Sasscer & TRAVELS OF QUINN Featured on Augusta's ABC "Jennie" Show!

The Jennie Montgomery Show airs on Augusta's ABC Affiliate, Channel 6 News. This segment aired in 2020, on publication day of Sasscer Hill's newest novel, TRAVELS OF QUINN

Watch the video to learn about this author's life and unusual journey on her road to publication.

Criminal Element's Tomlinson Reviews FLAMINGO ROAD

Review: Flamingo Road 

      by Sasscer Hill

KATHERINE TOMLINSON

Flamingo Road by Sasscer Hill is the 1st book in the Fia McKee Mystery series (available April 18, 2017).

Sasscer Hill likes horses, and not in a “My Little Pony” kind of way. A horsewoman and horse breeder, it’s in her blood. As she explains on her blog:

I started galloping about the family farm on a stick horse when I was four years old. By the time, I was seven or eight, I was sneaking rides on the Belgian plow horses. I did this because my father didn't like horses and considered ponies dangerous. So instead, I drummed my heels on the sides of a 2,000-pound draft mare, while grasping whatever string or rope I managed to tie to her halter.

Her debut mystery series featured a young female jockey named Nikki Latrelle, and the books were atmospheric tales that brought the racing world to life more authentically than anyone had since Dick Francis died. (On her blog, Sasscer pays tribute to Dick Francis as her favorite author.)

The protagonist in Flamingo Road, the 1st in the Fia McKee series, is a cop whose solitary beat in the crime-ridden streets of Baltimore could not be further from the sunlit racetrack at Florida’s Gulf Stream Park if it was located on the moon. And yet, by saving the life of a terrified woman named Shyra Darnell, who works at Pimlico Race Track as a “hot walker,” Fia is thrown into a mystery that connects her past to her present in a most unexpected way.

Despite being under investigation by Internal Affairs, Fia can’t help but pick at the mystery surrounding Shyra and wonder what (or who) she is so afraid of. 

Then, a call from her estranged brother summons her to Florida, bringing her into contact with horse-butchering lunatics, cutting-edge performance-enhancing drugs, handsome animal activists, and Cuban gangs. Suddenly, things get very personal when her already troubled niece loses her beloved gelding Cody.

What was this? Kids on a joyride? Stealing tack or Patrick’s tools and equipment? Whatever it was, it wasn’t right.

I sped down the drive, my rubber shoes silent. The cart had headed to the right on the far side of the stable, and it looked like the fastest way to catch up would be to run straight down the center aisle and out the other side. Plunging into the murk of the barn, I smelled a horrible, familiar odor before skidding in what had to be blood. I wound up on my hands and knees, staring at a dark lump on the floor.

God, no. “You sons of bitches!” I yelled. I staggered up, skirted the slick, sticky pool and ran out the back. In the distance, I heard a couple of thumps. A truck engine started, but no lights came on. The sound of a motor rapidly faded into the distance.

Feeling helpless and sickened, I searched for a light switch and found it. Okay, Fia, get a grip. I flipped the switch.

Blood was everywhere. Cody’s black tail like a paintbrush dipped in blood looked. I fought a wave of nausea. They had butchered him in his own barn, removing the large cuts of meat. I wanted to kill them. I grabbed my phone and called 911.

Fia, whose horse-trainer father was murdered in a case as cold as Maryland in winter, knows this horsey world very well. And thanks to Hill, who teaches classes on how to craft settings that “saturate a story with mood, meaning, and thematic connotations,” we are immersed in that world as well. (Maybe a little too well as we learn the particulars of the trade in horse meat.)

“Your horse,” Zanin said, “was butchered by Cuban Americans who live in the C-Nine Basin. By now, they’ve delivered his meat to a specialty butcher shop in Miami.”

Patrick shook his head as if denying the whole thing. “That’s disgusting. It doesn’t make sense. There can’t be enough money to outweigh the risk.”

