nothing like having a budding superstar strutting his stuff at your track without the shadow of a doubt as to whether he was for real (everyone knew Jimmy Croll's reputation for integrity, and he was well liked) to take people's minds off the ugly stuff!

The racing scandals were background material for the focus on Holy Bull's career, so given the space limitations I have to work with in this manuscript, I'm not going to be going into huge detail on them. Still, knowing such things helps to explain the horse's great popularity. He was brilliant, he was eye-catching, and he and his connections were totally for real. Sometimes a star shines the brighter for being framed against the darkness.

Grinding Out a Book

7/4/2024

Writing a book usually starts off with a burst of enthusiasm. The problem is that the opening enthusiasm will seldom carry you through a complete writing project. Three and a half chapters into my new Holy Bull manuscript, that's where I am. I still enjoy the work once I sit down and get into it; it's mustering up the discipline to get going that's the issue.

For me, at least, the best solution is to set mini-goals of so much to be completed (or at least drafted) at the end of a work week. I know how much time I have to produce a completed work, so by setting goals for when each chapter is to be completed, I can pat myself on the back a little as I pass each milestone. Other authors work better by word count (so many words per day or week) or by thinking of the book as a series of subtopics or vignettes and completing each chunk. The important thing is to keep moving, because with a deadline in sight, the one thing you can't do is nothing.

Opportunity Costs and Sunk Losses

6/13/2024

Last week, I touched on the concept of opportunity cost in relation to book promotion efforts---the fact that every such effort consumes resources (such as time) that cannot be used for alternate purposes (such as writing). Awareness of such tradeoffs is necessary in making decisions about how to allocate your available time, energy, and money. Let us suppose that you are on the other end of the stick, however---you have already made a decision, perhaps some time ago, and now are finding that the results you are getting from a particular course of action do not seem to be worth the trade you have made. What then?

Sometimes perseverance is a winning strategy. If you have considered your position and have reason to believe that you may turn the corner with a little more effort or investment, staying the course can be worthwhile. On the other hand, if you find yourself thinking more about the loss of what you have already put into your promo effort than about taking an objective look (well, as objective as possible---we're all human) at whether or not it still has a reasonable chance of getting the results you hope for, you may be falling prey to the sunk-loss fallacy, which can keep you pouring money, time, and energy down a rat hole.

A sunk loss represents a resource that is irrevocably gone, regardless of what you do next. For example, if you buy a meal at a restaurant, you are out the cost of the meal whether you ate all of it, half of it, or one bite of it. For many of us, this represents a challenge to eat the whole thing so that we don't feel we've wasted money. But what if you find that you don't like the food even though it's decently cooked and presented, or you're on a diet and eating the entire plateful would blow your calorie count or your sodium count or whatever sky-high? (For the moment, let's drop the option of taking the leftovers home.) The wise thing to do would be to simply eat no more than is wanted and leave the rest. The problem is that most of us will focus on how much money we're "losing" by not eating the whole thing and then proceed to eat as much of it as can be stomached, which doesn't bring the money back and has a good chance of adding an upset stomach to the evening's woes.

Now, a single meal is generally a pretty small thing, and the worst we usually face from falling for the sunk-loss fallacy in this case is an unpleasant encounter with the toilet later in the evening or with the bathroom scale the next morning. When it comes to an ongoing promotional effort, however, focusing on past investment rather than on a rational look at future expectations can result in failure to cut losses and modify or ditch a strategy that clearly isn't working out. An irrational fear of loss is often a factor, even though the actual loss has already occurred; it's as though the brain doesn't recognize the loss as real until confronted with the need to decide to let it go. Pride is also often a barrier to cutting losses; who likes to admit that they made what's turned out to be a poor decision? (I sure don't.)

Marketing a book inevitably costs money, time, and energy, and completely balking at these costs is a strategy that's almost certain to result in poor sales. At the same time, every promotional effort needs regular reassessment to examine whether it's worth continuing to pursue. Awareness of the sunk-loss fallacy isn't perfect insurance against making further decisions that don't pan out as hoped, but it can at least get your decision-making focused on where it should be---on the projected future rather than on an unchangeable past.

Picking and Choosing

6/6/2024

During my recent book tour in Kentucky, I did a lot of chatting with fellow author Kim Wickens (Lexington: The Extraordinary Life and Turbulent Times of America's Legendary Racehorse). Naturally, the topic of promoting books came up. If you've read material from a lot of sites on authors and writing, you've probably seen advice to the effect that you should take every possible opportunity to get out there and promote your book, no matter what that opportunity may be. Having recently been through the grind of making appearances and trying to keep a book in the public eye, Kim and I both found ourselves with the same conclusion: that advice is, well, flawed. I have a strong hunch that we're not the only authors to have figured that out.

Whether you like it or not, the need to promote your book is inescapable if you're going to make sales. That being said, not every opportunity to promote a book is equal in terms of the resources you have to put in or the results you're likely to get from investing those resources. Some "opportunities," to be blunt, just aren't worth it.

