Allyn's blog: Horse Charmer Blog Tour

Thursday

Horse Charmer Blog Tour - Guest Post

Today I have the pleasure of featuring Angelia Almos, author of the YA Fantasy, Horse Charmer. She is busy this month participating in the Tasty Book Tour and has stopped by my blog to talk a little bit about her process of putting some of her horses into her stories. If you'd like to check out Angelia's other blog stops click here. Also, Angelia is giving away a $20 Amazon/B&N giftcard but in order to have a chance to win you must enter your name in the Rafflecopter at the end of this post. Goodluck!

Horsey Characters

One of the cool things about writing young adult fantasy and horsey fiction is getting to put some of my beloved horses into the stories I’m telling.

Horse Charmer features my show horse from my teenage years. Kristy and I probably had the strongest relationship and bond out of all of the horses who have been a part of my life. I changed her name for the book and it took a long time to settle on the name Kali since the name had to be perfect. Kali looks and behaves exactly how I imagine Kristy would if she could talk as Kali in Horse Charmer can.

When I started Unicorn Keep I wanted to include another one of the many horses who had touched my life. Ginger, my family’s Shetland pony, had been a part of my life off and on for as long as Kristy, and both of my daughters started riding on her before she passed away. I decided to put a spunky and sassy pony into Unicorn Keep in her honor. I made the fictional Ginger larger than her real true ten hands since my heroine was a teenager and needed to ride her through most of the book. She got to shoot up two hands to the average Welsh pony height. Ginger’s personality was always bigger than her size.

In my romantic suspense novel, Mafia Secret, under my Angie Derek pen name, I put in a cameo from the very first horse I took lessons on when I was five years old. Old Ben snuck into the book without me consciously choosing for him to be there, but once I remembered I had named him the same as that gentle bay gelding who started me on my path of horsiness, I knew the name was perfect. Made me want to give him a bigger part in the book.

Some of my favorite horse books growing up were the ones where the horses were just as much a main character as the hero/heroine. Battlecry in Battlecry Forever and Flame in the Island Stallion series come to mind when I think of a horse as being a major character. But horse stars aren’t limited to the printed page. The Black was popular enough to have two movies and a TV show made about him. Maximus from Tangled is probably one of the funniest horses on screen. I could go on and on naming horse after horse, but I’ll stop there.

Who are some of your favorite horse characters in print and on screen?

Now here's a little more about Angelia and her book Horse Charmer:

A gifted princess. A special horse. A quest for the truth.

At sixteen years old, Cassia would rather spend her days in the royal stables than in the royal court. But as the eldest child of King Robet and Queen Sarahann she obediently performs her duties as the Princess of Karah.
Her safe world changes forever when her father is murdered in the neighboring kingdom of Vespera. Cassia grapples with his loss as her mother prepares her for her new role as queen. Her first task - she must travel to Vespera to marry a prince she barely knows to fulfill the treaty her father signed just before his death.

Nothing is as simple as it seems with political intrigues and unusual powers shadowing Cassia on her search to find out who killed her father and why.

Angelia Almos' love affair with horses began when she was five years old and talked her parents into her first riding lesson. Horses have always been a huge part of her life. The initial idea behind Horse Charmer came to her when she was fourteen. The image of a teenage girl riding her horse through a meadow appeared. Who was this girl? Where was she going? What was she running from? Those questions led to the creation of Horse Charmer.