Photo by Helena Lopes

Today’s guest post is by author Tudor Robins.

Throughout my childhood, I loved two things: books and horses.

My passion for books included both reading and writing them. I penned my first “novel” in a spiral-bound notebook I was probably supposed to use for English class.

The horse infatuation covered everything even vaguely equestrian. Researching about horses, riding and showing them, learning every aspect of horsemanship, drawing horses and ponies, and, inevitably, writing about them.

In my case, “write what you know,” was more like “write what you’re obsessed with,” and it meant my decades of equestrian experience were my research.

Alongside “write what you know,” writers often talk about writing the book they always wanted to read. As I began to publish my equestrian-themed novels, I was doing both those things, and getting positive reader feedback, with comments including:

• “She knows her horse stuff. I appreciated the (correct) technical detail.”
• “If you’re a horse-person, you’ll appreciate the accurate details and descriptions of equestrian life.”
• “I found all of the details about showing and riding to be believable.”

I could relate to these comments. In my quest to consume every possible horse book, movie, and TV show, I had encountered no shortage of unrealistic stories about muddy, starved horses who somehow went to the Olympics after two months of love and care, or non-Thoroughbreds running in the Kentucky Derby.

As a reader, those impossible storylines drove me crazy, and now I could save my own readers from that frustration.

It took me a while to realize that by writing what I knew, readers were beginning to know me for what I wrote—developing expectations of me and my books.

I would get an email pointing out that on page 127 of a certain book the main character mounted her horse, but I hadn’t mentioned whether she put her helmet on first—perhaps I could add that in to make it clear?

Somebody would review my latest book and say, “I would have liked less relationships and more horses.”

There was also the real-life pressure to keep horseback riding—an often expensive, and always time-consuming activity. Because of my readers’ high expectations, it felt wrong to be writing horse fiction if I wasn’t regularly at a barn, even though sometimes fitting that into my schedule and budget felt like the straw that might break the pony’s back (see what I did there?).

To be fair, this pressure was almost entirely self-imposed. Readers might say, “I love the way you describe riding a horse around a show-jumping course,” but nobody ever asked me, “When was the last time you, personally, rode a horse around a show-jumping course and can we see video?”

Dick Francis, my personal equestrian fiction hero, built his bestselling fiction career after retiring from being a steeplechase jockey. It was no secret, and I never enjoyed his writing less knowing that.

But all you have to do is ask my family—when given the opportunity, I never shy away from putting an obligation on myself.

Writing what I knew had gone from the obvious path of least resistance to an exercise in “you’re only as good as the last obscure horse fact you can include in your latest book.” And when sales weren’t great, or I got a not-so-nice review, I started questioning, “What am I doing all this for?”

It didn’t help that the horse-fiction niche is relatively small. I couldn’t help wondering what I could accomplish in a genre with wider readership.

I started longing to write a good, old-fashioned cozy mystery, or a romance in which none of the characters had ever touched a horse or visited a stable. I wanted to write in a genre where the expectations seemed clear and simple—produce a body without too much gore, or provide a happily-ever-after. I also liked the idea of having access to a LOT more readers.

So I did. I wrote both, in fact. Horses still managed to sneak into the storylines, but not on the cover, or in the description, and I even started a whole new “horse-free” newsletter list from scratch to avoid cross-contamination.

Things went surprisingly well considering my interesting decision to willingly put myself back at square one. To present myself as a brand-new author to readers who had never heard of me before.

The experience wasn’t life-changing, though. I wasn’t suddenly selling enough books to quit my day job. And it turns out readers in every genre have their own expectations whether it’s about the breed of dog you’ve worked into your story, or the expletive you’ve put in a character’s mouth.

It made me think of my horse books in a new light and showed me the value of being a recognized author in a small, quirky genre.

I realized that 12-year-old me would have died of happiness if somebody told her she would someday write horse books that people would love and pay money for.

So, I’m back. Talking about those books again. Adding to my equestrian series. Collaborating with other horse book authors to give our readers books with all the correct horse details they crave.

“Write what you know” has survived as sound writing advice for a good reason. For me, the important thing was removing some of the perceived constraints around it, so I could still use my horse “superpower” to explore something new—so I could treat it as a resource instead of a boundary.

Originally, I wrote horse fiction because it was what I knew. I moved away from it because it was feeling like an obligation. I came back because I wanted to. And that’s been the key. I’m having fun with it now. I’m leaning into it hard. I’ve come up with a whole slew of marketing slogans like, “For readers who’d rather be at the barn,” or “You never outgrew horses, why outgrow horse books?”

Don’t get me wrong—I still have a yen to write more mysteries. But this time there might be a horse somewhere on the cover.