One of the best – and sometimes worst – parts of being a writer is being reviewed. Good reviews make your heart sing, inspire you to write more, make all of the tedious hours of self-imposed exile seem worthwhile. Indifferent reviews can be shrugged off with matching indifference, and while bad reviews are an inevitability, you just have to try not to let them get you down. Not everyone is going to like your books, after all. That’s just life. But every so often a review comes along that halts you in your tracks. I got one of those today.

Creativity is an essential part of the human experience. But how often do we hold ourselves back because we don’t think we are capable of creating anything of value? We are told or we decide that we have no talent in that area and we turn our backs on the possibility and exploration of it. But maybe we need to redefine that thinking. A painting’s value lies not in whether other people think it’s beautiful, or even whether you think it is beautiful, but in the creative experience of making it.

“Do you ever feel like it’s just too hard… to care? Like, when bad things happen around the world – suicide bombings and terrorist attacks and people getting beheaded and there being millions of people living in rat-infested refugee camps and it’s so awful and you feel so bad about it, but then you still have to get up every day and go to school and live your life, and your own problems seem so little and petty but then they’re also like, huge, because they’re the only problems that you’ve got?”

An excerpt from SIX TO RIDE (Pony Jumpers #6).

It is a truth universally acknowledged in storytelling that in order for your protagonist to be relatable and to drive the story forward in a compelling way, they need to have a goal that they’re working towards, something tangible that they want to achieve.

Netflix’s FREE REIN went all in with the equestrian cliches, and I was vastly underwhelmed by the result. A season 1 review.

Finding male protagonists in equestrian fiction.

The absence of parents in YA equestrian fiction.