It's amazing the things you toss out, only to rediscover years later that those very same items were really quite valuable, if only in sentimental terms. Classic horse books are such things, in my mind. I used to hoarde them when I was young, as if each one was a literary treasure. At the very least, they were my refuge. I could lose myself among the pages of a great horse story. At least for a while I could be on the back of a galloping Arabian stallion, or hunkering down with a pony during an East coast storm, or gentling a mustang filly named Flicka. I'm not sure why I cast off these hardcover gems originally. But for the last few years I've been re-collecting them all. My bookshelf has become a stable of classic horse books from my youth: Smoky (3 copies), Black Beauty (a pair of copies, each with a different illustrator), Ride Like an Indian (an admirable admonition if there ever was one), and many others, including a healthy dose of Marguerite Henry and C.W. Anderson.

A while back we conducted our own informal survey of favorite horse books for Horse Illustrated. You can read the list of favorites here:
Favorite Classic Horse Books

While re-reading that list I found the lack of contemporary horse fiction interesting. So someday I may write my own. I can't reveal much about the plot, as it's in a rough draft format now, except to say that it includes lots of action, some humor, at least one great horse and a dash of romance. You know, just an everyday sort of tale that occurs all the time when you spend your life with horses!