Cynthia – Shiny Pony

January 18, 2026February 3, 2026

Top Horse of Crescent Ranch: an ebook!

Head to the Internet Archive book download page. Don’t judge the ebook by the wonky, auto-derived Internet Archive preview. Download the EPUB format book!

Top Horse of Crescent Ranch is a 1942 title by Howard L. Hastings. It is not a plot-heavy book, but a pleasing read nevertheless. The first edition print publication is 248 pages. While there are many chapters, they are short. The title fell into the public domain of the United States due to non-renewal of copyright. It is also public domain in countries where the copyright period is “life plus 70” years.

It was written during the same time period as My Friend Flicka by Mary O’Hara (1941). Both titles are set on Wyoming ranches. The child characters in each book do some unsupervised range riding. Each author clearly loves horses and stresses good treatment of them! Otherwise, they are completely different reads.

The author is best known as an illustrator. A few titles illustrated by Mr. Hastings are public domain and available from Gutenberg.org.

January 13, 2026January 13, 2026

The making of ebooks is a difficult matter!

It isn’t just one of your holiday games. You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter … —The Naming of Cats by T.S. Eliot

And you’d be right!

Long post, but with “under-the-hood” sneak-peek images!

Making ebooks is not for the faint of heart. It’s a brain-lethal combo of geeky nerdiness, creativity, concentration, and obsessive-compulsiveness that often makes me want to … pound things. I’ve heard it referred to by other epub-making hobbyists as a particularly frustrating game of “whack-a-mole.” When you think you’ve solved a problem, another pops up.

An EPUB is a group of XHMTL files, images, metadata, and fonts zipped up in a special archive. So anyone can make one. Making one that has accessibility baked in, that works across platforms, is trickier.

There is a standard for a valid epub file. There is NO set standard for the epub readers and rendering engines. A reflowable-text ebook will look different depending on what device or app is used to read it. With more robust mainstream apps and devices, the differences are fairly minor. Yet most apps and devices have individual quirks.

The ebooks I make are open format EPUB 3.0, and what you, the reader, will see, won’t be exactly what I see. We each will choose our own preferred settings, devices, or apps and that’s OK!

I learned how to make epub by reading about the process online. I started my education in 2010, shortly after getting my first e-ink reader, a Nook. My first publication was for a nephew, to whom I ended up giving the Nook.

I’ve spent time looking under-the-hood at other people’s epubs. I borrow code like crazy. I test. There’s little consensus online as to how best to go about ebook making. There’s good advice and bad. Arguments over how to handle any given element abound. Add in accessibility, and you have yet another arena of disagreement. Which means that one does one’s best and accepts that perfection is not reachable.

It’s been a rocky road!

January 11, 2026January 11, 2026

Advance apology to Nook users

The type of ebook I make is EPUB 3.0. With a lot of accessibility features baked in for those who need them. I make these epubs backwardly compatible with older devices and rendering engines but I’ve hit a peculiar wall with Nook.

In the past, I’ve noticed buggy behavior with epubs when testing in the Nook Android app. Was the problem confined to the app? Or would it show up on a device? I had no way to know. So I bit the bullet and bought a 2023 Nook Glowlight 4 Plus for half price on eBay. And found out. The bug happens on the device too. Sigh.

Well, this is why testing is important. You can’t count on different devices or apps, even from the SAME company, to render ebooks identically.

Interestingly, there is NO TRACE of this bug in the Nook iOS app. None, zip, nada.

The problem, which only happens in the Nook Android app and on the Nook e-ink device is quite reader-unfriendly. TEXT GOES MISSING! Fortunately, there is a fix.

January 1, 2026January 10, 2026

The race to 2026 is over and who won?

The United States of America public domain, that’s who! Happy Public Domain day!

Any titles and images posted below may be under copyright in other countries. Please check the laws for your own country before making use of any of these works!

There’s some nice horse titles entering the public domain this year, non-fiction and fiction. For art lovers, there are two non-fiction titles with Paul Brown illustrations: Gentlemen Up, and Foxhunting Formalities by J. Stanley Reeve.

From the UK, there’s Moorland Mousie by Golden Gorse and Jerry: The Story of an Exmoor Pony by Eleanor E. Helme and Nance Paul. Hildebrand by John Thorburn, features an opinionated piebald who has “ceased to be a willing co-operator.” All illustrated!

If you prefer western horse adventures, there are Tornado Boy by Thomas C. Hinkle, and The Pinto Pony by Hoffman Birney. Lone Cowboy by Will James, though not specifically a horse book, has plenty of horse action and horse illustration.

For fans of a good driving or harness horse, there’s Red Horse Hill by Stephen W. Meader.

There may be others, but those are the titles from my own collection that qualify.

December 31, 2025December 31, 2025

Wyoming Summer – Mary O’Hara

Dust jacket: Wyoming Summer by Mary O'Hara. A small group of horses in a dry grass field against a backdrop of cloudy sky.

If you love horses, you have probably read Mary O’Hara’s classic novel, My Friend Flicka. Or perhaps you’ve seen the movie.

Flicka is drawn from the author’s real life with her husband Helge Sture-Vasa on the Remount Ranch, Wyoming in the 1930s.

I have always loved Flicka, Thunderhead, and Green Grass of Wyoming, and have re-read the trilogy many times. As a child, I knew nothing of the author. As an adult, I was curious to read the memoir of her Wyoming experiences.

