Eclipsed by Shadow

Hello Reader!

This blog has been moved to more spacious quarters here. Please adjust any bookmarks and I’ll see you on the other side of the click…

My hero is resourceful, quick-witted and brave … and also, a teenaged girl named Meagan.

I needed a tough, resilient hero for my story, Eclipsed by Shadow. After all, the story travels the path of horsemanship through history, and horses have given the world such rugged stereotypes as cowboys (and indians), knights in shining armor and cavalry charges, not to mention Ben-Hur. So it was tempting to give the title role to a young man, but my initial character “Michael” kept dismounting to let Meagan aboard. My goal in this trilogy has been historical realism and accuracy, and it is a strange fact that young men in America do not dedicate themselves to horsemanship in nearly the numbers that young women do.

Another reason it was natural to cast the main character as female was my former experience teaching riders, which meant coaching battalions of young women for every male. My literary heroine is the young college student who stays up all night grooming horses in return for a trailer ride to the next day’s competition. She is the excited young girl whose straight-A report card finally convinces a carpool-weary parent to add one more stop to the schedule. She is the shy adolescent whose eyes light up with confidence after a good round, the dependable ingénue who quietly keeps herself and her horses glowing, and the serious junior who quietly listens and plans her way to success.

That this most equal of sports should be so unequally played is a shame, because young men are missing out. Horseback riding has historically been a respected, even hallowed method of youth development, turning out thoughtful, responsible leaders with empathy and depth of character for millennia. Meagan, the heroine of Eclipsed by Shadow, is a compilation of the qualities that horsemanship imparts: she is resourceful, careful, trustworthy, diligent, brave, and able to practice both teamwork and strategic planning. These are just some of the observable virtues gained in the sandy classroom of our greatest teacher, the horse.

A lot has been happening with the book! The first news is that a hardback edition of Eclipsed by Shadow will be published in October. This will be a “library bound” edition (without a dust jacket) and has been re-typeset with illustrations added along with a new cover.

Some site enhancements will be in operation soon, including a media kit including press and image downloads, and after the hardback’s release blog postings will be syndicated to the book’s Amazon page.

Also, the trilogy’s e-newsletter will soon commence publication. This monthly email will keep readers in touch with book developments and provide notifications and discounts for future volumes. I invite you to subscribe to the newsletter (and guarantee privacy of your email address).

I’m looking forward to posting more topics soon … thanks for stopping by!

I’m finishing the second book’s last edit for The Legend of the Great Horse trilogy and thought it might be interesting to share my method of writing about historical periods and it’s significance to readers.

The trilogy traces the horsemanship across fourteen historical eras, from pre-history to modern times, so research was fundamental to telling an accurate story. For each time portrayed in the books, I gathered writings produced in that culture and spent several months immersing myself in the period. Preserved writing is a distillation of the thoughts and emotions of its people, and I found after studying such writings that subtexts and ideas of a society came naturally to the surface in the story itself.

For example, one of the historical periods covered in Eclipsed by Shadow is ancient Rome. There is no shortage of writing from our Roman ancestors, but there is a profusion of literary quality during the late Republic and early days of Empire. The fascinating Roman “novel” Satyricon was written then, and also the legendary works of Tacitus who wrote scandalous histories of Rome. Reading historical facts of Rome along with works of Romans themselves reveals their world in a new and authentic way: through the eyes of our ancestors.

No new facts are discovered by this process, in the archaeological sense–what is gained is sense of the day. For example, Rome grew as a new idea in the hearts of man, that of shared citizenship and the power of harmony, and was gradually corrupted by ongoing appeal to military virtues and primacy of commerce. Rome in 100A.D. had become an armed slave camp ruled by force and fear, it’s speech tense and strident with an underlying sense of doom. Tacitus, former Consul who lived through nine emperors, writes bravely as his world is descending into debased madness that would end in twelve centuries of Dark Ages.

It is my hope that this research process made the stories authentic and provide the reader with something valuable and different in their knowledge of the world. I will say that the experience changed me, and my expectations for the story changed as the work progressed. My greatest wish would be to spark interest in history among my readers, for history is not a closed book and many of its lessons remain unlearned … or forgotten.