HEADING FOR THE PREAKNESS: Me and Everyone Else!

KY Derby winner, I'll Have Another galloping at Pimlico

Derby runner-up Bodemeister stretching his legs

Kentucky Derby winner, "I'll Have Another," is hoping to do exactly that on Saturday when he runs in the Preakness. It is also rumored that Bob Baffert's runner-up "Bodemeister" has vowed not to get baffled again at the wire.


Trainers, grooms, gamblers, exercise riders, jockeys, and sports writers are anxiously studying the stats of all the high dollar races to be run at Pimlico during the upcoming Preakness weekend.


Being entirely female, it's most important to me that the horses are happy, nobody gets hurt, and the fascinator I ordered arrives in time so I can wear it to the Preakness!

On Friday, May 18, Black Eyed Susan Day, I will be signing copies of  my two mystery novels, “Full Mortality,” and “Racing from Death.”  Catch me from noon to 2:00 p.m. in the Pimlico grandstand. 

An entirely different hat will be worn while signing the two novels. It wouldn't do to wear the same fascinator twice. Not on Preakness weekend.

I'm delighted to report NBC and TVG news personality, Donna Brothers Barton, will show up at 2:00 p.m. in the grandstand to sign her new book on handicapping. I look forward to seeing her again. 


My sister, Lillian, bought me a Preakness ticket! On Saturday, I have a seat in the Turfside Terrace where I can watch Donna Barton gallop by on her track pony followed by the NBC camera truck.

Donna Brothers Barton covering the Preakness.

 I can scream as "Bodemeister" and "I’ll Have Another" battle it out down the stretch. Unless an unknown explodes into the picture.


I am a bit emotional about these two days at Pimlico, the Maryland track where I won my first horse race with a home-bred colt named Sea Surge. An amazing full circle, a journey that led to my third, just completed Nikki Latrelle novel, “The Sea Horse Trade.”


 Maryland racing and every racetrack provide a microcosm for life. In one place at one time, there is greed, crime, treachery, cruelty, love, heroism, bravery, determination, and underdogs who reach deep into their hearts to get the win. Terrific fuel for the writing of novels!

THE FIRST WIN!

MALICE DOMESTIC 2012: Malicious Highlights

Just returned and still recovering from the 2012 mystery conference, Malice Domestic.
Sending out congratulations to Agatha Best Novel winner, Margaret Maron for her 2011 “Three-Day Town.” Go Margaret!

 Margaret Maron shown last year keeping the Agatha Best First  nominees under her wing.

Hooray for Sara J. Henry, who just won the Agatha Best First Novel for her book, “Learning to Swim.”

Author Sasscer Hill and Agatha Best First Novel winner
Sara J. Henry

 And kudos to my friend  Leslie Budewitz for winning the Agatha for Best Non-fiction with “Books, Crooks and Counselors: How to Write Accurately About Criminal Law and Courtroom.”

Leslie Budewitz, Best Non Fiction!

 Some of the highlights:

 A trash-bag-straight-jacket saved my silk suit. The delightful author of "Chihuahua of the Baskervilles," Esri Allbritten and I decided to skip out on the expensive Malice Banquet and go to an inexpensive Indian restaurant across the street. Unfortunately, rain poured onto the street while we were eating Tandoori lamb.

This is why they call the conference "Malice Domestic." Pictured above is my friend and panel referee "Alan 'the Whistle' Orloff," totally failing to keep me under control. This pic is from the "Three Strikes and Your Out" panel of sports mystery authors. 


Below, schmoozing with mystery writer, Parnell Hall, author of the popular "Steve Winslow" series. 

Me and Becky Hutchinson. I lost those glasses, if anyone found them, let me know!

Two great gals! Sisters in Crime members Ellet Logan 
and Ellen Byerrum.

My favorite publisher! John Betancourt of Wildside Press! 

Jack Cater, marvelous moderator of "Malice Go Round" led us through a maze of madness!

The Guppy lunch!

Me and Judy Hogan, whose new book comes out soon!!

Racing from Death Reviewed by Sandra McKee of the Baltimore Sun

http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/arts/bs-ae-book-review-sasscer-20120412,0,6080030.story

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"New novel about a Laurel Park jockey is a wild ride."

 When Sasscer Hill was growing up, she rode stick horses and plow horses and read "The Black Stallion" novels, a series of books about the friendship between a young boy and a beautiful black Arabian stallion. In the process, she fell in love — with horses and books and, eventually, writing.

