I don't how to ride a horse.

Er, that is, the more advanced mechanics of the activity. I know the basics. And done them. I don't know if you can really call that riding though. That's more like, I'm sitting on the horse and the horse is following it's friend on a track it's been on a thousand, thousand times before.

But how it feels to really ride, that I don't know.

Stunt rider.
That...will probably never be me.
But you have to admit, that is badass.

This lack of knowledge is making my current scene difficult. It's very difficult to write a fantasy novel without having people ride horses, unless you want to have people walk everywhere...and really, is that realistic? I know they did it in LOTR, partly, but you can travel so much faster on a horse. It won't make any sense if my group wanders around on foot.

Horses require care though. Feeding. Shelter. I don't know how to write about any of those things, I suppose I could just leave them out, but it will make it less believable.

I find it highly amusing that I can write about fighting with some small authenticity, but not horse back riding. I know how it feels to get hit and to hit someone, what it's like to be shoved into the wall, kneed in the ribs, and picked up and body slammed. Now, I don't know the extremes of a real fight, the extent of the pain, but I know the feel of the actions.

But I don't know about a basic method of transportation used by humans for thousands of years.

The solution is obvious yet unobtainable.

Take riding lessons. But riding lessons cost money. I haz no extra money at all, at all. And not time. But mostly it's the no money thing.

This photo is NOT a stunt rider, just a crazy Spaniard.
This photo was taken at a Las Luminarias festival.
I would call out Ramirez on this, but he's actually Egyptian so....

Well, I'll just have to muddle through and make the rest of the book so awesome that it the lame bits about riding get ignored and I'll make enough to take riding lessons.

No fire, thanks. I'll be perfectly happy to ride an impure horse.