EH Ward on staying the course to write his first racing thriller

The urge to write is a strange thing, one that I’ve always had it in me. However, turning the urge into printed words has been a meandering journey. At the age of nine, when I finished reading the entire series of adventure books by Willard Price, I felt compelled to attempt my own imitation. I think I managed 40 pages before conceding defeat. I was too young to fully understand the commitment involved in writing fiction. Then, life moved on. Between schoolwork, caring for my pony and the distractions of teenage years and, later, full-time work in young adulthood, the only things I managed to write were detailed diaries of my travels and experiences.

During this time, I read voraciously, including all of Michael Crichton’s work and most of Dick Francis’ thrillers and thought, I want to do that, even if I never actually did anything more than think about potential plotlines and characters and begin to fill notebooks with ideas. Then, 10 years ago, I saw an equestrian short-story competition advertised, and the urge to write burst out of me again. I wrote more stories – not just on horses or racing – and submitted them to any competition that also offered a critique service.

At this stage, I began to realise that I really wanted to write novels and so I took the plunge and started my debut, A Sure Thing, a horseracing / Mafia thriller.

I find that writing what you know is a springboard or a lubricant. It gets you into it and permits you to give structure and colour to what pours out of you and, eventually, allows you to write what you don’t know with the same degree of clarity. Writing, like assessing horses at sales during my day job as a bloodstock manager, is a learning experience. As with any new venture, you make mistakes when you begin, but the more you do it, the better at it you become.

I showed 150 pages of my first draft to a friend who used to work in publishing. She was most encouraging and constructive with her critique. However, I found it nearly impossible to find friends who could read my work and give me real criticism: “Yeah, I liked it,” is well-meaning, but not helpful to an aspiring writer! So, my next decision was to find a literary agent to help get my work noticed and to expand my knowledge of the dos and don’ts of writing thrillers and entering the publishing business.

I figured, what chance do I have of submitting properly and to the right people if I am a lone unknown? Agented advice, contacts and submissions are certainly helpful and a great way to get your foot in the door. And as any writer will tell you, writing is hard enough work without some kind of professional support.

A chance conversation and phone call put me in touch with a literary agent. After that, one thing led to another and I was lucky enough to get noticed by independent, Irish-based Tirgearr Publishing, who published A Sure Thing in April and released my follow-up, The Mandarin Stakes, last week. So far, so good!

I chose to write horseracing plotlines which also link to the wider world – in my opinion, stories solely about dodgy bookies and crooked jockeys/trainers have been done to death – as it was a way to blend a world I knew with a world I had to research and imagine from scratch. A Sure Thing linked racing to the Mafia and the madness of the Celtic Tiger years in Ireland. The Mandarin Stakes links racing to British and Chinese politics and the commercialisation of a sport. I now have two works in progress. One is about genetics, human and equine, while the other centres on powerful racehorse owners, terrorism and the modern scramble for energy. Plenty of exciting work ahead!

I now feel confident enough to be able to tell people (still somewhat sheepishly) that I’m a writer. Their reaction is often bizarre: people tend to think that writing is easy, a cushy number. It’s a bit like the reaction my wife gets when she tells people that we have a vineyard. People also tend to think wine-making is a romantic pastime, but the reality is hard agricultural graft. Likewise, the only cushy part of writing is getting to express yourself on your own terms, the rest is drudgery – but happy drudgery – and when it works out, it’s very satisfying.

The feeling of seeing your book in print washes away the long hours spent hunched over a laptop. It’s a bit like watching your horse win a race. When that happens, thoughts of cleaning out dirty stables or heart-breaking hours spent treating injuries through long convalescences are far from the mind.

When the work is done and it looks good, and most importantly, when people like reading it, then it is all worthwhile. At that stage it is usually time to get straight into the next project. As long as my head keeps filling with stories and people enjoy reading them, I’ll keep writing.