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| Josie and SummerTime - he's my hero. What does yours look like? |
June has been a
busy month – I’m coordinating a writing contest for my local RWA chapter,
running a summer horse camp, dealing with my horse’s abscessed hoof, finishing
up the school year as a substitute teacher and applying for full-time teaching
positions in the fall. On the writing side of things, I did finish the edits on
one of my young adult novels and am in the midst of the “second one” or should
I say, the “first one” since it’s scheduled as an autumn release. My hope is to
get back to my mainstream western romance sometime soon.
With
that in mind, I definitely needed to do some research – my hero is a veterinarian
and my heroine is the woman in charge of a pony farm. She doesn’t suffer fools
gladly and he’s used to telling people what to do. Helping to advise the local
4-H Horse Club, breeding, training, showing and looking after twenty equines
who own her body, heart and soul keeps my heroine busy. She knows her life will be complete when she
wins and weds the man she adores despite the fact he has other plans. He sees her
as a friend, potential sister-in-law, and a woman more capable than most Army
generals, a cross between Gunga-Din and Alexander the Great. Still, she has incredible fantasies about a
life with him. No, it’s not the hero – he’s the guy who wrecks her plans and
ends up saving her sanity.
Running a riding
stable in real life does provide some background for my new book. However, since
my heroine also trains horses, I’ve been watching natural horse-training
videos, attending clinics and reading articles and books. Then, I go down to
the arena and try out some of the weird stuff on our four-legged babies. They’ve
been very patient with me, especially since lessons always include carrots. Treats are my style, but not always acceptable in the horsy business - some folks think giving a horse treats teaches them to bite. Of course, I've heard the same thing about taking chocolate to the high school for the kids when they're good! So far, neither the horses or the teens have bitten me.
Yes, this means pooping and passing
gas. We actually keep Gas-X on hand for the horses at our barn and I mix it
with applesauce and force-feed it during these times. The drug can be used with
the muscle relaxants prescribed by the vet. Fun times are the enemas, mineral
oil drenches and don’t ask what I do with plastic bread sacks and shortning –
you don’t want to know! However, I did
use this in my newest book, but my veterinarian gets to use the “real” medical
stuff that vets do, not the homemade things horse people keep on hand to save
equine lives while waiting for the doctor to arrive.
In my second book, The Daddy Spell which is a prequel to my
new work in progress, my heroine thought one of her old pony mares had colic.
Actually, she is in labor when the hero arrives and he stays to help deliver
the foal. This allowed for some great tension between him and the heroine,
especially when he told her that she needed to do a hands-on inspection when
she bought a new horse. He was talking about the stud colt who’d been running
amuck in the herd – she needed to get up close and personal and she hadn’t. In
real life, we do this all the time. We look at teeth to determine the age of
the horse, the hooves to see if the animal is sound, the eyes – can he see and
the horse’s body. As the saying goes, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
You’ll quickly learn how old the horse truly is and the older they are, the
more care they’ll need.
Well, morning
comes early in the summer – I actually have to be in the barn by 6 AM so I’ll
stop for now and catch up with you around the old homestead.
Happy riding, reading and writing –
wherever you are and have a great summer,Shannon Kennedy aka Josie Malone
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