Novels

Review By: sinatra

for Big Horn Catchmequick

Hi, I’ve just read your opening chapters and very much enjoyed them.
I read your bio and see that you are writing from experience.
What a refreshing change to read your story about ranch life and horses in America. As an English woman living in Portugal!!! you have captured my imagination with your theme and descriptions of a way of life most of us only see in films. Your characters are authentic and your knowledge of horses shines through.
Congratulations on your writing and for capturing your own way of life to express it so expertly in this story.
Wishing you much success.

Can’t beat this kind of feedback!  Pressing on…

 

Big Horn Catchmequick, a Middle-Grade fiction novel has been in the make for a year and a half.  I don’t believe I’m still concerned with a word count.  And the story line has taken on a life of its own.

My goal is to have the manuscript complete by October 1st  December 1st.    February 1  2012!  (Revisions are grueling, but I really mean it this time.)

My biggest fear (Not a fear, but more like a concern at this point.) is the fact that the story is  100% fictional, and the non-fiction story that is happening as we speak/write is by far a better one.

So with that in mind. I’m getting to know this beautiful non-fictional animal, whom my daughter would not ride and I am falling in love with.

The protagonist of my Novel is also a non-fictional character whom I adore.

I can’t finish the fictional story, because I don’t know how the real-life version is going to evolve.

I’m caught up between two dimensions, both real and both normal, yet I can’t seem to take the fictional ending to completion without knowing how the real world is going to unfold.

The story, I imagine is still in the birthing process and I’ll just have to sit back and ride (Intentional pun, yes.) the waves of the unknown.  Yea, I’ve got the sea on my mind, while I’m stuck in the Rockies with Big Horn…

 

An Excerpt from of Chapter One
“Big Horn Catchmequick “
By
OL Shepp

I hold my breath.  Maybe he’ll buck, maybe he won’t.  Jackson and I find two bulls traveling south and down the slope and have them headed home.

“Keep these two boys moving.  I’ll ride the next ridge and see if there are any others.”  Jackson swings in the saddle, points his horse west and hollers, “Be right back.  Keep ‘em moving, Sis!”

I love my old horse, Rocky.  I’d give anything to ride him today, instead of May-Bee.  Rocky, is like my best friend.  He’s a friend who never gets tired of doing all the listening.  I never get tired of doing all the talking.  He never complains, anyway.  And thank God for that.  Wouldn’t that be funny?  My horse, rolling his eyes at me like my brother Jackson does for talking too much.  He’d get, you know, a horsey attitude.  He’d flair his nostrils great big, blow slobber all over his self and rolls his eyes back while sticking his chin out at me.  Ha!  No way.  Rocky never does that. I don’t remember ever owning another horse.  Rocky, he’s my family.

Read more here.