Undomesticated Women, Anecdotal Evidence from the Road by Anna Blake

Undomesticated Women, Anecdotal Evidence from the Road by Anna Blake is a travel memoir. I'm on tour with iRead Book Tours and they always have great giveaways as part of the tour so don't forget to enter at the bottom of the post. I'm excited to share an exclusive interview with Anna Blake! Enjoy and feel free to check out other tour stops by clicking on the picture below.

 

Interview with Anna Blake:

Q. What genre do you write and why?

A. I’m committed to Creative Nonfiction, the pretty term for memoir. All stories begin inside our minds with what we see and need to understand. Those are the stories I want to tell, sometimes through poetry and sometimes prose. Nothing beats real life. Undomesticated Women started as a suggestion from a friend to submit an article when the New York Times put a call out about how COVID changed the way we work. I traveled training horses, but suddenly, I was sitting in front of a computer screen training in Zoom meetings. Once the lockdown was over and I was back to work on the road, the initial idea for the article had a runaway and the would-be article became a book.

I don’t know if I’d recommend the memoir genre. I’ve done well, but other genres are more popular. It’s my goal to write so well that genre doesn’t matter.

Q. Do you have another profession besides writing?

A. Yes, writing isn’t my primary income. I’m a professional horse trainer. In 2010, I started writing a blog to teach myself to write better because I had a memoir stuck in my throat. My blog about horse training and farm life slowly became popular, but my life changed after publishing that first book. Readers invited me to give training clinics around the world. It was an amazing opportunity, and all because I wrote. Now the two jobs are so swirled together that I’m unsure where one stops and the other starts. 

Q. Which was the hardest character to write?

A. By far, the character I wanted to get right was my dog, Mister. I didn’t want to put false words in his mouth or use him in a cartoonish way. My horse training specialty is reading body language, and dogs are similar and often misunderstood. I needed to give the most honest description of him because I relied on him and he had an enormous influence on the trip. Mister is a very handsome dog with large ears, the kind of dog people coo about, but I wanted the reader to know him as I do. 

Q. What is the last great book you’ve read?

A. I’m like everyone else. I have dozens of favorites, like Demon Copperhead, a recent book. But then I wouldn’t want to forget The Elegance of the Hedgehog, a book that influenced Undomesticated Women. And I can’t forget older books. One of my favorite chapters is in response to another travel memoir, Travels with Charley. Throughout this road trip, I kept track of all the books I read. The list is at the end of my book because audiobooks were a huge part of this solo trip. Reading kept me in such strong company that I almost felt like they were secret characters in my own book.

Q. Do you write every day?

A. Yes. Right now, I’m busy promoting my new book, so here I am, writing to you. I write or edit or do similar detail tasks every day. Some of it is for my weekly blog, which I still publish and share every Friday morning. Those readers and I have a relationship that I value and respect. And I have a couple of new books started, and other ideas simmering. It was work to make writing a habit in the beginning, but now I can’t do without it.

Q. What advice would you give budding writers?

A. It sounds obvious and almost trite, but keep writing. Practice is the most important part. Learn to love editing. I work hard to improve my writing skills and am never complacent. I give myself assignments, to be funny or to describe something hard to describe. Stoking our creativity and curiosity adds value to our writing and our lives. 

They say that blogs are out of fashion these days, but I don’t believe it. Writers need to make friends with readers. We depend on each other. And that’s why I’m grateful to be here with you.

About the book:

Welcome to our year of living compactly. My dog, Mister, and I took to the road pulling our A-frame trailer, the Rollin’ Rancho. I’m a traveling horse trainer/clinician, who became a non-essential worker during the COVID-19 lockdown. Then, in 2022, we bounced back. We were nomads looking for horse training adventure and liver treats. Work paid for the trip; it was part clinic tour, part travelogue, part squirrel hunt. But mostly an unapologetic celebration of sunsets, horses, RV parks, roadkill, diverse landscapes, and undomesticated women.

It’s a book made of made of adjectives and nouns, blue skies and tornado watches, resorts and reservations, open roads to the horizon, and one-lane dead-ends. We emerge from the truck in a cloud of dog hair and sunflower shells, like disoriented and scruffy rock stars in a GPS haze, not entirely lost or found.

This book isn’t about training, although there are horses in it. It’s a follow-up of Stable Relation, my first book, but my life changed in ways I would never have guessed, so don’t expect the usual sequel. Undomesticated Women is a travel memoir, a peek behind the curtains of what my job is like. I wanted to see this beautiful country, do some time travel, and explore thoughts and memories now that I’ve become a gray mare.

Mister would tell you it’s his memoir about being tasked with the unreasonable job of guarding me against a wild range of dangers. Like eating dinner late.

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Meet the Author:

I’m an animal advocate, award-winning author, solo RV traveler, old-school feminist, dog companion, unabashed lover of sunsets, and professional horse trainer/clinician. I’m sixty-nine years old. I’ve done just about everything and done it well. No longer auditioning.

My books include:
Stable Relation, A memoir of one woman’s spirited journey home.
Relaxed & Forward: Relationship advice from your horse.
Barn Dance, Nickers, brays, bleats, howls, and quacks: Tales from the herd.
Horse Prayers, Poems from the prairie.
Going Steady, More relationship advice from your horse.
Horse. Woman. Poems from our lives.
Undomesticated Women: Anecdotal Evidence from the Road

I was born in Cavalier County, North Dakota, in 1954, the youngest daughter in a farm family. Now I live at Infinity Farm, on the flat, windy, treeless prairie of Colorado with a herd of reprobates, raconteurs, and our moral compass, Edgar Rice Burro. Previously, I was a self-employed goldsmith, showing one-of-a-kind artwork in galleries from coast to coast. My Denver studio and gallery was shared with generations of good dogs.

Early writing included a few screenplays, one of which was produced independently, and articles for several periodicals. Every Friday since 2010, I have posted an unconventional and popular blog about life on the farm and horse training. My unique perspective combines Calming Signals and Affirmative Training for a special method of understanding, training, and respecting animals.

connect with the author: website ~ facebook ~ facebook ~ instagram ~  goodreads 

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