On April 15, her novel "Racing from Death" is being released by Wildside Press. It is the second in a series about jockey/ assistant trainer Nikki Latrelle, a Laurel Park-based rider, who finds herself caught up in murder.

While Hill has been compared to Dick Francis and Sue Grafton, "Racing from Death" reflects the respect she has for horse racing and the influence of the late Walter Farley, the author of "The Black Stallion" series.

Hill's characters, some of whom are compilations of people she has known at tracks, come through as authentic, and her sentences are short and crisp. While full of description, she hands out Latrelle's background sparingly, building curiosity.

The book is a page-turner. In just 193 pages her jockey-detective must deal with someone killing jockeys with "diet cocktails," a burned body, an unwanted passionate attraction, a hidden methlab, an old family secret, and the disappearance of her friend and exercise rider Lorna. Oh, and then there's her job, which is to train and race a string of thoroughbreds for her boss, Laurel-based trainer Jim Ravinsky, at Colonial Downs in Virginia.

Hill said the book is about chasing a dream, helping the helpless and fighting the odds.

"It's those ideas that carry me along when I'm writing the stories," said Hill, whose full name is Lynda Sasscer Hill. "I read every Walter Farley 'Black Stallion' book when I was a little kid in grade school. I loved them for the way they made me feel. I want to write books like that, that entertain people. I want to write a good book that people want to retreat to — a 'Black Stallion' for adults."

Hill is an amateur steeplechase rider — and winner. She's ridden in fox hunts for 22 years and is also a horse breeder, who still lives on her family's farm, Pleasant Hills, in Upper Marlboro with her husband.

"You get to understand how horses behave and what people will do during a race to win," said Hill, 61. "You can feel a horse's fear and its bold heart. The way you feel the excitement during a [steeplechase] is very much the same as that on a flat track."

Thanks to her experience, the action in her book comes off as authentic — like this passage in which Latrelle rides her mount Stinger to a third-place finish:

"The gray moved alongside me, crowding me into the rail. I sat chilly, asking for restraint, and Stinger listened, allowing the favorite to go by. I waited. Then waited some more.

"We were through the turn at the top of the stretch, lying about sixth when I asked him. Stinger turned on the speed, rushing to the heels of the gray just ahead. I planned to use the favorite and hoped he'd live up to his short odds. He did, shoving his head into a nonexistent hole next to the rail, hammering through it. Mental "Yes!" as Stinger drafted in his wake ... We lay second ... at the wire, the second-favorite shoved his head forward, leaving us third by a whisker. ... But hey, we were supposed to be last."

Hill will be signing autographs in support of Susan G. Komen for the Cure in the grandstand area at Pimlico Race Course from noon to 2 p.m. on Black-Eyed Susan Day, Friday, May 18.

sandra.mckee@baltsun.com

'Racing from Death'

by Sasscer Hill

Wildside Press, 193 pages, $14

Copyright © 2012, The Baltimore Sun

HORSE OF THE DELAWARE VALLEY Reviews "Racing from Death."

Following review appears in April 12 issue of “Horse of the Delaware Valley.” http://www.horsedelval.com/

Sex, betrayal, murder propel new race track thriller from author Sasscer Hill
By MARTHA BARBONE

Author Sasscer Hill has hit her stride with her second, and hopefully one of many more, race track mysteries, ‘Racing from Death’.

Jockey and assistant trainer, Nikki Latrelle, who readers first met in Hill’s Full Mortality, is charged with the responsibility to take a load of Virginia-breds from Laurel Park in Maryland to Colonial Downs near Richmond for six weeks, where owners would get 50-percent on top of purse money for Virginia- breds.

Before loading up the van, Latrelle had already stumbled on the beginning of what would become an adrenaline rushing stay when a fellow jock died suddenly from designer weight-loss drugs.

At the funeral of Paco Martinez, the victim of the lethal concoction, Latrelle is approached by a stranger, Jay Cormack, an agent with the Operations and Enforcement arm of the Virginia Racing Commission, who asked her to be his eyes and ears on the backstretch in his investigation into illegal drugs.

At first she refused, but as events unfolded she was drawn in despite her misgivings.

