The Joys of Self Publishing

Yes, that is meant somewhat ironically because this is a long and tedious process. First you have to have the team who are able to prepare the covers properly, do all the interior layout and then someone to prepare the manuscript for all these different places. Thank the gods I have Jeffe Kennedy and her extraordinary team to assist me and Jeffe to teach me. The one really big wrinkle in all of this has been Bowker that sells ISBN numbers. Note that in Canada they are provided to authors for...

Sometimes The Characters Need to Tell You

I do outline my novels. Not in the same detail that I would outline a script, but it’s important to me to know the major beats ie the tent pole scenes that will carry me to the various act outs, but there are a few limited time where I let the flow of the story and the actions of the characters show me the way. It’s one of the reasons I can’t jump around when I write. I have to experience the events of the story along with the characters in a very linear fashion. I spent the...

Family Story Told by Cats Across the Decades

So here is a story. My aunt and uncle on my dad’s side had two Siamese cats — Tasha and Andy. And when I was a baby my mom (my dad was in Washington D.C. testifying to a congressional committee about organized crime in Los Angeles more on that another time) was staying with Judy and Ernie. Now, they were young and staying home with a baby so my aunt and uncle and my mom would put Tasha in my crib and tell her to “watch the baby” while they went off dancing for a couple...

A Glorious Purpose — Musings on Loki

There has been an outcry from fans over the ending of Loki season 2, because he didn’t get to live happily ever after with Sylvie, but I think it was perfection. And now I’m going to tell you why. AHOY, THERE ARE SPOILERS AHEAD. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!! I fell in love with the character way back with the first THOR film. Partly because he’s a tremendously complicated character and also because of Tom Hiddleston’s portrayal. He is probably one of the finest actors of his generation (and many...

When Less is Absolutely More (Or Don’t Cock Up Aliens)

via GIPHY I had a friend visiting who had never seen ALIENS, so we popped in the disc to watch it last night. What I hadn’t realized is that Carl and I had purchased the Special Edition. Which meant it had added back in deleted scenes and dialogue that had been cut from the theatrical release. And oh my dear gods and little fishes, they should never have done that. There was a reason those scenes were cut and some dialogue trimmed. I’m going to do a SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING!...

Duh and Also Some Thoughts on Riding the Posting Trot

Let’s first get the fact that I am sometimes an idiot out of the way before I get into musing about how little I knew about riding until I started riding with my coach extraordinaire, Leslie Apfel. I have these great Romitelli riding boots, that I just love, but when I wore the brown leather ones — the zippers would always slide down while I was riding. I thought it was due to the leather softening up, but then Leslie said, “Don’t they have a zipper guard?” she looked, and yes, they have...

Cars, Cars, Cars

Yeah, I’m a car person. I’m a big time car person. It’s the once place where my liberal cred really falls down. If I won the lottery I would have like eight or ten cars. So, in that spirit I went out to the car show in the parking lot across from the Round House this morning to check out the all electric Lucid. I’ve been reading about them in Car & Driver, vehicle won car of the year, and it’s slick. It’s also narrower than the Tesla S which would be...

No, The First Episodes of Andor Aren’t Boring (and I’m going to tell you why)

One of the constant complaints I hear regarding Andor is how the first few episodes are boring, nothing happens, what was the point of all this? In this era when there isn’t a Michael Bay EXPLOSION INSIDE AN EXPLOSION!!! people think a particular show or movie is slow, but I found the pacing of Andor to be nearly perfect. We all know the over-arching plot — Cassian Andor becomes a rebel intelligence officer, steals the Death Star plans, and dies, but what Tony Gilroy did was far deeper and...

Using the Leg When Riding — But Not Overusing It.

So, it’s time for another thrilling adventure in dressage neepery. This time it’s all about the importance of the leg in riding, particularly in dressage. This all started when my coach blew my mind by telling me that in the leg yield (which is a maneuver in which the horse steps sideway while keeping their body parallel to the rail while still moving forward) the yielding leg ie the leg that is pulsing against the horse’s body and telling them to step sideways remains directly under the...

Riding With the Core

You would think I would have learned this before now given how long I have been riding (rode for the first time at 3 years old. Had my own horse at 7, sweet black and white paint named Suncloud), but it took riding with Leslie to help me truly, fully, understand how to control a horse almost exclusively with my seat and my core muscles. I can go from an extended canter to a canter so collected we’re almost cantering in place just by using those core muscles and thinking more up than...

Shoulder-Fore versus the Shoulder-In — The Art of Dressage

I was riding in a Bill McMullin clinic and had my mind blown, and I wonder why nobody ever told me this before. The shoulder-fore is not just a more shallow shoulder-in. It’s actually designed to get the horse straight on the rail. Here is how Bill explained it. The horse is narrower in the front than they are in the back, so if you keep their shoulders right on the rail they will always look like they are doing a slight haunches-in because their butts are much wider than their chests....

Riding the Flying Change (Yes, It’s More Dressage)

Today we were working on canter to walk transitions, and Leslie said you ask for the transition by lengthening your leg, sinking down into the horse, shortening his stride, but making the hind legs jump through more quickly, and you give the aid to walk when the horse’s withers and shoulders are coming up to you. I applied this technique and we had some perfect downwards. And then I realized that this was when I needed to be asking for the lead change when we were doing tempi changes....

Ballet And Riding are the Antithesis of Each Other — More Dressage Neepery

I keep thinking if I write all this down my muscles will just magically start doing what I want, and isolate the way I need them to. It is starting to work, so hooray. One of the problem is that I was a ballet dancer for a long, long time. Toe shoes, the whole nine yards. But year ago I had to make a choice — riding or dance, and the equestrian sports and ballet are not compatible. I had to make a choice. Horses won… because of course they did because horses are magic and as the...

Dressage Musings: Back Pain

For years when I rode my low back would end up just killing me. I thought it was the price you pay to ride, but Leslie realized I was hyper-extending and arching my back. So, I tried to fix that, but I was going at it all wrong. I was trying to slouch/hunch and that ended up freezing my hip so I couldn’t swing through with the horse’s motion. And when the hip is frozen I ended up gripping with my thighs and my knees, and all that tension made my tempi changes (flying lead change)...

Dressage Essay: Adjustability of the Horse

I needed to put down some thoughts about dressage again so you get to suffer for my OCD about this crazy sport. Vento is wiggly, I mean really wiggly. He’s like a freaking gummy worm of a horse. Which makes dressage a challenge because straightness is an essential part of our sport. Now this isn’t to say, he isn’t good at it — he is a Grand Prix horse and has done very well on a very tough circuit against big warmbloods (he’s a Lusitano), but he and I have to work for it. One of the ways my...