HALLIE EPHRON: Today I'm delighted to welcome Connie Johnson Hambley back to Jungle Red. She's a horsewoman, well versed in thoroughbred racing and steeplechase, and in her books the horses are as real as the people. Her trilogy features world-class equestrian, Jessica Wyeth, entangled by her lover into a world of international crime. The final book, The Wake! was published in September.
Connie, catch us up on what you've been up to since you visited us last.
CONNIE JOHNSON HAMBLEY: My two sons have graduated from college and my
“baby” daughter has begun her college years. I’m still waiting for the empty
nest blues to hit, but my hubby and I like
a quiet house!
I think that’s because the rooms are always filled with my characters.
Our conversation during cocktail hour starts with, “Have you heard from the
kids today?” and ends with, “You wouldn’t believe what happened to Jessica
Wyeth!”
I did a lot of soul searching while
padding around my empty house thinking of the threads I needed to knit together
for a satisfying, gripping, and emotionally true conclusion to the final novel in The Jessica Trilogy. My characters are real to me. I talk out
loud to them, pantomime their movements or reactions, rejoice and cry with
them.
The trilogy follows historical milestones involving riots in Belfast, called the Troubles, but American history shaped the story as well. My character-driven thrillers feature Jessica, a world-class equestrian The characters, born with The Charity and who grew in The Troubles, have their life woes resolved in The Wake.
I’ve written them so each book can stand on
their own merits as a novel that encapsulates a moment of history involving
American involvement in Northern Ireland’s struggle for unification and peace.
Jessica received the Wyeth family fortune
from a couple who had raised her since birth, but died without formally adopting
her. As a lawyer, this situation nagged at me because it raised questions of family
loyalties, citizenship, and inheritance. As an author, I wondered who would be
the most motivated to avenge a wrongful inheritance?
Ha! Enter “Uncle” William
Wyeth, a bankrupt Boston Brahmin adept at Machiavellian plotting. Jessica’s
biological family secrets have international political consequences too, and I
worried about the men in her life. Were they good people at their core? Could
they be corrupted? I fretted that her lover could exploit her secrets for his financial
gain.
I worried about who
my characters loved as much as how
they were loved. I put all of these threads to good use and made some hard,
tough-love decisions to answer the question of whether terrorists are born evil
or if circumstance could rot their hearts.
To me, Jessica is a rose. Beautiful, but
not without thorns. Some of my character-based decisions were complicated by
historical events. Folks who know their Irish history may recall that English
law forbade direct references to an independent Ireland, so protests against
English rule referred to Ireland in code as the “Black Rose.”
When The Wake begins, Jessica has returned to the States after a
harrowing time in the Irelands. Her arrival places her in the South three weeks
prior to the Atlanta-based Summer Olympic Games. Jungle Red readers may recall
the horrific bombing that happened in Centennial Park during the Games. Weave into
this chaos a desperate uncle and a selfish lover along with the threads of
international terrorism, and hey, I’m a thriller author, so my mind goes there.
My first two books bring the reader to
thoroughbred racing and steeplechase, but the third bookdemanded a different
edge. I use The Wake as a platform to
bring attention to an amazing healing tool--therapeutic riding, an equestrian discipline for which I have
a tremendous passion.
I volunteer as a horse handler at Windrush Farm located near my home in
Massachusetts. Windrush provides hippotherapy, a horse-based physical and
emotional therapy conducted by licensed therapists. I work with clientele with
a variety of challenges. Some challenges existed from birth – like Cerebral
Palsy or Down Syndrome – and others are the result of a catastrophic injury or
event–like stroke, PTSD, or accident.
For physical therapy, riding a horse has
a rhythm and engages muscles similar to our natural walking stride. Deep core
muscles required for balance may not be triggered by traditional therapies, but
riding can speed recovery for certain individuals. Emotional therapies leverage
horses’ primal instincts. They are herd and prey animals, meaning they have a
keen sense of the emotional state of those around them–horses and humans alike–and
react to emotions often before we are aware of feeling them.
I’ve been an equestrian my whole life,
and continue to be amazed at the power of healing horses provide to people who
are not able-bodied or who carry emotional scars.
CONNIE
JOHNSON HAMBLEY grew up on a dairy farm in New York and had plenty of space
to ride one of her six horses. All would have been idyllic if an arsonist
hadn’t torched her family’s barn. Bucolic bubble burst, she began to
steadfastly plot her revenge against all bad guys, real and imagined. After
receiving her law degree, she moved to Boston and wrote for Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Nature, and other wonky outlets as she
honed her skills of reaching readers at a deep emotional level. Connie embraces
the changes in the publishing world by being both traditionally and
independently published. Her high-concept thrillers feature remarkable women
entangled in modern-day crimes and walk the reader on the razor’s edge between
good and evil. Connie delights in creating worlds where the good guys
win–eventually. Her short story, Giving
Voice, won acceptance in New
England’s Best Crime Stories: Windward, published by Level Best Books and
will be joined by Black Ice in the
2017 Level Best release of Snowbound.
The third book in The Jessica Trilogy,
The Wake, joins The Charity and The Troubles, which was the 2016 Best
Fiction winner at the EQUUS Film Festival in New York City. She keeps horses in her life by volunteering as a horse handler
at a therapeutic riding center. Connie is a board member and Featured Speaker
of the New England chapter of Sisters
in Crime.
