Author Terri Farley was riding on a cattle drive across Nevada’s Black Rock Desert when a storm and a wild stallion changed her life.
Terri rode at the back of the herd of cattle because Ace, her cowpony, was a show-off and he loved to buck.
“I always stayed on,” Terri says, “but I hated putting on little rodeos to entertain the cowboys.”
One night a rainstorm struck the high desert of Nevada with such violence, riders had to dig moats around their tents or risk being flooded out of their sleeping bags.
By morning, rain had condensed into a creamy fog that erased the surrounding Calico Mountains, but the cattle drive went on.
“It was like riding in a cloud,” Terri remembers. “We could barely see. Even mama cows bawled to keep their calves close.”
Ace was jumpy. When his head swung toward a narrow slot canyon, Terri saw something move, too.
“A lone white mustang stared at me like a dream horse,” Terri says.
A cow broke from the herd and Ace darted after it. When Terri looked back, the mustang had vanished.
“But I carry a notebook in my saddlebags,” Terri says, “and that night I wrote about him.”
Before long, the PHANTOM STALLION books had galloped around the world to sell over 2 million copies.
In the 2023 series, the story of the Phantom, contemporary cowgirl Sam Forster and Ace, the mischievous cow pony, will give readers more than they did in the original series.
Simon and Schuster welcomed Terri’s plan to add a cowgirl dictionary, Sam’s journal and more to the books.
Readers are already collecting the new PHANTOM STALLION series. THE WILD ONE, MUSTANG MOON and DARK SUNSHINE are available now in bookstores or online at bit.ly/3BSNsmn. The rest of the series can be pre-ordered to arrive at readers’ homes as soon as they’re published.