Golddust and Saddlebags

Paperback, as new condition.

From the ODT:

"Otago Daily Times agri-business editor Sally Rae and illustrations editor Stephen Jaquiery teamed up to add a book to the already groaning New Zealand bookseller's shelves. This is their story of how that happened.

One a writer, the other a photographer, and between us we have been on more than half of the 20 cavalcades, so co-producing a book on the Otago Goldfields Heritage Trust's horse and cart pilgrimages seemed to make sense.

We had an idea, a vision, a collection of many thousands of photographs and loads of potential subjects for compelling, highly entertaining stories. But before getting too serious, we had to find a publisher.

The first email approach was to a well-known national publishing house and received a firm, "Not our style". At the next attempt, Graham Gurr, from Halcyon Publishing, replied the same day he was contacted with a heartening "Yes, is the answer", followed by an outline of how he would like to see the contents, and concluding with, "How's that for a response?".

That was November 29, 2011. the deadline was the end of March 2012. This tight schedule was to ensure the book would be in the shops by November this year, making the most of the Christmas market.

I was excited and daunted by the project, but the size of the job ahead wasn't apparent until I rang Graham just before Christmas to find out basically how to write a book.

His response was along the lines "I'm in a bank in downtown Auckland in festive rush-hour. That's not the sort of question I can answer right now. I'll call you back later", and didn't settle my nerves.

While waiting for his call, Stephen suggested it would not be a good idea to tell him that I already had concerns about meeting the deadline.

Producing a book is no easy process. It is not at all like the romantic image of an inspired writer pouring delightful prose, written from the soul, on to pages. Then, handing the loose-leaf manuscript to an eager publisher before an adoring audience snaffles the resulting work from the shelves.

Here's a tip for wannabe authors: Never do a word count at 5am, only to discover that you have only reached 12,000 words two weeks before deadline and the target is 25,000 words.

That may work for an Agatha Christie or a J.K. Rowling but for the vast majority of authors, the initial explosion of enthusiasm quickly becomes months, or years, of painstaking toil with little guarantee of success.

Google estimates that since the invention of printing, some 130,000,000 unique titles have been published and other research suggests as few as 1% of completed manuscripts ever make it into print.

There are many reasons for writing a book. Academics do so for small target audiences within their disciplines, a small percentage are written "for the love of it", but the majority, such as cookbooks, self-help titles and novels, are aimed at the mass market.

Gold Dust and Saddle Bags - Tales from the Cavalcade (a title eventually settled upon, after much debate, on the back of a paper serviette in a Thai restaurant in Dunedin) came about as a result of a shared love of Otago's glorious high country, which, every year, since 1991, has become the destination for a diverse group of cavalcaders.

Stephen says a photograph is more than just "the push of the shutter".

"First open the locked gate without a key; urgently get the vehicle unstuck from a bog, follow the slippery, scary, steep, shingle-slide goat track to the top of the mountain. Finally, with streaming eyes, you peer into the gale-force wind for an hour searching desperately for any sign of a horse among this barren, unforgiving but beautifully spectacular landscape."

Doubts nag as you question arrangements made by telephone 10 days earlier. Unencumbered by track or road, the pack trail, which travels unsupported, could change its travel plans for any reason, leaving us windswept, frustrated and empty-handed on the top of Mt Kyeburn with a precious day of cavalcade photography wasted.

Finally, far in the distance, what appears at first to be rocks seem to be moving.

"Horses. HORSES, I see them!"

After an excruciating wait, suddenly it is action stations. Which route will they take? Where should I stand? What background do I want? Will the sun be shining brightly or dulled by the patchy clouds? Nervous tension as the trail approaches.

Suddenly, they are here. The riders walking, wrapped against the conditions like polar explorers, lead their mounts and their packhorses, which carry large boxes of supplies. There is neither a wave nor a smile as they approach. Like me, they are chilled to the bone.

"Click, click, click. I shoot a short series of images as they pass. One image captur