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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Whoops!
I'm so sorry, but I seem to have punted my brain, and I had the wrong date for the publication date of The Thucydides Trap, the fifth and final book of the Imperials series. It will be released tomorrow, January 17th, not the 15th as I had originally posted. I'm so...
So Many Ways to Outline
I've always been a writer who outlines. I got a lot better at it once I worked in Hollywood and learned how to "break a story". For an in-depth look at how that works check out my blog post called How I Plot. Point being, I'm a bit of a dinosaur, I like to outline the...
Why is Food So Hard?
I seem to be unable to cook with any degree of skill. So rather than actually eat anything sensible I listened to opera. In particular my favorite soprano in all the world, Kathleen Battle. So now all of you get to listen to opera too if you are so inclined....
Imperials Update!
Okay, I have definitive news, the fifth and final book in the Imperials series will be published on January 15, 2023. It's been a long journey with an unfortunate hiccup in the middle when my first publisher decided to cancel the series after the third book. I was...
Voting: Yeah, It Matters.
I keep seeing Tweets about how voting doesn't matter. Voting doesn't cut it. What's the point? Look, the system is rigged, no doubt about that, allowing for minority rule, but it can be overcome with sheer numbers & there are more of us than there are of them. And...