Latrelle attracts danger like a magnet, and from the minute she and her friend and exercise rider, Lorna Doone, who had overcome her own drug demons, arrived at their assigned stabling, far on the backside near dense woods, the story takes the first of many plot twists when a strange man emerges, moaning, from the pines dragging a shovel saying, “Everybody knows, but they won’t tell.”

Driven off by Latrelle, Doone and the groom, Ramon, the man shuffles away, and, when the horses are settled in, the women leave to go to the rental cottage where they will be staying, only to be confronted by still more mystery and danger.

Racing from Death has all the elements of a compelling read, sex, betrayal, racing, danger and ultimately murder. Colorful characters abound, including an exotic and temperamental owner who was once a super-model and who is involved romantically with one of the prime suspects.

The mystic, Mello, who appeared in Full Mortality, arrives to soothe Latrelle's own horse, a filly so talented but equally unmanageable that she is nicknamed ‘Hellish’. Latrelle encounters some of the most unsavory gang members in the heart of their headquarters, a meth lab, to ever disgrace the pages of a novel where she barely escapes with her life.

Racing from Death, available at Amazon.com for $7.94, is a pageturner that does not disappoint.
Copyright © 2012 The Horse of Delaware Valley 03/16/2012

"RACING FROM DEATH" REVIEWED BY FELLOW CRIME WRITER, JUDY HOGAN

2

Review: Racing from Death, a new Nikki Latrelle Racing Mystery

Cover of Sasscer Hill's second Nikki Latrelle racing mystery

***

This is a major new talent and the comparisons to Dick Francis are not hyperbole.–Margaret Maron, New York Times Best-Selling Author


Wildside Press, Paper. Feb 2012. ISBN: 978-1-4344-4040-2. Wildsidebooks.com

***

Sasscer Hill claims her Nikki Latrelle racing mysteries fit into a niche sub-genre. True, for horse-racing enthusiasts, they satisfy a known appetite, but you don’t have to know a thing about horses to enjoy Nikki’s trials and tribulations and eventual crossing the finish line in a lively, breath-taking mystery.

I was eager to read the second novel. The first, Full Mortality(Wildside, 2010), an Agatha and Mccavity nominee for first best mystery, I thoroughly enjoyed (see my blog post of May 8, 2011).

Nikki takes six of the horses in the stable of her trainer, Jim Ravinsky, to the Colonial Downs track in Virginia. With her go her friend Lorna Doone, a former addict, who can only keep her exercise riders license if she stays clean, and an old black man, Mello Pinkney, who has a sixth sense both about people and horses. He is especially close to Hellish, the horse Nikki saved form the glue factory in Full Mortality. Right before she left, a jockey named Paco Martinez died at the Laurel Park track, apparently from a drug he took to keep his weight down.

Greeting her soon after she arrives at the Virginia track is Jay Cormack, the Chief Investigator for the Virginia Racing Commission. He pressures her to spy for him, as he suspects drugs are behind the jockey’s death. She refuses, but he won’t give up. He trusts her and threatens that, if she doesn’t help him, he could throw her off the track because of Hellish’s disruptive behavior and an old felony conviction of Mello’s. 

Reluctantly Nikki takes his card. At the cottage arranged for them, Nikki’s cat, Slippers, picks up her own sidekick, a rooster which Lorna dubs McNuggett. Lorna is drawn to a local wild rich boy named Bobby Duvayne, like a moth to a candle. Nikki understands her attraction because she feels similarly beguiled by Bobby, and she warns Lorna to stay away from him, to no avail. Then Lorna comes back from her night with Bobby hopelessly enamored, and stoned.

To top it off, two new horses arrive from Ravinsky’s training stable, Stinger and Daffodil. Their spoiled, imperious, insensitive owner, Amarilla Chaquette, whom Nikki likens to a yellow jacket, has not one whit of understanding about how to treat and race her horses, and she is contemptuous of Nikki’s savvy and attempts to help her horses win races.

Creepy and inexplicable things begin to happen until it’s very clear that something is terribly wrong at this track, and Nikki is drawn into the middle of it.

As in Dick Francis’s novels, Nikki’s life and circumstances as a jockey and an exercise rider, pull us into the racing pace of Hill’s books. I love the off-beat characters like Lorna and Mello, including the cat and the rooster. I learn about a world unfamiliar to me, one thing I look for in a good mystery. I easily identify with Nikki, who doesn’t want to rat on anyone but has a strong sense of justice and an impulse to help those human and animal beings who need a lift up. She’s also a fierce fighter, once aroused. 

