Books, Mud and Compost. And Horses.

Over four weeks since I last posted. Gosh. The last few weeks have been very odd, and almost entirely eaten up by sorting out the illustrations for my book, and attempting to manage our house sale. The illustrations have now gone off to be typeset, complete with captions. Doing the captions was a walk in the proverbial park compared with attempting to track down artists. Some artists have taken me weeks to track down. Here's how I tracked down the copyright holder for Janet and Anne Grahame-Johnstone (Puffin's 101 Dalmatians, Percy's Pony Annual; amongst many others). Google Grahame-Johnstone, giving thanks that it is not a common surname. The first things to pop up are obituaries. Both twins have died, and this means copyright in their illustrations, in those cases where it wasn't sold to a publisher, will probably have been left to a relative. If this is the case, I can sometimes find a descendant by fossicking about on the family history sites. Neither twin had c...

This post has been bubbling away for a while now, but has kept falling to the bottom of the list of things to do. We are still trying to move house and I am still spending hours disinterring the junk of ages and attempting to sort it out. The people at the tip no longer bother to tell us what to put where, as they know we know. Reading has been something I've managed in five minute bursts, usually while waiting for something else to happen. But this year has not been a total washout on the reading front: far from it. There has been some fine series fiction. Victoria Eveleigh's Exmoor stories  (Orion), have been republished and re-written to good effect. Belinda Rapley's Pony Detectives series (Templar) is an exciting new series for the slightly younger reader. Maggie Dana has been re-writing and re-issuing her Timber Ridge Riders books. She has a particularly good appreciation of the ups and downs of teenage life, and the latest,  Wish Upon a Horse   is one...

Busted! Vicious recruitment drive in Suburbia! They were there again yesterday as bold as brass; circling the churchyard, trawling for recruits, secret agents under their thin Christmas disguise, masquerading as Santa’s little helpers, sweeping up victims one at a time and taking only a circuit of the churchyard to gain followers for life. They knew what they were doing, and they were doing it in broad daylight, under the gaze of fully consenting parents. Flashbacks washed over me like a tsunami as I bore witness to unsuitably dressed children lured to a few moments of seemingly innocent pleasure, their eyes wide, in a winding queue impatient for their turn, excited and breathless. Volunteering to be suckered in, their unsuspecting parents paying for the privilege, well oiled from mulled wine from the adjoining Christmas Fair and snapping away on their iPhones to record the moment for Grandma. To all intents and purposes a harmless bit of fun ‘for the kiddies’. Merciless, that’...

My guest blogger today is, Jane Ayres, author of the   Matty series. You can download Matty and the Racehorse Rescue for free today and tomorrow (26/27 November 2012).  The other two books are Matty and the Problem Ponies and Matty and the Moonlight Horse . All the profits from the books go to support Redwings Horse Sanctuary . Black Beauty, past and present by Jane Ayres I can’t actually remember the first time I read Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty.  I think it was over several sessions when I was staying with an aunt in Kent on a family holiday.  It was on the bookshelf along with other classics like Treasure Island and Little Women.   I was about eight years old, and got very upset about any kind of cruelty to animals.  I loved the illustrations in the book (and wish I could remember what edition it was).  I cried when I read about Ginger’s fate and got so angry I felt like tearing the pages out.  I wanted to attack the people who h...

Diana Kimpton: There Must Be Horses Paperback, Diana Kimpton, £6.29 Kindle, £2.56 Amazon.co.uk,  Kindle, $1.23, Amazon.com, $3.99 Diana Kimpton's website Thank you to the author for sending me a copy of this book. Diana Kimpton is best known in horse circles as the author of the Pony Mad Princess series, of which I am a fan .   There Must be Horses is her first essay into horse fiction for the older reader. It's only available (thus far) in Kindle format, but don't let that put you off. I have to say I am not a Kindle habitué, and if I get an e-book, it tends to take me longer to read, as I prefer your actual page to your virtual one. This book (file?), however, I finished in a day, and at the end was sitting with tears streaming down my face. There Must be Horses  is the story of Sasha. Her adoptive parents have given up on her, and when the book opens, she is off to yet another set of foster parents, for yet another temporary placement. She is now a har...

Another giveaway - completely different to Friday's. This one is a rather charming unicorn story. I am not normally a fan of the unicorn; not in his 21st century guise, anyway. This one does have a noble unicorn, but he is quite a worried beast too. No one can see him, save for one elderly man, and the unicorn does want to be seen. This is a charmingly told story, and it has beautiful illustrations, and a satisfyingly ambiguous ending. If you'd like to be entered for the draw to win it, just add your name to the comments below.

Friday giveaway .... though possibly not if you're easily offended. I have a copy of Judy Reene Singer's Horseplay, which I suppose you could just about consider a romance. It's more about the heroine sorting out her horse life, and the up s and downs of the women she lives with. It is at times very funny. And occasionally quite rude. Those who have read it will know whereof I speak if I mention the vet. If you'd like this copy, which is very minimally exlibrary but really in pretty good shape, add your name to the comments. I will pick names out of a hat at some point on Saturday.