Anna Rashbrook's Blog

When the most incredible, amazing and puzzling thing happens to you, what would you do? Run? Hide? Spread it on the media?
Jade cautiously decides to keep the revelation secret. She takes on a dream job, hugging this new joy to herself, only to find the job strange in itself as she has to carry out the most extraordinary tasks.
Is there a conspiracy to steal or hide her secret, control her and all that she could do with it? Her life is being watched from a distance, or is she imagining it?
It’s only when she disobeys orders and takes off on holiday with some old school friends that things come to a startling conclusion. And Nimrod?

At last! All the Horses and Souls books in a box set and only for Advent 2024. Here’s the link

https://mybook.to/TULmrp

Trot along to Hazeley in the English countryside and immerse yourself in the ever complicated lives of Joanna, who lives in the manor. Mollie and Ann, who work in the stables. Chris who runs a nearby farm. Then last but not the least, new arrivals, Sally, and the terrible twins Jerry and Merry.

None of these stories would be complete without the horses. Challenger, the retired showjumper who reads everyone around him like a book. Keith, a totally dippy stallion. The mysterious roan, Chaos. Bella, the spotted horse, and Hindrance, her donkey sidekick. Rodi and Stella from snowy Austria. And of course, all the dogs who sneak their way into the tales.

As everyone seeks a happy ending, a web of tangled emotions, hidden pasts, and troublesome family relationships is interwoven with love, reconciliation, and healing, reflecting the Christian theme that runs through the series.

Book 1; Challenger

Book 2; Compromise

Book 3; Chaos

Book4; Christmas

Book 5; Castles in the Air

Short Story; Challenger’s Celebration

Book 6; Conclusion

I’m very grateful to Anna for offering the opportunity to post on her blog. The equestrian fiction writing community is full of such generosity and sharing, and there are so many of us – far more than I expected when I began writing so many moons ago!

So, who am I?  Well, as a pony-mad, ponyless kid (in Somerset just across the Bristol Channel from where Anna now lives), I scoured second hand bookshops for pony books, and bought PONY magazine every month. I dreamed of getting a pony and keeping it in the farmer’s field behind our house (that never happened – I was 28 before I got my first pony – and now the field is a housing estate!). Nonetheless, I never grew out of horses or horse stories, and I always wanted to be a writer. I wrote lots of short stories (even had a few published in PONY magazine) but what I really wanted to do was write a horse book for adults – for all the people like me who had grown up on a diet of Ruby Ferguson’s Jill, Patricia Leitch’s Jinny, Walter Farley’s Black Stallion, and Monica Dickens’ Follyfoot books.

It’s taken me a long time to learn about the craft of writing, including completing a Masters in Creative Writing about 12 years ago. Since then, I’ve written for the UK women’s magazine market, and published two collections of equestrian short stories, one for children (Mine for a Month) and one for grown-ups (At the Paddock Gate). Last year, just before my 50th birthday,  I finally achieved my dream when I published Clear to the Last, a novel about Livy who, at the start of the book, is living in a horrible flat, doing a job she hates, and, having just broken up with her long-term boyfriend, is convinced men cannot be trusted. After years of burying her love of horses, a twist of fate brings her into contact with a beautiful Arab gelding, as well as an unexpected ally, and before long she is immersed in the world of horses once again.

One of my aims when writing is to ensure that the equestrian element is authentic and believable. I’ve previously worked in riding schools, and, as an adult, have been lucky enough to have had my own horses for years, so I’ve built up plenty of experience I can draw on in my fiction. Horses are wonderful creatures and can make your heart lift, but they have minds of their own and their own fears and anxieties, which makes them unpredictable and potentially dangerous. Understanding the nature of horses, and why they behave in the way they do, makes for realistic stories with situations equestrians will find relatable.

If you want to find out more about me and my books, you can go to my website: jennyroman.wordpress.com. And if you like the sound of my fiction, but want to ‘try before you buy’, please sign up for my newsletter here – you’ll receive the ebook Angel in Disguise (the prequel to Clear to the Last) absolutely free. This story is for my subscribers only and isn’t available anywhere else. As a member of my mailing list, you’ll be the first to hear of news and offers associated with my writing – and if you decide it’s not for you, of course you can unsubscribe at any time.

So that’s it from me. A big thank you to Anna, for inviting me to share a bit about me and my equestrian fiction here, and for all the work she does bringing together those of us who love reading and writing about horses via the Facebook group “Horse Books for Grown Ups”.

Free on .com and .co.uk, links below

Anna Rashbrook used to be a person who would proudly boast, ‘I am what I am.’ It took nearly forty years of the hard knocks of life before she found God, and that much of what she treasured was actually caused by damage.

In these totally frank memoirs, follow Anna through what should have been a privileged childhood, pony mania, a badly behaved teenage, student placement on a farm in Switzerland, working as a zookeeper, running a smallholding, marriage, and family.

Then, through a traumatic eviction, she finds God’s love and begins a new journey. Yet, it is only when her marriage comes under threat that she must come to terms with her past and find healing. Out of this comes a new job, where her passion for horses is reignited.