“I’m betting the horse was young,” Zanin said. “Maybe a little fat?”

Recalling Jilly’s conversation at dinner, I said, “Cody was only three.” An image struck me. Cody plump and happy in the paddock with Jilly that afternoon. “Oh, God. He was fat. Is that why they killed him?”

“Yeah,” Zanin said. “They like ’em young and well-marbled. Brings the highest price, like beef.”

I dropped my head into my hands. It was impossible to shut out the images. Glancing at him, I said, “Who are these people? And what’s the C-Nine Basin?”

“It’s the Wild West of Florida. Straddles the western edge of Broward and Miami-Dade counties, along one side of the Everglades. Mostly men live there, Cubans and Haitians and almost everything they do is outside the law—cockfights, horse slaughter, dogfights.”

“But Patrick’s right,” I said. “It doesn’t make sense. Horse slaughter is legal in so many places now.”

Zanin gazed at me intently. “Think about it.”

I cringed as it hit me. “It doesn’t matter if it’s legal because if those animals are old and tough…”

Zanin nodded. “They bring less money. The men in the C-Nine, they’re renegades, squatters, really rough people. These guys build shacks and pilfer from electric lines. They don’t care about right and wrong, especially when money in the form of prime meat is available just down the road. Believe me, the police are afraid to go in there.”

Turns out, there’s a really good reason the cops are scared to go into the C-Nine, and before the story gallops to a conclusion (sorry), readers will be scared too. And they’ll know a lot more about the racing world than they did before they opened the book.

Click here to find FLAMINGO ROAD!

Katherine Tomlinson is a former reporter who prefers making things up. She was editor of Astonishing Adventures Magazine and the publisher of Dark Valentine Magazine.

FLAMINGO ROAD

So thrilled to receive this first and fabulous trade review from Kirkus on FLAMINGO ROAD. I am also very appreciative of the unnamed reviewer who read the story closely and got it right! Thank you Kirkus.

FLAMINGO ROAD 

Sasscer Hill

Review Issue Date: January 15, 2017
Online Publish Date: December 27, 2016
Publisher:Minotaur
Pages: 320
Price ( Hardcover ): $25.99
Publication Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN ( Hardcover ): 978-1-250-09691-3
Category: Fiction
Classification: Mystery

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 (Racing from Evil, 2016, etc.) boasts a 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. 

ONE AUTHOR’S JOURNEY TO A NEW YORK PUBLISHING DEAL

Like many of my writer friends, the road I have traveled so far in the quest for a “big” publisher has been long and hard.

In 1994, I finished my first book, a novel of romantic suspense. I landed an agent with the manuscript. He sent it out to six major publishers. They rejected the book, and the agent immediately dropped me.

I was so devastated and naive, I crawled away to lick my wounds for five wasted years, before taking several courses at the Bethesda Writer’s center where I learned not just how to write mystery fiction, but the elements that must be included. Stuff I’d never heard of, like story arcs, plot points. I learned how to write a synopsis, how to market, network, and that I needed to join groups like Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America. 

While taking these courses, I wrote the first book in the Nikki Latrelle series, FULL MORTALITY. With the novel finished some time in 2005, I queried 40 literary agents before securing one who believed FULL MORTALITY could attract a New York publisher. After months of this agent sending out and receiving rejections, I was disheartened to say the least. Of course, my agent avoided small publishers as the money was too meager for her.

In the meantime I wrote the second in the series, RACING FROM DEATH, which lingered at Bantam, New American Library and Berkeley for a total of 13 months before being rejected. Then, Marcia Markland at St. Martin’s Press requested an exclusive on RACING FROM DEATH before rejecting the manuscript nine months later. And so, another five years crawled by. 

I met John Betancourt, the publisher of the small DC area Wildside Press. He’d read parts of RACING FROM DEATH and offered to take it on, but I wanted to wait for the big NY deal. I waited on these NY publishers until the stock market crashed in 2008 and the Maryland horse market went down the drain right behind it.

