Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024

Natalie Keller Reinert: Equestrian Novelist’s ‘Ocala-verse’ Is Headed To Amazon Prime

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Natalie Keller Reinert was 30 and living in Brooklyn when she finished writing her first novel. 

Well, the first novel “I planned to finish,” she clarifies for the record. 

New York City was hardly the most friendly place to be as a grown-up horse girl. But Reinert managed. She worked as an exercise rider at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens. Before that, she still worked in the Thoroughbred industry, but in race horse breeding. 

“I was working on this book exploring my very complicated, personal relationship with horses, especially Thoroughbreds, and the way they demand everything from you, and if I was comfortable with that,” Reinert explained. “This book was so intensely personal, and I wondered if it would resonate with how other horsewomen might be feeling.” 

Spoiler alert: It did. 

Reinert self-published that first title, “The Head And Not The Heart” in July 2011, during the budding age of digital self-publishers with the rise of the Amazon Kindle. This novella would launch Reinert’s career as an author with a knack for equestrian fiction. And she still remembers those days of relying on friends, her husband and amateur editors to get those early self-published works online and ready to download. 

Natalie Keller Reinert started her career as an author by self-publishing books on Amazon. This year, one of her self-published equestrian book series was picked by Flatiron Books, a New York-based publisher, and she’s an executive producer on a television series slated for Amazon Prime based on her books. Photo Courtesy Of Natalie Keller Reinert

“It sort of snowballed from there,” Reinert said. “People connected with the characters and wanted to read about more realistic equestrian situations. Every new book I wrote responded to what people wanted more of from the book I had previously released.” 

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Fast forward 13 years, and Reinert has published dozens of books. They include fictional series that feature riders with big three-day eventing goals, ambitious young women on the hunter/jumper circuit, trainers taking ex-race horses to the Thoroughbred Makeover and more. Some of her fans call her various titles part of the larger, Florida-set “Ocala-verse,” in which beloved characters from one series make appearances in others. 

But Reinert isn’t just self-publishing any longer. Earlier this summer, Flatiron Books acquired the world rights to two of her most popular series, the Eventing and Briar Hill Farm books, and inked a deal with her for a new novel to publish next year, which will launch a brand new equestrian-themed book series in a reported seven-figure agreement. Flatiron is a division of New York-based Macmillan Publishers, which has published numerous New York Times bestsellers, including non-fiction and fictional work from authors including Oprah Winfrey, Joe Biden and Melinda Gates, to name a few. 

And Reinert’s success in 2024 doesn’t stop there. In October, Amazon Prime (through Amazon MGM Studios) announced it had preempted the TV rights for both the Eventing and Briar Hill Farm series and had begun development with Reinert as an executive producer. 

“Against the riveting high stakes backdrop of equestrian competition and demanding athleticism, Reinert explores the passions which drive us, the love affairs which  fuel us and the partnerships—both animal and human—which help us thrive and find ourselves,” Amazon said in a statement at the time of the deal’s announcement

It’s unclear how soon Reinert’s characters will make their debut on Amazon Prime.

As part of her arrangement with Flatiron, Reinert re-released the Eventing series this year, with new material and additional editing, adding more to the narrative tales she’d written years before. The freshly printed paperback books even came with new cover art. 

“Ambition” is the first book in Natalie Keller Reinert’s Eventing series, which was re-released by the publishing house Flatiron earlier this year. Photo Courtesy Of Gold Horse Media.

“I was able to go back over these books I had written and apply what I had learned as a more seasoned storyteller,” she said. “We deepened relationships and fleshed out storylines. We took these books to the next level. It’s sort of been like issuing a director’s cut; we explored the same plot in fuller detail.”

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The eight-part Eventing series begins with the book “Ambition,” which follows Jules Thornton, an aspiring eventing trainer, the horses “she loves more than anything,” and her relationship with fellow eventer, Peter Morrison. “She’s an anti-heroine when the story begins, but watching Jules turn it around and become a respected horsewoman is a fascinating journey,” reads Reinert’s synopsis of the book.

While the deal with Flatiron has helped Reinert reach a larger audience, she said it hasn’t take away from the realistic scenes and detail her readers have come to expect from her works. She writes books for horse girls, as one who has lived the experience herself. 

“The best part is I have a team. I used to handle every aspect of these books myself. It was all on me,” she said. “Now I have sessions with all these people to make sure we have the right photography, that the ads are accurate. It’s important to keep the authenticity of the equestrian experience—that’s always been my brand.” 

That “brand” has evolved since those early days in Brooklyn, too. Now Reinert is based out of her own farm, with her own horses, just outside of Ocala.

Reinert knows well the places in which her novels are set. She lives on a farm near Ocala, Fla. Photo Courtesy Of Gold Horse Media.

The timing of Reinert’s success feels just right. Being a “horse girl” in the year 2024 seems to come with some newly minted street cred, thanks in part to riding celebrities like Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner, and a seemingly renewed interest in equestrian and cowboy culture from fashion magazines and even Queen B herself, Beyoncé. 

“People are discovering that they can be involved with horses without having a farm. Or that having a farm is awesome, actually, and you don’t have to live in an apartment to commute to work anymore. You can live the life you always dreamed of living,” Reinert said. “You can find a horse almost anywhere if you really want to. I think it’s trending because influencers and celebrities are sharing these moments and offering windows into different aspects of their lives.” 

And it’s that thread—the pieces that make up being “a horse girl”—which Reinert credits for her accomplishments this year. 

“We’re really just a huge minority,” she said. “If you have a group of five women, three of them probably rode horses when they were kids. The Amazon Prime deal was largely because someone at Amazon was a grown-up horse girl. It all goes hand-in-hand.”

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