Discover. . .: #FearlessFriday and the Great Leap of #Faith by Connie Johnson Hambley

Friday, May 4, 2018

#FearlessFriday and the Great Leap of #Faith by Connie Johnson Hambley

FEARLESS FRIDAY

I love where inspiration comes from and how it kicks you into fearless. Please welcome Connie Johnson Hambley with her fearless tale.

Thanks, Brenda, for having me on your blog today. I love the concept of Fearless Fridays. For me? My fear tank is nearly full. To be without fear isn’t movtivating. I’m more of a “Face Your Fear Fridays” kind of girl.

On the cusp of sending three kids off to college, I quit my job as a VP in a Boston Bank to write. No, I was not laid off or otherwise restructured out of gainful employment. I stood on the precipice of the most expensive years of child-rearing and swan-dived into the void.

Oh, I had my gigs. I taught finance to MBA candidates, help found a children’s furnishings company, and ventured into biotech recruiting, but I always made sure writing remained at the core of my efforts. I’m a lawyer by training, so my writing was fact-based. Marketing, promotion, and journalism pieces gave my brain that endorphin bath writers understand. I’m a bit of a geek, so writing for Bloomberg BusinessWeek and Nature was fun!

Then, one night I woke up and a character skittered through the shadows across the ceiling. No, not in a horror story or paranormal kind of way, but she projected herself as if on a movie screen. I saw her and immediately knew who she was. Jessica Wyeth – world-class equestrian and star-crossed heiress who was being framed for murder – beckoned me into her world.

I had a problem. I was a left-brained writer – all facts and rational thinking – with a right-brained idea – one of creative adventure and fiction. I was afraid of what would happen if I grabbed that brass ring. I tried to push her out of my mind, but she proved herself to be a formidable adversary.

So, I took another leap and looked fear dead in the eye. This time, I gave myself permission to write outside analytical and objective lines, but logic still prevailed. I had always inhaled information and exhaled legal briefs or marketing proposals. This time, I kept the facts true, but exhaled a new world populated by terrorists, money launderers, assassins, and tortured souls, and wrote the first installment of my suspense trilogy,

A fiction junkie was born.

CONNIE JOHNSON HAMBLEY began to steadfastly plot her revenge against all bad guys, realThe Jessica Trilogy, The Wake, joins The Charity and The Troubles, and her titles have won Best Fiction at the EQUUS Film Festival in New York City in 2016 and 2017. Her short stories, “Giving Voice” and “Black Ice,” appear in Best New England Crime Stories: Windward and Snowbound, respectively. Connie is Vice President and Featured Speaker of Sisters in Crime New England.

and imagined, at the ripe age of six when an arsonist torched her family’s farm. When receiving her law degree didn’t provide satisfactory tools for retribution, she turned to fiction writing and became immediately satisfied with the varied ways to kill and torment evildoers. Her third thriller in

In THE JESSICA TRILOGY, world-class equestrian Jessica Wyeth becomes a target of an international crime syndicate after uncovering how family secrets link her to the power behind a Boston-based terrorist cell. In this gripping, multi-generational tale, the bonds of blood and love are tested through times of war and peace.

The Charity: Witness to a gang-style slaying, a young woman is hunted to stop her from exposing the money and the people behind a Boston-based terrorist cell.