Guys! Guess what?!

We’ve raised . . . $400 for OLD FRIENDS so far! (teamcanterwoodproject.blogspot.com)

If you’re donating after Christmas, I’ll have a PO Box set up in my town so that the donations will come directly to me. Stay tuned for the address. 🙂

Much love to you all! xoxo

Sooooo cute!! I love this clutch! ❤ Perfect Christmas present for equine fans!

So . . . I was originally supposed to be away for just one night on a Secret Project in Lexington, KY. I decided, though, to make it an entire weekend full of ROYALS! I’m hoping to get the first draft D-O-N-E and then off to an editor.

Right now, I’m waiting for my 11am departure from Cincinnati on a Megabus. I’ve never taken this bus line before. It’s roomy, warm, and has free Wi-Fi. BUT almost all of the plugs (including those around me) are dead. So thankfully I brought 3 backups for my phone. 😀 I’m a little weird about traveling–I HAVE to have my phone fully charged and have extra means to charge it. I have this weird phobia about getting lost so that phone has to be charged. Got it plugged into my MacBook right now.

I’ll be live-Tweeting during my Secret Project! The reveal will be Saturday morning. It probs won’t be too exciting to you guys, lol, but hopefully will, um, to….others. Hahaha.

I suck at secret keeping! I just want to tell all of my Harts everything! 🙂

So, what are you up to this weekend?

xoxo

Jess

Wh

And if you want to hire the artist . . .

  <—YAY!!

It’s BEYOND exciting to see my name on the line up for EQUINE AFFAIRE’S YOUTH PAVILION. I’m still in shock that the amazing Coagi Long invited me. I REALLY thought she had meant to email someone else when I got the note.

Back in 2007, when TAKE THE REINS sold, I learned about EA and knew that I wanted to go. But I lived in Florida at the time and money was tight. Plus, there was NO WAY that I would be able to afford a booth there.

So, every year I followed the event on Twitter, IG, Facebook–you get the idea. 😉 I was sooo jealous of everyone who had attending or was planning to go. I distinctly remember sitting on the floor by my bed and telling myself that when I “made” it, I would go to EA.

Here’s a snipped of Coagi’s email:

“We will be celebrating our 50th event this fall in Massachusetts and would like to pay tribute to the authors of children’s horse stories –both past and present– as they have indefinitely influenced the lives of many horse people. As an accomplished author of the “Canterwood Crest” series, we’d like to invite you to join us to present your books in a session at Equine Affaire.”

Now, I’m not only able to attend this event, but I get to be part of the super cool Youth Pavilion. I’m working on my talk now although I usually speak on the fly.

I’m also working on perhaps the MOST important thing: my outfit! 😀

So, if you’re in West Springfield, MA on Sunday, November 16th, come see me at 11am. I’ll be talking and signing CANTERWOOD books, CHARM and ARISTOCRAT Breyer models, and UNICORN MAGIC books.

I’m beyond thrilled to be able to meet one of my Elite Team members–Miss Juliet! She and I are working on a TOP SECRET HORSE PROJECT together. 🙂 You guys are gonna L-O-V-E it, trust me! I’m going from EA to Juliet’s home and stable so we can work on TSHP. But . . . there’s one tiny little thing about going to Juliet’s that makes me want to jump up and down . . . we are going on a trail ride!!! She’s going to pick the quietest mount for me and even though we’ll likely only walk, I’m grinning now at the thought of being on a horse again. I haven’t ridden since last Christmas with Lexi.

Aside note about the riding: I’ve been reading a TON online about people who had have spinal fusions and still ride. Now, mine gets a little more complicated because 12 inches of my back is fused–not just a vertebrae or two. Plus, my right elbow is shot. I had to neck rein in CA because even tugging gently on the reins hurt like crazy. I don’t want to push it and potentially end up in a wheel chair and/or tear up my arm even more, BUT I am going to see a spinal doctor. I’ll get an MRI and figure out if pleasure riding is something that I can do more often than once or twice a year. We’ll see! END of side note, sorry! 😉

I’m truly honored to be speaking at this event. I mean, THE Bonne Bryant spoke there not long ago. I hope that I catch a little of her magic and can write hundreds of horse books.  It’s also surreal that Pat Parelli and David O’Conner will be there. Both have Sunday clinics so I’m definitely getting to the arena when the doors open at 9:30 to see David’s seminar.

There were over 100,000 participants at EA last year. I hope a fraction of all of those people are Team Canterwood members! If you’re coming, comment below or Tweet me!

xoxo

This is NOT the topic of my post, but I had to share it. It kinda made my ego puff up and I saw glitter floating in the air. 🙂

This is on my agent’s blog. I want to steal “pony-crazed glitter princess” and put it in my bio.

Jessica Burkhart is the pony-crazed glitter princess responsible for the awesome-tastic tween series CANTERWOOD CREST, the chapter book series UNICORN MAGIC, and she’s got lots more super-cool stuff coming soon!