In February of 2010, my favorite author Dick Francis passed away, I was diagnosed with lymphoma, and my horse farm was hit by the historic blizzard, Snowmageddon, the worst snow storm in the history of Maryland. 

The first hour of Snowmageddon

By now I was desperate and emailed Betancourt to ask if he’d look at the first in the series, FULL MORTALITY. He read the manuscript during the blizzard and accepted the book for publication the next day.

My agent informed me a NY publisher would no longer want to take on the rest of the series. We parted ways.

The treatment I underwent for my lymphoma was wonderfully successful, and miraculously, FULL MORTALITY was published in May of 2010, received rave reviews, and was nominated for both Agatha and Macavity Best First Book awards.

These nominations, and another big batch of query letters, helped secure a new, truly professional agent. But by the time I finished the third book, THE SEA HORSE TRADE, I knew my old agent had been right. New York publishers were not interested in a new book in a series already in the hands of another publisher–unless it had humongous sales. A word to the wise: you are unlikely to get humongous sales with a small press.

In the hopes of making some pocket change, I put a number of my short stories up on Kindle. I made a dollar here, a dollar there, almost enough to buy dog food.
My new agent told me if I wanted a bigger publisher that might provide me with a modest income, I had to start a new series. So I did, creating “Fia McKee,” a thirty-two-year old agent for the real life agency, Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau (TRPB.) I drove up to Fair Hill, Maryland, in the winter of 2012 and interviewed with the President and Vice President of the TRPB. The President asked me so many questions I felt almost like a criminal under investigation.

TRPB in Fair Hill, MD

I started the first book in the Fia Mckee series after I moved to Aiken in the fall of 2012, but lost most of 2012 and the beginning of 2013 to selling the farm that had been in my family for over two hundred years, my horses, moving to Aiken, and settling in. I finished the manuscript with the working title FLAMINGO ROAD  around August of 2014. I started the second in the series in October of 2014.

My agent began shopping FLAMINGO ROAD in December of 2014. An editor at St. Martins Minotaur showed interest in FLAMINGO ROAD, but with some reservations about the public’s interest in a horse racing novel. I immediately went to work. Phone calls and research provided me with statistics on the surprisingly strong popularity of horse racing. I cited things like NBC’s unprecedented ten-year extension agreement to broadcast rights to the Breeders Cup weekend races as well as the eleven qualifying races that precede that two-day, all-star  event. I noted how a recent ESPN poll showed horse racing is the most popular non-team sport, beating out tennis, boxing, and even NASCAR! I managed to dig up and write two pages of statistics, and my agent sent them to the St. Martins’ editor.

Happily, less than a week after this, the Carrie McCray committee announced that my in-progress novel, the second of the Fia McKee series, had won their Best First-Chapter of a Novel award. How did this happen? When I moved to Aiken, I joined the South Carolina Writer’s Workshop, the state writer’s association, and got involved with the group.

Amazingly, that same week, my previously published Nikki Latrelle horse racing trilogy received a glorious endorsement from Steve Haskin, the senior Correspondent for the Blood-Horse, and a former national correspondent for the Daily Racing Form. The recipient of eighteen awards for excellence in turf writing, Haskin wrote, “Sasscer, the honor comes in your accomplishments and talent, and you should take great pride in such a magnificent trifecta. Congratulations!!! Well done. Dick Francis lives!” 

Visit Sasscer's Amazon Page 

& Read First Chapters of Trilogy! 

http://tinyurl.com/n5gaavf

                      

How did I get this 20015 endorsement? I befriended Haskin on Facebook in 2009, reading and commenting on his excellent posts and articles in the “Blood Horse,” for five years.

But the brightest star to align that very same week was a racehorse named American Pharoah. Deep in my heart, I’d believed if the colt could pull off the historical and momentous feat of winning the first Triple Crown in 37 years, it might nudge a publishing offer from St. Martins my way. White knuckled, I watched the final race. When American Pharoah blasted around the Belmont track on the lead, rocketed down the stretch, pulling away from the Belmont field, I screamed, “My God, he’s going to win!” 

