Annette Dashofy on Total Immersion Research

DEBORAH CROMBIE: It's such a treat to have Annette Dashofy, one of our favorite Jungle Red guests (and commenter!) here today to talk about two of my very favorite things, research and horse racing. You know this book went on my must-get list as soon as I read about it!  Here's Annette to tell us more about DEATH BY EQUINE! (And so many fun photos, too!)

ANNETTE DASHOFY: Early in my writing career, research intimidated me. I would look up stuff online. Read books. Occasionally, I’d search out a phone number for a public relations connection and ask timid questions with a painfully anxious voice. I was really lousy at the phone call thing. To be honest, I still am.

 However, while writing Death by Equine over ten years ago (yes, it’s been a long time coming), I discovered a different kind of research. Full immersion. Not merely asking questions but jumping in and experiencing the world I was writing about.

 

A friend, who was a trainer at a racetrack about 45 minutes from my home, got me onto the backside with a visitor’s pass a few times. When I proved that I wasn’t going to do stupid stuff around the horses and get someone injured, she arranged for me to obtain a groom’s license. It was like an all-access pass to a different universe. 

I did have some “street cred.” I’d been a horse-crazy kid, who loved horseracing. I’d owned and ridden horses of my own (although no Thoroughbreds) for 25 years, so I knew enough to avoid getting kicked or bitten. I could wield a brush, curry comb, and hoof pick with the best of them. But hotwalking a high-strung Thoroughbred is totally different than leading a lazy Quarter Horse around the fairgrounds. (Walking a Thoroughbred is always a question of who’s walking whom, while walking a lazy Quarter Horse is like taking my cat for a “drag” on the end of her leash.)

 My time as a groom taught me that while I knew a lot, I had no idea how much I didn’t know.

 My main character in Death by Equine is a veterinarian. I may have assisted my own vet with procedures on my horses and cats, but once again, the track is something entirely different. I spent time hovering over the track vet’s shoulder as he treated the horses. I was able to be hands-on, feeling injured horses’ legs for heat and swelling. I learned various treatments for assorted lamenesses and injuries.

I asked questions and took pages and pages of notes.

Something else I learned: I’m horrible at picking winners at the races. Owners and trainers started begging me to not bet on their horses. In a business that is notorious for its superstitions, being dubbed a jinx is not a good thing.

Side note: I had three favorites for the Kentucky Derby this year. None of them finished in the money.

So while the story, the characters, and the setting (and the homicide!) in Death by Equine is all fiction, it is based very much in fact.

Reds, did any of you watch the Kentucky Derby? Or ever been to one? Readers, do you enjoy being totally immersed into a new and different world when you pick up a book? Or do you prefer something more familiar?

Annette Dashofy is the USA Today best-selling author of the multi–Agatha Award nominated Zoe Chambers mystery series about a paramedic and deputy coroner in rural Pennsylvania’s tight-knit Vance Township. Her latest release, a standalone, is Death by Equine, about a veterinarian at a second-rate thoroughbred racetrack seeking the truth about her mentor’s mysterious death. She and her husband live on ten acres of what was her grandfather’s dairy farm in southwestern Pennsylvania with their very spoiled cat, Kensi.

 DEBS:Here's more about DEATH BY EQUINE, which you can order here.

Veterinarian Jessie Cameron agrees to fill in for her mentor, Doc Lewis, at Riverview Racetrack so he can take a long-overdue vacation. When he’s tragically killed by one of his equine patients the night before he’s supposed to leave, Jessie quickly suspects the death is anything but accidental. Her search for the truth is thwarted by everyone from well-meaning friends to the police, including her soon-to-be-ex-husband. Undaunted, she discovers layers of illegal activities and deceit being perpetrated by the man she thought of as a father figure, creating a growing list of suspects with reason to want Doc dead. Too late, she realizes that her dogged quest for the truth has put her in the crosshairs of a devious killer desperate to silence her. Permanently. 

DEBS: I've done some fun research but Annette's takes the cake. You can tell this book was a real labor of love. And I, for one, love being totally immersed in a new world when I'm reading. (I bombed out on the Derby, too, Annette!)

Readers, any winning Derby bets?