Has life finished with her, are there more hurdles to overcome, or even another new start on the horizon?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08P5V6F86

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B093SNDT68

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B097T1F8KS

First off, huge thanks to Anna for hosting me on her blog! I don’t keep a blog of my own currently, so it’s a nice moment to pop in and give it a try.

Hi, I’m Isla Ryder and I write equestrian sweet romance. I am a lifelong rider and proud HorseGirl. I started writing books with horses because I wasn’t happy with the ones I was finding—too many were full of inaccuracies and I was tired of being let down, so I put my horsey background on the page and started the Harris Twins Series – a cowboy romance trilogy.

Now, for the most part I am a dressage rider, so yes that was a bit outside my area, but I have ridden western quite a bit in the past and my favorite clinic I ever participated in was cattle working clinic, so it’s not that out of the box for me. But once that series was finished, I was excited to dive in with some books featuring english riders and my Pine Mountain Horse Park Romances were born. Those are stand-alones where characters pop in now and then from other books. So far I feature eventing and show jumping, with a dressage trainer FMC coming up next.

This year I’m hoping to add to both worlds—I have a side story set on the Harris twins’ Twin Springs Ranch and a new Pine Mountain book focused on a dressage trainer. I’m not totally sure which will come first. My muse is pinging me between the two like crazy!

So, are you team western or team english?

Twin Springs Ranch or Pine Mountain Horse Park?

By the way, all my books are available in Kindle Unlimited, so if you need more information before deciding which team to join…you know where to go!

If you’d like to find out more about me, you can find all my writing info at IslaRyder.com

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Isla-Ryder/author/B09GMNYCNQ

https://books2read.com/TwinSpringsRanchHT1

Thank you, Anna, for inviting me to your blog.  I write as Rita Lee Chapman.  I was born in London and now live in Queensland, Australia and I’ve published eleven books.  Which one sells best?  My horse book, Winston – A Horse’s Tale.  This was the book I had to write and it was also the easiest to write.  It is told by Winston himself and is the story of his life in Australia, from foaling to old age. He tells of his early education, trying to please different owners, the time he was sold by accident and the day he was caught in a flood.

I was mad about horses from a very early age, which my family struggled to understand as they were not horse people.  I collected china horses and horse books.  From pony rides at fairs to receiving courses of rides over the fields at the local riding school for birthdays and Christmas, I was in seventh heaven when I moved to Australia and discovered a riding school where the rides went through the Australian bush.  As an escort I rode for hours over the week-ends on all sorts of horses and ponies, from the unknown to the recently broken-in, an ex-police horse and a pacer.  The horse on the cover of Winston is of my horse, Glen Alpine Napoleon, whom I called Pal.  The love of my life!

You can find out more about my books on my website at www.ritaleechapman.com.  You will also see that I interview a different author each week, so if anyone would like a free interview, please contact me through the website.

I’m opening the blog for authors to do take overs with a blog post, it’s a new idea and we’ll see how it goes. Watch out in the next few months for some great authors and books.

If you’re an author and want to take over, drop me a line on Horse Books for Grown Ups on Facebook, or here.

Above is a blast of the past, Dave and Swingle reading the Baize door which became Challenger!

Boxing day was actually dry, so Dave and I, our son George and the dogs, Swingle and Dizzy took ourselves off for a walk at the Dare Country Park in nearby Aberdare. We parked in the town and walked up the old railway line to the park and had a pleasant stroll around the lakes and streams then came back.

As many of you know, Swingle’s middle name is dustbin and this has got her into many scrapes and trips to the vets over the years. She still hasn’t learnt cause and effect at nine and never will.

As we got in the car, she was missing, so I yelled and she re-appeared, to jump into the car and belch. It stank the car out as it was clearly poo – yes, really. She literally wasn’t flavour of the month and we were all glad when once home, she went off for her post walk snooze.

A couple of hours later, she came downstairs, and swaggered into the sitting room, and began to wobble in the most odd way and was clearly not focused. My immediate reaction was that she had been poisoned, so after several calls to the vets, it was off to Treforest to have her checked out.

On telling the Vet the tale, she said she didn’t think it was poison, but needed a wee sample. I spent half an hour walking around the car park with a wobbly, unfocused dog, who dragged her claws the whole time. No luck we sat and waited for the vet, and as Swingle sat, she peed. The vet took a sample.

‘I’m afraid your dog has ingested marijuana and cocaine,’ she spluttered with laughter, ‘she’s stoned.’

So after paying a large bill and clutching bottles of charcoal to help absorb the drugs, we dragged my hippie dog home, there was nothing to be done but let her sleep it off. She spent a lot of time that evening watching things walk around the room that we couldn’t see. The next morning she was fine.

George did suggest we go back to the carpark and see if there was a stash there, but I didn’t fancy it. Swingle is now officailly a drug  dog, but for all the wrong reasons.

Sadly Legacy didn’t get into the third round of the AllAuthor cover contest, but a GINORMOUS thank you to everyone who supported me with votes.

The book itself is doing extremely well, and I promise to get back to some more normal posting! It’s picked up some lovely reviews on Good reads.

I’m now looking forward to the first Pontypridd Book Fair which I am organising with my friend Lin, and seeing what sales I can get to this summer…and I’ve a tale to tell about my drug addict dog!