Archives – Page 2 – THE LEGEND OF THE GREAT HORSE trilogy

Book Blog 2.0

After a long Winter of editing the second book of “The Legend of the Great Horse,” I’m looking forward to getting back to regular posting. (I know I’m jumping the gun by declaring the season over, but others living in the frozen tundra will understand.)

The book’s blog has been reorganized a bit, to focus on the main topics of history and horses (and the trilogy!), since it’s gotten scattered. And, a new Historical Timeline has been added, which will follow the path of Meagan’s journey through history. I’m also planning to discuss some of the characters in the book, both human and horse. So I’d better get posting. Hope you have a great week!

Kaizen

I’ve recently heard about something that has definite appeal to anyone else being swept downstream in the Web 2.0 digital river of blogs, tweets, and other social media technologies.

The word “kaizen” basically means “improvement” in Japanese, but it has come to mean a method of continuous incremental improvements in process or design. Kaizen in this sense developed in post-WWII Japan and is primarily associated with business practices, but I feel has something to offer the technically overwhelmed.

I don’t know that kaizen is truly zen–though, who can say it is not, grasshopper?–but it sounds like a great way to approach the online dragon.

New Year’s Resolutions and other sad stories

Hi guys! Well I blew right through #2-4 of my 2010 resolutions and #5 is huddled in the corner looking at me with understandable suspicion. And I only made 5.

But my Top Number One Resolution for the New Year was to start up blogging regularly by the 15th of January. And dammit I’m doing it, ready or not. I’m sorry.

I’m not ready–perhaps that is obvious–buried as I am to my elbows in a website overhaul. It’s nearly done now (go see it, I’d love feedback: www.TheGreatHorse.com (Go on, I’ll wait. (See that’s (nested) internet humor (haha.)))))

He was warned not to read the archives ...

So I’m finally updating the infamous “Media Kit” whatever and, um, I have to say it bites publishing butt. I just hope that reading one’s old posts is like listening to yourself on recorder, ie, revelatory horror, because I can’t believe the drivel of it. I can only resolve hope to regroup and do better going forward.

To this end I just now made a new resolution NOT to delete my archives, we’ll see how it goes…

How well are you doing on your resolutions?

2010

It’s a great time to be alive, watching the wheels of history turning and trying to avoid being run over. It feels like that in publishing right now, between the ongoing demise of booksellers and big publishing houses and the oncoming wave of technologies such as Print on Demand (POD), e-book readers, and of course this good ol’ fashioned internet.

bookstore Adding to the excitement is star-devouring Google’s massive copyright infringement, another business-suit heist in an era that seems to be caught in a vast boardroom crime wave. I will have more to say about this: my debut work, Eclipsed by Shadow, was one of over 5 million titles scanned illegally by Google in cahoots with several American libraries (of all places). (Begging the question: if a crime is large enough, is it still a crime?)

For now I just want to wish everyone a happy 2010, and hope your holidays were warm and dry and filled with love and friends. I’m looking forward to the new year and I wish everyone the best in their endeavors. A new day is upon us…

Taking a Break for the Holidays

horse2 I want to wish everyone great holidays … I’m going to be away from blogging and social media for a while. I’m preparing for a move, never a minor incident in Boston. I’m also gearing up for next year and the release of the second volume of the trilogy, The Golden Spark. “Yikes” is my main thought about that right now :)

The first book of the trilogy, Eclipsed by Shadow, was published in 2008 to a starred review in Library Journal and won several honors including first place in the Eric Hoffer Book Award for YA, and second in the Reader Views Literary Awards for Fantasy. It was exciting as a debut author to learn the ropes a bit, and daunting to see how much more there is to learn in this fast-changing environment. Most of all I’ve enjoyed getting to know readers and receiving their support–that has been the biggest thrill of this adventure beyond the actual writing.

Besides the release of the sequel to Eclipsed by Shadow, my goal for the new year is to expand my online presence to reach out to new (and old!) readers, and to become effective in communicating through social media. There’s a much-needed website upgrade in the near future, and an initiative to become more involved on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc.

I wish everyone a fantastic holiday season and a wonderful New Year!

On the Trail of History

If history may be said to be the memory of the human race, it seems subject to many of the same failings of accuracy and interpretation. We see this even in our most recent history: for example a national self-image embraced by some which holds America to be a militaristic warrior-race which “won” WWII, rather than the gentler truth that we were beloved as the good guys who did not continue war-making but instead helped rebuild Europe.

If even recent incidents can be mis-interpreted (or mal-interpreted), can events further in the past can be accurate and valuable?

An answer is in corroborative evidence that points to explanation, such as archaeological remains that support period documentation. Art is a hugely valuable window into the heart of a culture. Diaries, journals, new items, accounting records—there are many forms of documentation that can lend credence to historical truth.