~*~*~

Okay, so the REAL post . . . every year about this time I think about where I was. I was living in Dieterich, Illinois, which was close to Effingham and I had SUPER bad scoliosis. I was scheduled to have FREE surgery at Shriners Hospital for Children in St. Louis in mid-November. I had the worst case of scoliosis the hospital had ever seen. They were nervous about my operation and paralysis was a real risk.

Here’s my thirteen year old spine:

Not good, right? It was pressing on my heart and lungs and getting worse every few months. Without the surgery, I would die.

I maintained the same thought: I WOULD rather keep riding horses until I couldn’t and then die.

I thought my life was over at thirteen years old. My dreams of equestrian success were going to evaporate the moment I checked into the hospital.

The barn was my life. I rode my Tennessee Walker/Saddlebred, Sallie. She was a gorgeous strawberry roan who was a little wild and a lot of fun. I bred Sallie to a black Arabian and months later was gifted a stunning albino filly–Misty.

I was there for the birth and I had my hands on Misty moments after she was born as I did the imprint training that I’d studied while waiting for her to arrive.

With Sallie resting, I hacked horses for Pam, the barn owner. The oldest horse was an appaloosa named AJ. He was a breeze to ride. Then I’d ride Kabo–a smaller appaloosa with gorgeous black and white markings. Kabo was high strung and full of energy–two of my favorite qualities in a horse. I loved a challenge. My favorite horse to ride was a bay Arabian gelding who was over 17 hands high. His name was Blue because of mysterious blue dot on his white blaze. He was the most gentle horse that I’ve ever met.

If I wasn’t hacking, I was training Misty, helping gentle an adopted mustang, trying to make friends with an angry copper chestnut stallion, and switching back and forth between English and Western to grow as a rider.

Once Misty was a yearling, I bred Sallie again to the black Arabian–Max. This time, she had a stunning chestnut filly that I named Princess Spice. (I was/am a huge Spice Girls fan! :))

It was in the middle of weaning Princess that I had to swap breeches for a hospital gown.

After 9 hours in surgery, I woke up three inches taller, missing a rib and full of two 12-inch rods and a bunch of screws.

It looked like this:

This x-ray is one year after my surgery. I spent two weeks in the hospital and was released on Thanksgiving Day of November 2000. I escaped with only a handful of numb spots on my right side. Being able to breathe was amazing! One of my lungs, actually, was so used to being squished by my spine that it collapsed in the hospital. Take a bendy straw, bend it tight and try to breathe through it. That’s what it felt like. Doctors couldn’t reinflate my lung, so I travelled by ambulance to a nearby hospital. Soon, I was all right again.

Physically, I was healing. Mentally, I was broken. I sold Misty, Sallie, and Princess and my family moved away from the stable that had been in my back yard. It took six years before I dreamed up Canterwood Crest and knew that I had to tell Sasha’s story.

One door in my equestrian life closed, but a different one opened.

Years later . . .

On October 17, 2012, I posted this on my blog:

“There have been a lot of positive (and some negative) comments in the media recently about Lady Gaga’s Body Revolution. In short, the movement is about loving and accepting your body exactly the way it is. Many people are posting their own shots on LittleMonsters.com. I wasn’t “born this way,” but I’m proud of how I now look.”

I posted this photo along with the above:

The cliche, but true message of this post? Something may end in your life, but it doesn’t mean that thing is over. Fight for what you want. Find a way to make it work. I know you can do it.

xoxo

So this is a post that I’ve written and rewritten about a thousand times. I’ve read it aloud, slept on it, decided it was a bad idea, thought it was a good idea and finally–I am going to click that blue publish button. I feel like I’m kind of lying to people most important to me–my readers–by not posting this.

Without going into too much detail that’ll bore you to tears, I want to step up and be honest: I’ve been vocal before about the fact that I have depression. For the past year, it has been pretty damn bad. It has always been there for years, but an event last fall tipped the scales into the direction from manageable depression to a downward spiral that was and is the worst I’ve experienced.

I lost all interest in things that I enjoyed. I stopped leaving my apartment. I backed away from friends. I didn’t get out of bed for days. I stopped caring about everything. That led to a suicide attempt. It was a very selfish thing to do. But I saw no light at the end of the tunnel.

Now, I see a light. Sometimes it’s no brighter than a keychain flashlight–but I still see it. I’m taking one day at a time and have had to make lots of changes in the way I live and work.

I’m coming forward now about this because a lot of you know me better than I thought. You’re more than readers. You’re my extended family and many of you sensed something was off. I want to be honest with you all–I owe you that. You’re the reason that I’m able to live my dream job. Tonight, getting the ARCs for WILD HEARTS gave me the sparkly, happy feeling that I haven’t felt in a while. It reminded me why I love writing and publishing. I’ve got a story–WILD HEARTS–that I absolutely can’t wait to share with you!

Like I said, I’m taking things one day at a time now. I hope the keychain light keeps getting brighter.

xoxo