March
18, 2014
Dear
Readers,
The
finalists for the 2013 Castleton Lyons Dr. Tony Ryan award were announced
yesterday, and I’m delighted that my memoir, Casual Lies – A Triple Crown Adventure,
has been chosen as a finalist in this prestigious international literary
competition. I’ve included the press release from Castleton Lyons at the end of
this post.
As a writer, getting published has
never been easy. Many a fine author, after repeated rejection letters, has ended up putting
a terrific story on the shelf to gather dust. With the advent of print-on-demand publishing,
a whole new world opened up for would be authors. Once called vanity
presses, rejected authors could contract with a printer to produce their book.
The more copies you ordered, the more reasonable the per copy price. Self-published
authors would often end up with a pallet of several hundred books gathering dust in their
garage.
Now, print-on-demand for self-publishing,
has eased the sometimes grueling task of finding an agent to represent your
work to publishers. Publishers who are already inundated with proposals and are unlikely to consider
unsolicited manuscripts. With print-on-demand presses, you don’t need an agent,
and you can order one or one hundred books, and each is the same set price. Furthermore,
you can come back at anytime, and order more books at the same cost per copy.
This has opened up the business of self-publishing to an unlimited audience.
Last year 750,000 self-published books were produced.
Yikes! 750,000? That doesn’t include
the titles published by the traditional publishing houses. As you can well
imagine this opens up a whole new set of difficulties for would-be bestselling
authors. Build it and they will come? Write it and they will read? Maybe, if
the reading public can find it. Can you imagine pawing through 750,000 plastic
pearls trying to find the genuine? Neither can most readers, they return to the
mainstream authors and publishing houses they are familiar with to find their
next read.
This is why
competitions like the Castleton Lyons Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award are so
important. The late Dr. Ryan loved a good story, and by starting this competition,
Dr. Ryan has given me and others like me, a chance to rise up out of the depths
of obscurity. Making the finals, in such a prestigious literary competition,
gives credibility to my endeavor, and I wish I could’ve thanked Dr. Ryan for
this opportunity.
2013 Dr. Tony Ryan finalists announced
All
three finalists for the 2013 Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award are tales of unexpected equine
stars who grabbed racing’s headlines in their respective eras—with two being set
against the dramatic backdrop of England’s Grand National Steeplechase, and two
featuring strong, barrier-breaking women.
As
with the prestigious National Book Award, the Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award annually
offers a $10,000 winner’s prize, with $1,000 going to each of two finalists. It
was launched in 2006 by the late Dr. Ryan to recognize high-quality full-length
literary work that focused on all things thoroughbred.
Since Dr. Ryan’s passing in 2007, the award has continued on in his memory under
the guidance of his son, Shane.
Judges for 2013 were: Kay Coyte, managing
editor of the Washington Post-Bloomberg
News Service; Caton Bredar, broadcaster and producer for HRTV; and Patrick
Smithwick, winner of the 2012 Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award for his autobiographical
Flying Change: A Year of Racing and
Family and Steeplechasing.
This
year’s winner will be announced during an invitation-only reception at the Ryan
family’s historic Castleton Lyons farm near Lexington on April 9.
Finalists:
Battleship: A Daring Heiress, A Teenage Jockey, and America’s Horse
Author:
Dorothy Ours
Publisher:
St. Martin’s Press
Battleship,
the tale of a strong-willed, enigmatic woman and the tiny but well-bred
stallion she believed in, takes us on a literary gallop from historic
Montpelier in Virginia, to Aintree, England, to Randolph Scott’s Hollywood. Ours’
character-driven work, based in the first half of the 20th century, centers
on Marion du Pont—a woman of wealth and privilege, who nonetheless had to
battle the strict limitations placed on women of her time. A supreme
horsewoman, she acquires little Battleship, in whose veins flows the fiery
blood of Man o’ War, then points him for the world’s toughest race, England’s
Grand National, where the fences are taller than the horse himself. She then pairs
him up with an inexperienced 17-year-old jockey … and the rest, as they say, is
history
Casual Lies: A Triple Crown Adventure
Author/Publisher:
Shelley Lee Riley
A
story of true inspiration, Casual Lies
proves emphatically that lightning can, indeed, strike anywhere. Trainer and part-time
newspaper journalist Shelley Riley guides us with joy and humor down her own
life path from horse-obsessed girl to history-making woman—who in 1992 up-ended
a male-dominated sport by becoming the first of her gender to saddle a starter
in all three American Triple Crown races. The history-making horse who took her
there was Casual Lies, an undersized $7,500 auction bargain, whose outsized
heart and extraordinary character was slowly revealed under Riley’s patient, loving
care. This feel-good narrative may not be a fairytale in the truest sense of
the word … but it’s close enough.
Foinavon: The Story of the Grand National’s Biggest Upset
Author:
David Owen
Publisher:
Wisden Sports Writing
On
April 7, 1967, the author witnessed this greatest of Grand National upsets on
black-and-white television, as a seven-year-old boy from his home in Taunton,
England. Now a retired sports editor for the London-based Financial Times, David Owen never forgot the chaos and wreckage …
the almost slow-motion victory of a hopeless 100-to-1 shot that ignited within
him a life-long passion for the world’s most demanding—and dangerous—horse
race. In Foinavon, he pens a detailed
account of the underdog winner that day 47 years ago, tracing the protagonist’s
life from its beginnings, through his post-victory travels with a white
nanny-goat companion, and ultimately defines what he came to mean to the sport
he represented so sensationally.
A strong set of finalist, and I’m
honored that my memoir is in the running. I’ll be looking at this weekend’s racing, and
sharing my thoughts with you on Friday.
Take
care,
Shelley
Lee Riley, Author of Casual Lies – A Triple Crown Adventure
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