The first idea I had on Pattern Five – One in a Million, came to me while I was in Kreuth, Germany in 2011. Kreuth is the top arena in Europe for all reining enthusiasts. I actually believe this is the best venue and location in the world albeit I know that there a many who would disagree. However, as I was sitting watching one of the NRHA slates my thoughts were on my next novel. I had been humming and hawing on a story-line for an old time western novel for some months when all of a sudden the thought came to me. Why not a reining novel? It would be something new and as far as my knowledge was at the moment, I was pretty sure that there wasn’t another fictional adventure novel on the market where the story-line was set in the Reining sport.  The more I thought about it the more excited I became.

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While I was jotting down the reining scores I made some notes on my score card.  Looking back it amazes me that I deteriorated so much away from the original story -line. I had planned to set the complete story in Wyoming but as the story unfolded I realized that it wasn’t going where I wanted it to go. I discussed this with my number one critic. My wife Mieke. Without any hesitation she suggested that I set the story-line to Belgium. After all, we had lived there for several years in the heyday of our involvement with the reining sport. Belgium would be different and I could use a lot of my local knowledge to create the characters and the locations. Over the following weeks I adapted the story to Belgium and in a very short space of time I knew that this was what I was missing and there weren’t enough hours in the day to get my story on paper. Basically I changed most of the characters and the plot to suit the location of Pattern Five.

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I believe this was the best way to go and I am pleased with the outcome.



A Western Novel from Patrick Norris





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