Happy Coincidences

The weather’s been yucky, and I have not been feeling all that good myself the past few days (sinus headaches.) To cheer myself up, I finally got my Khalid out of my car:

I am happy to report that he appears to be nearly flawless, after spending nearly a month in my car. (I know, Bad Andrea.) And to prove to you that Dun Sabino really was a thing of mine, here’s that Stablemates Seabiscuit custom I had done by Judy Renee Pope a bajillion years ago (the late 1980s):

We all like to think that something we’ve written or said online – or communicated with Breyer/Reeves in some way – directly affects or influences what eventually gets released.

To a degree, that’s true, especially when there’s a groundswell of hobby interest in a breed, celebrity, or discipline: the more voices you have, the louder the chorus gets. Maybe it was your thumbs up or comment that finally pushed the idea into the “let’s do this” column.

And of course, some of us are lucky enough to directly influence or participate in the creative process.

But I know for a fact that Khalid was not something I had any hand in. Other than the passing interest I expressed in a similar piece done for the BreyerFest Auction back in 2016 or my happiness at acquiring the ASPCA Stablemates Hermes, they likely had no idea that this particular color and marking combo was something that I was really into.

They also wouldn’t have known that the name they chose for this model has some personal significance for me. One of my long-term fiction writing projects is a loosely connected trilogy (actually, a trilogy of trilogies) of books that includes a character named Judge Khalid.

All I’ll say is that he’s basically my take on the “sexy vampire boyfriend” trope. I am very fond of him as a character and it is entirely within the realm of possibility that if this model had not been named Khalid, that I would have named him that, anyway. 

But this is all – well, and truly – a happy coincidence.