Coming in 2011...

Get an 82-head peek at what's to come! (These are some of our own Froelichs that will be in the book...these particular photos of them won't be used, but we didn't want 'em to go to waste! ;^) )

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Progress Report #6 (11/18/2010)

Talk about a tremen-dous time--my five-day visit with Julie at her paradise of a place in the Wisconsin north woods was wonderful! 

I really enjoyed hanging out with Julie and her Cairn companion Kaile, nightly suppers together with her mother next door (which is a good walk away!), and meeting Julie's horses Rhiannon, Pony, Ostara, Gabby, and Roxy. The woods all around were beautiful, the air was so fresh, and Julie even made green bean casserole from scratch for me, yom!

No trip there could ever be long enough, but even at five days there was nearly no time for sleep, what with several thousand photos and drifts of information to sift through for the book...most of it stashed away in the secret space revealed in the photo above, behind solid but swiveling bookcases!  

On another floor of the house, Julie's showstring of legends--possibly the largest gathering of Congress champions on the planet--was enjoying semi-retirement (earlier this year Julie and the gang competed for the first time in more than a decade, entering a local live show). 

Although their photo images have long been engraved on my

brain, it was the first time I'd seen any of them in person...and I

couldn't help going into groupie mode, grabbing the chance to shoot my very own photos of the stars!

On that week-long trip to the U.S.--first to Julie's house, and then down to the Ohio storage unit holding me and Corky's collections--I shot 1,970 digital photos of model horses. (Upping the number was the fact that I photoed every horse with two different cameras...just in case a memory card went bad, as happened last year.)

Then there were the paper ones. From her hobby hideaway

behind the bookcases came 853 (a hefty stack, but really just a

tiny percentage!) of Julie's halter and performance photos, reference photos of her work, and snapshots from live shows, which she's kindly loaned us to scan for the book.

In trying to shorten the stack, I sorted the halter photos into groups by horse color to try to make it easier to spot any duplicates. In the photo below, it doesn't look so hard when viewed from above. But as you can see in the shot below that, the actual height of some of those stacks (especially the stack of bays on the far left, and the even taller group of greys right behind it) was a little daunting! 

Which brings us to the logistics of actually getting all these horses into the book! Corky and I are rethinking the design now to try to fit them all in without having to go to a second volume. But, wow--we were hoping there would be a lot, but this is exponentially more than we'd imagined! (It's a nice problem to have, though!)

I still need to interview four hobbyists, after I finish up a different project this month. We're continuing to plan for publication in 2011. Thanks very much for your patience, and please stay tuned for more updates!

Progress Report #5 (9/12/2010)

Plans (and the plane ticket!) are in place now to visit Julie the last week of September! I'll be photographing her historic herd and other material for the book. After that, it's down to Ohio to reshoot the 40 horses whose images were lost on the defective SD card. 

After I get back to Japan the first week of October, I hope to arrange phone interviews with four other hobbyists...and then all the makings for this epic will be complete!

Remember, if you haven't yet submitted photos of your own Froelich creation or any you happen to have photos of, the photo submission deadline is September 30! Here are the submission guidelines.

Another progress report will be coming soon!

Progress Report #4 (7/03/2010)

The second of the two recorded phone interviews with Julie was today--and it was very much like having a time machine to revisit the hobby in the 1970s, '80s, and on into the '90s!

Next will be phone interviews with four other hobbyists. After that, in late September or early October, I'll make the trip from Japan to Wisconsin to visit Julie, get her comments on individual horses, and shoot photos galore. (Hope to also shoehorn in a quick trip to Ohio, to reshoot the 40 or so of me and Corky's horses whose photos were devoured by a defective SD card.)

Another progress report will be coming soon!

Progress Report #3 (7/01/2010)

Today turned out to be a hectic one for Julie--the hazards of setting up interview times a few weeks in advance!--so we've postponed today's planned interview until July 3. In the meantime, I'll start pricing autumn flights to Minneapolis, to visit Julie in September or October and shoot photos like crazy!

Progress Report #2 (6/09/2010)

Today's mail brought a treasure from Julie: photos of 83 more horses for the book, as well as some fun snapshots from early-'90s live shows...and this is the tip of the iceberg, she said!

Remember, if you haven't yet submitted photos of your own Froelich creation or any you happen to have photos of, the photo submission deadline has been extended to September 30! Here are the submission guidelines.

Another progress report will be coming soon!

Progress Report #1 (6/06/2010)

Was finally able to get my techie ducks in a row--Skype on the computer (installing was no problem; finding a way to fuel it with credit here in Japan was the tricky part), and an MD recorder at the speaker--so the phone interviews are at last underway!

The first was today, with Julie. She's difficult to catch at home, so when we'd last spoken, about a month ago, we set a specific date and time--5pm on June 5 for Julie, which is 7am on June 6 for me--to do this phone interview. This would give time for a box of photos from Julie to get here first. Well, Real Life happens, and the interview day beat the photos here...but that's okay; they're on their way, and it's great to have something to look forward to in the mail this week!

The interview was a six-hour session, with laughs galore and even more history learned than we'd ever talked about before! This was the first of two recorded interviews planned with Julie; we've discussed the book and its makings for almost exactly a year now, but this was the first formal for-print interview (and I'm so tickled that the quotes this go-round are every bit as fun as our informal discussions over the years!). After I transcribe this one, we'll cover the rest in the second recorded session July 1. In the meantime, there are four other folks I'll be interviewing by phone (don't worry, it won't take six hours! LOL).

Earlier, Corky and I had been hoping to be able to debut the book at BreyerFest 2010--but to do that, we'd need to go to press, like, now. We've resigned ourselves to the fact that it's not going to happen. We'd both love to go to BreyerFest, which also isn't possible this year (I was the only one able to get the time off work, so it would just be me), and Julie can't go this year, either.

That makes it very tempting to change the target for the book's release to BreyerFest 2011. I think there's a chance it could be ready by this Christmas, though, if problems we've run into with photos can be solved by this fall. Julie is searching for the bulk of her photo stash, which has been packed away for more than a decade--but she injured an ankle badly and is currently getting around with two canes. And photos of about 40 of me and Corky's own Froelich horses were lost when the SD card they were on went defective, so we're debating whether to go without (which would be depressing) or for me to make a trip back to the U.S., fish the horses out of storage and reshoot (which would be expensive, to put it mildly)...still chewing that one over.

So for now, we're going to say "RM for Riddermark" will be coming in 2011...and if it's able to happen a little earlier, that'll be a nice surprise.

If you haven't yet submitted photos of your own Froelich creation or any you happen to have photos of, here's your chance to have them appear in this epic book! We've reopened photo submissions until September 30, and here are the submission guidelines. (And if the photo situation on this end improves by then, this holiday season will be a special one for Froelich fans and hobby history buffs! :^) )

Thanks so much for your patience! I'll post another progress report soon.