And when he opened up even more and won by daylight, I wept. I turned to my husband and said, “I think I’m going to get an offer.” I could feel the bright star that is my love for horses rising over me. Pharoah’s race drew 22 million television viewers, and the subsequent radio, television, and social media attention was phenomenal. Within a week, American Pharoah appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and a day later, I received a two-book offer from St. Martins Minotaur.

THE DEAL!

Inspectors McChickens inspect Hill's Trilogy and ten pages
 of  St. Martin's contracts for the new two-book deal!

YOUR TAKE AWAY FROM THIS STORY:
Never give up.
Learn your craft, but follow your heart.
Always be kind and gracious, you never know if the person sitting next to you, or posting on Facebook might be a key to unlock a door.
Know your market.
Join groups, but don’t let them take too much of your time.
Nothing is a important as writing.
Network, but do so within reason. See previous sentence.
When you go to meetings note (A) writers you like and admire. Now, note (B)writers you don’t like or admire. Tip: for heaven’s sake behave like the A writers!

Writers Police Academy: Part 3 The Bomb!

Sasscer Hill hanging with the Bomb Robot. I thought he was very cute and suspected he had a predilection for hot women with explosive tempers.

Note the double barrels. When in doubt, blow the bomb up!

 Then I saw what else he could do after the bomb dog alerted to the backpack bomb! 

Keep in mind, this dude can "sniff," shoot pictures, X-Ray and relay all the info back.

Get that bomb out a here!

             Fully suited Bomb Tech attaches fuse to bomb.

BOOM!

 Bomb tech, the crew, bomb dog, and remains of back pack.

Bomb Dog gets a treat!

                                                         WOOF!

                             

                              Yeah, we showed 'em!

A July 2012 Review for “Racing from Death.”

Agog and amazed upon receipt of this lovely review!


"Small Press Reviews" by Betty Webb in Mystery Scene Magazine, 2012 Summer
#125

 Sasscer Hill brings us another exciting racehorse mystery in Racing from Death (Wildside Press, $13.99). When Maryland jockey Nikki Latrelle,introduced in the Agatha-nominated Full Mortality, takes several horses to race at a Virginia track, she lands in the middle of several cold cases. Years earlier, two teenage boys were shot to death, leaving their mother in despair. Around the same time, another mother disappeared, abandoning her young son to his cold father. In the present, and possibly connected to those old tragedies, jockeys are dropping dead, victims of a lethal weight-loss drug. Horse lovers and fans of Dick Francis will love Hill’s you-are-there-on-the-racecourse thriller, but the real asset of this excellent series is the hard-riding, hard-partying Nikki herself. After being orphaned, Nikki ran away to the track, where she found her calling. Spirited to a fault, she doesn’t suffer fools gladly, especially when their ignorance harms horses. Nikki’s racetrack friends are worth mentioning, too. Lorna, an exercise rider, loves too hard and too blindly; Mello, an elderly groom, has a touch of the Sight. In fact, Mello’s visions give Racing from Death the touch of magic that separates it from standard mystery fare. Add to the character mix a mysterious crying man who haunts a nearby forest, and we’re given an utterly unique take on racetrack thrillers.


http://tinyurl.com/7elojmjPurchase novel or read free chapters!

UPCOMING SASSCER HILL EVENTS

June 23, 2012


Book signing at Colonial Downs Racetrack in New Kent, Virginia on Saturday night. It's "Ladies Night," so it's free for all the gals and for children twelve and under. And there will be both turf and dirt stakes races that evening! The Buckland and the Chesapeake for fillies and colts respectively, with each race carrying a purse of $50,000.00.  


Sasscer will be signing her new mystery novel "Racing from Death" as well as the Agatha and Macavity nominated "Full Mortality." The event will take place in the Colonial Downs gift shop just inside the track's main entrance from six p.m. to ten p.m.


