What is more honest than a horse? Horses are always in the present moment, and when you ride, you better be there too. Horses have nothing to hide and no reason to hide it; they have no other skins to shed or masks to wear. Horses just are. They teach you that in order to get what you want, you must use skill and not force. You have to learn not to grind the gears when you ride, and to look ahead and not down. Horses teach you to connect mind and body.

Riding with a horse, rather than just on it, is the most incredible feeling. You can leave behind all the crap you normally carry around and just be. So, how do I merge that with my writing? Writing has to be honest or readers can’t relate to it. Writing has to be present, otherwise it seems all disconnected. It doesn’t matter if the setting is in another universe, realm, time or place, it if is present and honest, the reader will be right there. 

I doubt that I will ever write any story that doesn’t include a horse. To this day, I still drive and wonder what it’d be like to be riding my horse along the same road. Many of my best memories are of rides: in the mountains, on the plains, on the beach, and one particular pack trip through the Snowy River Mountains in Australia!

“Their horses are swifter than leopards And keener than wolves in the evening.” Habakkuk 1:8