Connie Johnson Hambley: Inspired by The Troubles & therapeutic riding

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.

Meeting Your Fences

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:   Did you see the 60 Minutes story on the Maryland Cup? And the crazy devoted talented brilliant riders who gallop four miles over fencers and water hazards and who knows what else at breakneck (oops) speeds on gorgeous horses? 

Yeah, the fabulous Sasscer Hill does stuff like that, and I cannot wait to talk to her about it at Malice.

She’s got a brand new mystery set in horse racing world, FLAMINGO ROAD, just brand new from St. Martin’s. And, dear Reds, Sasscer is about to see that the course of a book tour is almost as hazardous as a cross country steeplechase. In fact, it may be exactly the same thing.

 THE UPTOWN BOOK SIGNING

                              By Sasscer Hill

It’s a cold March afternoon and pouring as my plane skids to a halt on LaGuardia’s runway. I have arrived for the first book signing for Flamingo Road, three weeks prior to its April 18 pub date.

I rush to the baggage area, relieved to see my bag circling toward me. It has the outfit for my event at the posh ladies’ club in Manhattan where I have miraculously landed this gig. I manhandle the bag off the carousel, grab the handle, extend it, and begin marching. Except, the bag is immobile on the floor, and I am holding an unattached handle in my hand.

  

Have I just said the F word? Was it loud enough to be heard? If you’ve ever suffered an experience like this, did a four-letter word escape your lips?

This won’t do, I admonish myself, remembering the perfect, hand-written letter I received from the club announcing cell phones may not be used inside, and absolutely no photos may be taken, ever. It advised that I must not reveal the name of the club when mentioning the event on social media. A whole new meaning for “private” club.

 

I arrive at my sister’s apartment a little wet and looking like I’ve just gone ten rounds with my suitcase. The next day, as we arrive at the club, it’s still raining. I remove my rubber boots and slip on my suede Sacha London three-inch pumps. Fortified with fashion and makeup, I meet the ladies. I have never seen so many Gucci shoes and Chanel Suits outside the September issue of Vogue.

The ladies are charming, educated, and talk of their latest travels and the jewelry they bought in South America the previous month. We are having English tea and beautifully arranged pastries. I tell the head lady that I would kill for a Diet Coke and she rustles one up. Soon I’m at the podium to speak.

I go inside myself, focusing like I used to do when I’d ride in a steeplechase race. I meet my fences––which today are bullet points on a sheet of paper––and I don’t falter. Women are leaning forward, listening to every word, no one is whispering, there is perfect silence, and I know I’m winning. At the book signing, I sell out.

Have any of you experienced a recalcitrant suitcase, or wealth intimidation? How do you find your inner strength?

HANK: Heck with inner strength. I want to hear about a club that is so private you can't even talk about it.  

But WHY does something always go wrong in  situations like that? At the worst possible time? How does it know?

At least we can't get last-second runs in our stockings anymore! 

Sasscer, you are fabulous!

Author Sasscer Hill was involved in horse racing as an amateur jockey and racehorse breeder for most of her life. She sets her novels against a background of big money, gambling, and horse racing, and her mystery and suspense thrillers have received multiple award nominations.

Sasscer provided the Kirkus Review, which, she says, provides the most accurate synopsis of Flamingo Road that’s been written.

“The dark and dirty underbelly of horse racing is exposed when a Baltimore cop goes to visit relatives in Florida. Internal Affairs has been very interested in Fia McKee ever since she shot and killed the man who was choking Shyra Darnell, a hot walker at Pimlico who's so afraid of someone that she refuses to answer any questions. 

When Fia's beloved father, a racehorse trainer, was murdered five years earlier, Fia joined the police and has never given up on his case, which has now turned very cold. Put on leave, she answers a call for help from her brother, Patrick, whose wife has walked out and left him with a horse-crazy teen. Someone's been slaughtering people's horses for meat, and when Cody, her niece Jilly's gelding, becomes a victim, Fia gets mad and plots to get even. 

The night of the gelding's death, she meets a man named Zanin who runs the Protect the Animals League and is trying to stop the carnage. Zanin is sure the guilty party is a Cuban-American who lives in the dangerous and lawless area known as the C-Nine Basin, but no one's been able to prove that he's involved. Meantime, 

Fia learns that her problems back home may go away if she agrees to go undercover for the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau at Florida's Gulfstream Park, where horses that shouldn't be winning are suddenly showing amazing talent. Fia eases into a job as an exercise rider for an honest trainer while trying to discover what new, so far undetectable, drug is turning ordinary horses into superstars. Hill boasts knowledge of horses and the very real problems in horse racing that fill this sound mystery with thrills and hair-raising action from first to last.”—Kirkus