If your vacationing in Williamsburg, at Virginia Beach, golfing, or live in the Richmond area, come on by! The racing, dining, and ambiance at Colonial is tops.

Sasscer on Colonial's Jumbotron  in July, 2010

BOUCHERON! OCTOBER 4-7, 2012 

Sasscer will be appearing at this very popular mystery convention, held this year in Cleveland, Ohio, at the downtown Marriott Renaissance hotel. Schedule to be posted.

Lee Child with Sasscer, Bouchercon 2010

Here is the Bouchercon web site link: http://www.bouchercon2012.com/

BOUCHERCON BLAST

I arrived in St. Louis on Wednesday, September 14, to a cold, wind-driven rain. After checking into the conference hotel, I rolled one of my two suitcases – filled with copies of FULL MORTALITY– to the book dealers room. Truth is, many authors published by small presses have to carry their own books to these events and sell them on consignment. 


Don’t feel bad for me; there was an author from the big publisher, St. Martins, who’d been assured the book sellers would have this person’s book on hand. The poor author arrived at their book signing to discover they had no books at the conference. Not one. I’d rather schlepp an extra suitcase any day of the week than face that situation. Especially when Southwestern Airline allows two free bags per flight!

Richard Katz's Book Store in Milwaukee 

In the dealer’s room, where book sellers were busy unpacking hundreds of boxes and setting up their displays, I found the people who’d agreed to shelve my books and sell them: Deb and Wayne from Hooked on Books, and Richard Katz of Mystery One Books.


Both shops gave Full Mortality excellent shelf space and location. I’m grateful they had my books on hand and sold copies at both of my book signings.  
  
That evening, It was raining so hard, and the temperature dropping so fast, friend and fellow SinC member, Debbi Mack, and I took a cab. For a two-block trip. Seemed the only way to avoid drowning or freezing. We rode in $5.00 comfort to the Sisters in Crime “Great Writing” workshop, where panelists took a hard look at the incredible changes transforming the publishing industry. They discussed everything from e-books and social networking to three dimensional e-marketing strategies. 


Being informed by these experts that I need both a Facebook page and website for my character Nikki Latrelle, might have caused me to drop my head into my hands, or maybe I was just tired from schlepping suitcases.


On Thursday I attended some great panels including one I participated in, “Adding Depth to Character.” Panelists for this were Mysti Berry (Moderator), Sparkle Abbey, me, Joy Laughter, Victoria Laurie, and Sandra Parshall.


Then it was off to the book signing in the dealer’s room where I was lucky to sit between authors Tim Hallinan and David Housewright. I’d already read Hallinan’s “Queen of Patpong” and loved it. I started Housewright’s “Highway 61" since returning home, and so far, so excellent.

 Author Hallinan 

Thursday night, I had a great dinner with some of the Chessie Chapter SinC members including author Sandra Parshall. (Note: her book UNDER THE DOG STAR is fabulous!) Afterwards, at the opening ceremonies I met author Simon Wood and spoke again to Timothy Hallinan. Since my book, FULL MORTALITY was up for a Best First Macavity award, I waited a bit anxiously. Hallinan seemed a bit stressed, too. Not surprising since his book, QUEEN OF PATPONG, was up for Best Novel! 

Sasscer Hill, Simon Wood, and Debbi Mack

When they announced the title for the winner of the Best First Macavity Award, sadly, it wasn’t FULL MORTALITY. Hallinan's QUEEN OF PATPONG didn’t get the nod for Best Novel, either. Time to suck it up. 


Support from SinC members made my loss a bit easier to swallow.  A phone message from David Housewright claiming, “You were robbed!” didn’t hurt either. Later, some of us went to the bar and partied. I had a chance to speak to Kate Stine, Janet Rudolph and Hank Phillippi Ryan – lovely women, all three. I met Guest of Honor, Colin Cotterill, and had a drink with him and author Tim Hallinan. When you don’t win, make the best of it!

