Okay…not actual wild horses, but last Saturday (November 11), the Writers Forum hosted a talk from award winning author and wild horse advocate Terri Farley.

Terri presented her workshop on Nonfiction Writing for Fiction Writers. Her premise is that fiction writers collect an enormous amount of research while working on their projects, so why not  maximize the use of all of that solid research? Terri demonstrated research and documentation strategies for strengthening our nonfiction writing, and shared with us pitfalls and hazards to avoid.

About forty people attended the workshop.

I was curious about which of Terri’s passions came first: writing or horses? She doesn’t have a simple answer for that. She was riding horses before she started putting pen to paper, but on her earliest Southern California rides, she was already crafting stories in her head while on horseback. Unfortunately, horses fell by the wayside for a time. Writing and teaching took prominence for a while, but her love of horses was rekindled after college. They both merged in her first best selling series on The Phantom Stallion, set on the ranges of northern Nevada. The Phantom Stallion series has twenty-four volumes. Her passion for both continues today in her latest book, a nonfiction book titled Wild at Heart.

Terri is being honored tonight, November 16, along with two other inductees into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame in Reno, Nevada.

Congratulations, Terri!