Take book fairs and festivals. What could go wrong? The fees for participation usually aren't exorbitant, and the whole purpose of the event is to put you and your books together with a large group of potential buyers and readers---many times the number of people who would normally visit even a large bookstore in a single day. In addition, you'll have opportunities to network with other writers and with professionals in the book industry. So, why not go to every one you can reach?

The answer is simple: not every festival will offer the same bang for the buck regarding your book or books. Some festivals are slanted heavily toward children's books, or toward certain genres; if your book isn't a good fit for the market the festival is best known for, you may spend all day at your table to sell only two or three books. Some simply aren't in the right location to attract the kind of audience that might want to buy your book; a book on some aspect of horse racing that would be attractive in Lexington, Kentucky, might be a much harder sell in Miami, Florida, or even in Louisville, Kentucky. Some festivals do a better job of attracting people who want to sell you their marketing expertise, writing classes, seminars, etc., than they do in attracting the audience you want to make contact with.

What can be said of book festivals can be said of other promotional opportunities that involve personal appearances. There is always a tradeoff between the potential benefit and the amount of time and money you'll have to sink into making the appearance, and that tradeoff can be harder to justify if significant travel is involved.

Opportunities that don't involve in-person experiences are generally less expensive, and as a rule of thumb, I'd say that if you have an opportunity to be interviewed by phone or Zoom for a piece in a periodical or website, or you have a chance to "appear" as a guest on someone's podcast or YouTube channel, go for it unless something about the party offering the invitation raises a red flag in your mind. These things typically cost nothing but your time, and most periodicals, podcasters, and YouTubers aren't going to waste their time on talking to someone they don't feel will appeal to their audience. That's a win-win; you get publicity, and they get an interview that they have reason to believe will help grow their audience. I'd be much more cautious with people who want you to pay for whatever their writing-related service may be. Exercise due diligence with these and check around with people you trust, because people offering paid services range from excellent professionals to slapdash or overly optimistic amateurs to scammers. (A good clue: if results are "absolutely guaranteed," take a long and skeptical look at more than the testimonials such services often rely on to sell themselves---even the best agents, editors, instructors, and marketers out there can do no more than improve your chances of success, and the good ones will be honest enough to admit that although they're confident in in their ability to provide value with service, they cannot promise great success every time.)

Promotion is important, but don't forget that there is an opportunity cost attached to the time and money you spend on marketing your book. Unless you're in a "one and done" situation as far as writing goes, time and effort you spend on marketing is time and effort you can't spend on getting your next book written, and over the long haul, creating a sizable body of work to keep engaging older fans and bringing in new ones is at least as important if not more so than relatively short-term marketing endeavors. Keeping an eye on both the forest and the trees is the needed strategy in developing a successful writing career.

Book Tours Part V: The Aftermath

5/16/2024

Getting home from a book tour can be a great relief, no matter how good and profitable a time you had on the trip. There's much to be said for being back with your loved ones again and for settling into familiar, comfortable routines. Nonetheless, there are a few pitfalls to be aware of on getting back home.

First, give yourself a little time for readjustment, especially if you've been on the trail for a couple of weeks or more. Your loved ones have adapted to doing without you; you've been equally adapted to doing without them. You need to get used to each other again. This is especially true if you're returning to children, who can make sudden changes right under your nose, much less when you're out of sight for a while. Depending on the personality of your child or children, you may find them needier or more standoffish on your return than you remember. Give them (and yourself) a little time to adapt to being a family again. Don't overlook the fact that pets, too, may need a chance to readjust.

Second, be prepared for a significant physical and emotional letdown to hit you within a few days of your return. You've been running hard and living on adrenaline and cortisol, probably more so than you know. If your body is demanding rest and lowered stimulation levels, do your best to meet those needs. You may have no choice about getting right back to work, but try to defer complex or demanding projects for at least a few days while you sort out the inevitable accumulation of things that didn't get done and need your attention. Be prepared for needing extra sleep and for readjusting your diet and exercise schedule. Taking care of your physical self will help keep your emotions from taking you on an unwelcome roller-coaster ride---and if the trip didn't go so well, can be a needed way to soothe and reassure yourself that you're still a worthwhile person.

Third, don't overlook the possibility that you may get sick soon after coming home. When you combine extra stress for days or weeks on end with exposure to viruses that you haven't met at home, the odds are pretty good for ending up with a minor illness. That's another reason for not planning too much into the first few days after you get home---you may need recovery time from more than exhaustion. (I speak from grim experience here as I'm still coping with the tag end of a head cold I brought home with me.)

Fourth, don't give yourself a chance to lose receipts and records you'll need for filing your taxes. Put them into a file or envelope right away and put them where you keep other important records.

Fifth and finally, don't forget gratitude. If people made arrangements for you, provided hospitality, or did you favors along the way, be sure and thank them again after you return home, even if you did so in person. A note or thank-you card may be a bit old-fashioned but is still a particularly nice touch, though an appreciative text or email is far better than nothing.

Until the road calls again, safe travels and safe harbors to you all. Next week should see a return to more "normal" topics.