Janet Rudolph founder of Mystery Reader's International and Sasscer Hill

Shaking it off with a good night’s sleep, I attended some great panels on Friday with Debbi Mac. The best panel for me was “The Last Detective” an interview of Robert Crais by Greg Hurwitz. These two have worked together before, and it showed. They were sharp, funny, and very quick.


Hurwitz razzed Crais by saying that best selling author Lee Child insists his protagonist, “Jack Reacher,” would pulverize Crais’s “Joe Pike” if the two were put to the test.


Crais shot back, “Jack Reacher is Joe Pike’s bitch!”  

 Robert Crais and Co-Program Chair Judy Bobalik

Debbi and I laughed so hard, we almost fell out of our seats. That evening I had dinner in my room and watched NCIS. Why? Because my alarm was set for at 5:30 a.m. Saturday morning. I had to be fed, dressed, and made-up by eight for my first ever panel as a moderator, and I was scared to death of being late or messing up somehow. Besides, I planned to go to the live-band dance Saturday night, too.


I arrived on time, but I still screwed up. Our panel was “RELEASE ME: Finish Your Research and Write Your Book,” with a host of great historical fiction authors: Dan Johnson, Frances McNamara, Judy Moresi, Roberta Rogow, and Nancy Means Wright.


Being nervous and convinced that notes on cards would be lost, I put my questions for my five panelists in a notebook. Only, I couldn’t pull the notebook close enough to the microphone, so my first questions came out very slowly and with big gaps of silence as I tried to read the pages that lay off to the side. Probably, I scared my panelists to death. Our moderator is crashing and all of us will burn! 


I warmed up after the first few minutes, and listening to a tape of the panel that arrived in the mail yesterday, I was relieved to hear my voice smooth out and the pace pick up until there was laughter and the audience seemed to be enjoying the show. 

 Dancing fiends from Saturday Night. Can you say blast?

Saturday night, I danced to the great sounds of “Cruisin’” from eight-thirty until midnight, crawled into bed at one a.m. and staggered to the airport and back to Maryland on Sunday.

My Saturday Night Dancing Partner Was So Cute!

Passengers, sardined into that Southwest flight to Baltimore, never suspected they were surrounded by people who kill for a living – me, Marcia Talley, Debbi Mack, and Laura Lippman, to name a few.


If that plane had gone down, the D.C. area would have lost half its mystery writers. Fate, apparently, has other plans.



Read First Chapter of RACING FROM DEATH!
Click on following link to read: http://racingfromdeath.blogspot.com/2011/09/first-chapter-of-racing-from-death.html

A SHAKEN, HOT AUTHOR

The northeast Pleasant Hills Chimney

In Maryland, the earthquake of August 23, followed almost immediately by Hurricane Irene, left behind a number of devastated historical homes. Many of Maryland's Prince Georges County landmarks were hard hit: Pleasant Hills, Tulip Hill, Weston, Mount Calvert, Bellefields, Bowling Heights and others. The ground rocked wildly, building a force that cracked the mortar joints of old brick walls and whiplashed the tall chimneys above. 




At several locations two, or even three, chimneys broke and fell, tearing huge holes in the roofs. Within days, Hurricane Irene dumped torrents of water inside these historical treasures.


At Pleasant Hills, we were very lucky to have the chimneys stay up. Still, we have to take two of them them down brick-by-brick, cover the resulting hole, and then rebuild each structure. If we don’t, another production by Mother Nature may bring them down and break open our roof. 

When the earthquake hit, Mr. Duval, a local religious man, was in the graveyard at St. Thomas Church in Croom. The belfry and tombstones shook so hard he thought  Doomsday had finally arrived. Had I been there, I’d have kept a sharp lookout for Buffy-the-Vampire-Slayer. 


As an author, I  see no use for the earthquake other than to write it into a novel.