Published in 1963, Wyoming Summer details a summer Mary spent on the ranch, though she incorporated incidents from other summers. Names got changed. The Remount Ranch becomes the Goose Bar Ranch of fiction, yet I feel the name change is unnecessary. No reader would have trouble recognizing the Remount as the Goose Bar! Mary’s husband Helge is referred to as Michael. The Sture-Vasas become the Bergwins. My guess is the publisher preferred American-sounding names.

It’s a nice companion to the series, though not the same read. This book consists of vignettes and tidbits of life on the ranch, and some of Mary’s life off the ranch. There’s action and drama, and plenty of humor, life on the ranch was never boring!

December 31, 2025

Long time no see!

And I mean that literally. I hadn’t looked at or logged into the site in an age. Naturally, I was locked out again. Fortunately, I was able to get back in. My WordPress install is up-to-date.

I am still alive and kicking, but with my spine troubles, find it hard to get things done easily. Fixing meals, getting a wee bit of exercise, taking care of the cats, and housework tends to be most of what I can manage.

Writing a blog has fallen by the wayside, no surprise there! I’m not planning to close the site down, but there may be a shift in focus.

My brain is bookish lately. Looking over my cluttered bookshelves, I realized I have a fair number of books that will enter the public domain of the United States of America tomorrow! These are books for the most part that were published in 1930 or prior years.

I plan to make some of these into ebooks. I don’t expect many folks to be interested in books that old, but I love this kind of nerdy thing, so it is what it is. Stay tuned.

August 16, 2021August 16, 2021

We caught a curveball…

Embarrassingly, I managed to lock myself out of the site and didn’t want to deal with figuring out how to get back in until today. That’s a little complicated, thanks to the security plugin I use.

I’m still kicking, but it’s been a rocky year. Last fall, the neurosurgeon’s office had me trucking back and forth to Walla Walla for physical therapy in spite of me telling them how painful the car ride to Walla Walla was. My husband drove me, but I was usually in tears both ways. And would end up laying in bed for hours afterward, just hoping for the pain to ease. Finally, the physical therapist called it quits. He said he couldn’t see me in such pain.

At least I had the beginnings of a home exercise program. Unfortunately, by then the nerve pain flare-up was so bad I was unable to do my exercises for well over a month after we stopped the driving back and forth.

I resumed the exercises slowly and carefully, but winter was depressing. I was sending out some Covid care packages to hobby folk (mainly books) but a trip to the PO just before Christmas meant a short wait in line that resulted in yet another flare-up. I had to stop as clearly, my body wasn’t ready for anything additional beyond taking care of myself.

November 17, 2020

The Horsemasters by Don Stanford

This horse story is based on real life, in particular, the daily chores of caring for horses at a riding school in Great Britain. I never read this title as a child, but discovered it recently and loved it!

1957 Funk & Wagnalls first edition hardcover — 1957 Funk and Wagnalls first edition

The majority of horse books for children and young adults tend to glamorize horse ownership. There are exceptions, of course, but few books really dig into the sheer work that owning a horse entails and this is what I loved here. Details like feeding the horse on time, keeping it groomed, cleaning its stall, its tack and treating its ailments are often only casually mentioned or completely ignored in other books. But it’s just these tidbits that bring home what owning a horse might be like.

Basing his fictional tale on the very real Porlock Vale Equestrian Centre in Great Britain, Mr. Stanford gives us chapter after chapter of mucking out, cleaning yards, grooming, treating horse ailments, having falls and other riding incidents, and creates a wonderfully entertaining read from the everyday life of a student!

November 17, 2020November 21, 2020

Blog updates and sales tactics . . .

Resources update

The resources page now lists assorted model horse Facebook groups, some clinky oriented, some more general hobby. Some other links have been updated or fixed.

I’ve added the new email list CeramicAnimalCollectors that will replace Breakables when Yahoogroups closes on December 15th.

I’ve also listed the brand new PonyBytes online showing site, this looks like a super way for showholders to hold online shows!

Sales tactics

On sales, while I do plan to continue using the Horse Book Auction Facebook page, I may list some titles here first as a perk for blog subscribers. Paul Brown illustrated books come to mind, perhaps also popular Dorothy Lyons or Patsey Gray titles. The Horse Books- For Sale Facebook page could also be utilized.

For figurines, listing stays the same for now, here first, then elsewhere. But that is subject to change if it proves cumbersome.

There could be exceptions. Yesterday I sold a mini unpainted resin because I saw a Facebook post in search of just that piece! I wasn’t expecting it, but there ya go! I need to de-clutter my house, in case I must do spine surgery. So, if an easy sale presents, so be it.

Going into the cold months, I’m not expecting to do a lot with figurine sales, perhaps a few smaller items. The current plan is to concentrate on whipping my bookshelves into shape as I read through titles!

November 15, 2020November 17, 2020

My spine on steroids . . . a tailbone tale

After two months of physical therapy in summer of 2019, my doctor wanted to get an MRI on my lower back. The results came in late October of the same year.

“The good news is that your spine is stable and you probably won’t wake up paralyzed some morning.”
My doctor’s first words, verbatim.

As I’d been worrying about that little matter, that was somewhat of a relief to hear!

“The bad news is you have degenerative disk disease with one disk virtually obliterated, another in bad shape, a bulging disk, spinal stenosis and multiple pinched nerves. You’re in for it.”
His next words or close enough . . .