Without honest inquiry none of this matters but, even with this impulse, how can one find relevance to our own experience? Is it relevant, say, that as our Roman forebears grew prosperous, a merchant class rose that militarized the culture, formed corporations to buy up land in Italy and dispossessed the working class farmers, replacing the food crops with vineyards which led to starvation and the grain dole and the creation of the infamous masses?

These things happened … do they matter today? If so, how to talk of this in a corporate world with a focus that leaves such history uncovered? Is it necessary to careen from disaster to disaster as humanity has done for millennia, or can we use history to connect the dots and create a better world for all of us?

History as an afterthought

History is an inexact science to be sure, relying at least partially on hearsay and filtered through the political whims of its era. History is also old in the physical sense of the word, an unattractive quality to some.

But the past isn’t dead. As William Faulkner said, “it isn’t even past.”

Yes, the actors are gone, places have closed or vanished. Attitudes and beliefs have also changed … but it is this sort of mental change that is the value of knowing history: to discover what fails, and what succeeds.

A society’s shared knowledge of history can be compared to a person’s memories. It would be a tragedy for an adult to lose the lessons of youth, to forget what happens when your hand meets a hot stove or a light socket. We could not expect an adult without memories of prior experience to prosper, or even to survive very long. Human society may be no different.

There is nothing inherently needful about human society on Earth: nature proceeds quite well without us. Mankind has the tendency to forget the value of cooperation and commonwealth and retreat to our primitive tribal tendencies as frightened creatures suffering Hobbesian lives–“nasty, brutish, short.” These cycles have been called “dark” ages, and these times of forgetting have occurred throughout human history. The “Middle Ages” are a recent example, a backward era that existed between antiquity’s civilization and our own. Human progress is not a straight line.

If mankind had never discovered fire, or the wheel, or horsemanship, or any of the multiplicity of specializations and customs and insights that make up civilized life–the forests and plains would be there, the world would still turn.

Some may see the world today and mistake success for inevitability. But there is nothing inherently necessary about human civilization on Earth. There is no observable feature of nature to preserve us in our ignorance. We prosper by our hard-learned knowledge, but the cliff is always there to fall from if we forget.

Wherein I Observe that Blogging is a Sink -or- Swim Business

Soga-Goro-Gallops-Bareback- Okay, my blogging is a mess. There, I said it. And once you slow down it gets hard to go again …

I think I have the problem of Stephen Leacock’s rider who “flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.” In posting about horses and history, as well as information about my book trilogy (the supposed reason for this whole enterprise, quiet as it’s kept) I’ve mixed a bowl of porridge.

And it’s going to get worse, I’m afraid. I made the attempt to run separate blogs, which translated into lots of techie fudging about without much writing, and got very bogged down. Bogged in a blog.

So I’m throwing it up into the air: any sense that is to be made of this space in the future will proceed from these thoughts…

a) Horses and human history are inextricably intertwined…

b) Progress in horsemanship mirrors progress in human society…

b) I suspect this is not a coincidence, and I’m curious about it.

Because of my curiosity, I came to write a work exploring horsemanship using factual history wrapped into a fiction adventure story, a trilogy, to which this blog is dedicated.

In between hot news flashes about the books of the trilogy, this blog is subject to the author’s ranging interests on horsemanship and history–neither of which topics are less than vast. I hope people will join me for the ride as I saddle up for the new season; yes I will probably use horse-puns and such. It’s hay-larious! (Okay, I won’t use that many.)

So Welcome, autumn in New England, as well to any fans who’ve met Meagan and Promise and found an intriguing bit of fun and even magic in their literary journey. Maybe we’ll find some interesting truths in the wind of a gallop and the ancient rhythms of hoofbeats …

“The Legend” explained

In the Beginning, Man so angered the Lord he was cast from the Garden. In the midst of the Lord’s wrath an Angel came onto Him. The Angel asked permission to lead Mankind back again to Paradise, and wished to be given a shape to best serve Man in his exile.

This love stayed the Lord’s wrath. The Four Winds swirled into a shape of beauty that moved to thunder … the Angel took form and became the first Horse.

(excerpted from Eclipsed by Shadow)

So begins “the legend” from The Legend of the Great Horse trilogy. Legends and myth shape the world of our imagination, and none is more universal than the belief that the horse is associated with the supernatural.

This idea is seen in Western Civilization’s own Greek myths of the winged horse Pegasus.

It is also found in Islam, where Mohammed’s horse Buraq made a great leap into Heaven which left a hoofprint still to be seen in Jerusalem … according to legend, that is.

I have a word with Mission Control

Welcome to the new blog, with a new CMS platform and new dedicated site. (!)

The upgrade was made after it was revealed that readers would have no way to post comments, so a new council was convened at Micron Press headquarters and the result is this new WordPress platform. It is state of the art and many other things besides, but mainly it will allow more connectedness with the outside world and allow readers to comment if they wish.

I would like to extend thanks to Shaun Tarves for his technical assistance. If you need some WordPress work done–and who doesn’t?–Shaun is fast, qualified, reliable and reasonable and you really should be using him.