In the meantime, former Baltimore Sun writer Ross Peddicord, who is now head of the Maryland Horse Industry Board, invited me to do a FULL MORTALITY book signing at the Maryland Department of Agriculture’s exhibit at the Maryland State Fair in conjunction with the Timonium’s horse races. I said yes!


In the 91 Degree heat of September 4, I arrived at the fairground’s Farm and Garden building, a block structure without air conditioning. The Department of Agriculture provided me with a hand-held paper-fan, but waving it only made me hotter. It was a sweatbox in there. 

Any jockey who wanted to make racing weight that day, could simply walk across the midway, past the Ferris wheel, and into in the Farm and Garden Building. We even had an Equicizer in our booth, except it was supposed to be for the children.  

In a daring display of bravery, I rode the fake exercise horse.  A dangerous sport, as I was laughing so hard, I almost fell off.  


After losing two pounds of water weight, selling a dozen books, and eating several fresh peaches, I took home a load of ripe red tomatoes, and first-blush farm apples. 

When I got home, the chimneys were still standing and I decided life is pretty sweet.

TWISTING THROUGH KENTUCKY

On April 20, I flew into Lexington’s Blue Grass Airport to attend the races at Keeneland and a book signing for my novel, FULL MORTALITY, at Joseph-Beth’s book store. Got to meet up with old and new friends, too.

The Amazing Paula Weglarz in the Paddock at Keeneland

Keeneland and the horse racing I watched on Thursday and Friday were fabulous. Silks, bourbon, ladies in amazing hats an perilous high heels. I even bought myself a "fascinator" in purple and black.  


Since everything in life is a trade off, I shouldn’t be surprised my Friday evening book signing at Joseph-Beth’s was routed by a tornado. When the warning siren went off shortly after seven p.m., I stared at the sky beyond the store’s glass ceiling and walls and felt more than a little uneasy.

Notice the dark sky and glass wall behind my signing post!

 The staff herded me and what might have been FULL MORTALITY customers down the escalators to the store’s first level, away from the glass. We were all scared, and I felt especially bad for the mothers in the store with little children.










We got lucky. The twister skipped over us, sucked itself back into the sky, and taught me something before it departed: tornados are not good for book signings! Most people left immediately after the all clear, anxious to check on their families and homes.


Still, there’s a rainbow at the end of this post on Lexington book signing and tornado watching. Hall-of-Famer and Kentucky Derby winning-jockey Kent Desormeaux showed up around nine and bought a copy of FULL MORTALITY. 


After reading the back cover text, he said, “So if I read this, I’ll be going back to my glory days in Maryland?” 


“Yes,” I said, giving myself a mental head slap. 


I’d never made a conscious connection between my novel about fictional Maryland jockey Nikki Latrelle and Kent Desormeaux, who after his 1986 rocket-ride through Maryland won an Eclipse award for Outstanding Apprentice Jockey. Desormeaux nabbed his first career stakes race on December 13, 1986, riding Godbey in the Maryland City Handicap at Laurel Park Racecourse, and I remember screaming at the TV set for this former Maryland Jockey to win the 1998 Kentucky Derby. He did. And he won it again in 2000 and 2008!

Multiple Derby Winner Kent Desmoreaux and Sasscer Hill

I got a bit more racing in early on Keeneland’s Saturday program. What a whirlwind of a trip.  I know, I know – that was lame. 


I want to thank Brooke Raby of Joseph Beth’s for making the absolute best of a bad situation, to Lexington’s Paula Weglarz for ferrying me about town and making sure I was dosed with Kentucky bourbon, and to the amazing Sheppard racing stables for allowing me in the Keeneland paddock for up close research for my favorite jockey, Nikki Latrelle.

 Assistant trainer Barry Wiseman (striped jacket) and Hall of Fame Trainer Jonathan Sheppard (on  far  side of horse) saddling Farmers Club April 21 in Keeneland's paddock.