A favorite scene of mine in this book takes place when Nikki attends a very posh party among the rich owners and powers that be in this Virginia setting, all in honor of Chaquette. The contrast between Nikki’s unpretentiousness and the inflated sense of their importance among these rich folks adds a rich humor to the book.

May Sasscer Hill’s books continue to win all the nominations and awards they deserve.

***

FINANCIAL MYSTERY AND Mayhem: Your Credit Score and Other Scams by the Banksters

I consider myself to be intelligent, educated, and fairly savvy. Recently I had a rude awakening. When it comes to credit scores, and how the banksters operate, I was naive and foolish.


Yes, yes, I knew about all the foreclosures, the people losing their homes, being forced onto the streets. Heck, Michael Connelly wrote a book about it. But I thought since I had cash in the bank and owned my home free and clear, none of this built-in-bankster-quicksand could sink me. Wrong.


My husband and I live in Prince Georges County, a high-tax and high-insurance Maryland suburb of Washington DC. Housing prices have plummeted in Prince Georges with the highest foreclosure rate of any county in the Virginia, Maryland, and DC metropolitan area. Our selling real estate agent clucked sadly when I told him my zip code. 

My home value has dropped over fifty percent and suddenly my once big nest egg – the family farm –  is fried. Foolishly, I thought I could take out a small first mortgage on my home for additional money to buy another home. I was sure the loan was a cinch. I only asked for a third of the home’s sad new value, and I have a brokerage account with money in the bank. 


Enter Credit Score. The bankster loan sharks “randomly” pull one of the three available credit scores from TransUnion, Experian, or Equifax. My scores on the first two are “excellent.” But USAA Bank pulled Equifax where my one lifetime late payment on a checking-account-overdraft-protection-line-of credit popped up. Loan application denied. 


At this point I have talked to a number of loan underwriters, asking questions, learning. Here is what I didn’t know. If you apply for a loan and are denied, your credit score goes down. If you have any credit cards or credit accounts and your balance is fifty percent or more of the credit limit, your score goes down. It doesn’t matter if you always pay on time. Your credit score goes down.

My checking account has been with Bank of America since 1987, and BAC is the bank who reported the late payment on the overdraft-protection-line-of credit. So I called them and when I finally got to the right guy – a supervisor –  I asked, “Don’t you think it’s weird that Bank of America was bailed out for billions of dollars, that I have been a customer since 1987, and BAC is the only company with a report against my credit score?” He made no reply. 


When I explained that this one late payment had occurred in 2010 when I was diagnosed with lymphoma and was undergoing cancer treatment, he said he would talk to the BAC Credit Score Team. I asked if there was a number where I could talk to these people. He said, “No, they are strictly back office.” See me doing the raised palm thing and rolling one eye? 


The boys in the back office.

In the meantime, ask yourself what is in it for the banks to keep lowering credit scores. Where is the money? How about this? 


Banks and these credit score companies make money managing and reporting this information. Everyone gets one “free” credit report per year. But if you want the score, you have to pay for it. People have been conditioned by the media and ads on TV and radios shows --  paid for by the banksters --  to constantly worry and wonder about their credit score. Once the score  goes down, these poor people wonder and worry even more. So they pay for their credit score. If they want a second credit report in their desperate hope their report has improved, they pay for it. 


If your credit score is low, the banks often charge a higher rate on loans, too. See how the banksters make money?


I imagine young whiz kids sitting in bank offices thinking up ways to screw people. I can almost hear them, “Awesome, man! Credit scores. Brilliant idea. We can take even more of their money! The will never see it coming.”


UPDATE, MARCH 21, 2012


Got a call from Bank of America this morning. They received the letter from my oncologist, and removed the BAC late payment report that was wrecking my credit score. Yay!!

RACING FROM DEATH: Now Available!

“Racing From Death” Now available from Amazon and other book sellers as a trade paperback! Read first 5 chapters for free. If you like them, pre-order the book!   Read First Chapters NowBy Clicking Here! 

“Sasscer Hill has done it again!  Racing From Death proves that Full Mortality was not beginner’s luck. This is a major new talent and the comparisons to Dick Francis are not hyperbole.” – New York Times Best Selling author, Margaret Maron. Winner of  Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Mystery Awards

Racing From Death