Shelley Lee Riley is the International award-winning author of Casual Lies—A Triple Crown Adventure. The memoir tells her story about Casual Lies, the horse she trained through all three American Triple Crown Races—the first woman to do so. After five years spent in the United Kingdom, she returned to the San Francisco Bay Area and, in her spare time, worked as a freelance writer for various publications. Now retired in Oregon, she enjoys living in a forest, watching the deer clearcut the garden, the sounds of the Canadian geese roosting on the chimney, and the squirrels chewing the siding, the decking, and the sprinkler heads. While not engaged in repairs and replacement gardening, she enjoys writing fiction.
Behind the story
A few years after competing with my horse in the Triple Crown of horse racing, I moved to England. I bought a Triumph Spitfire that I named Nathan and had it painted candy apple red. I lived in a nine-hundred-square-foot flat, a small part of a two-hundred-fifty-year-old estate built on a medieval site. Situated on ten acres, while it had a formal garden, it also offered a spooky overgrown walled-in fairy garden. There was also a lake, stream, weir, fruit tree orchard, and a mile-long drive lined with six-hundred-year-old stately trees. And the house was haunted! (Someday, I may have to recount that story.)
I spent my time exploring the English countryside in Nathan, and the thing about a car as old as Nathan is the adventure aspect takes on a whole new level of meaning. When you left in the morning, you weren’t always sure you and Nathan would make it back in the evening. Nathan was prone to bouts of melancholy.
I have lovely memories of the five years I spent in England and my many visits to Europe: the solar eclipse, Comet Hale-Bopp, seeing in the New Year while drinking cheap champagne in the Piazza del Popolo in Rome, staring up at the Eiffel Tower on the Champ de Mars, and finally with the crazy crowds and the majesty of Trafalgar Square in London.
I spent January in Barcelona and fell in love with the city, the food, and the people. I could have quite happily lived out my life in an apartment overlooking the La Rambla in Barcelona: one word, Paella.
But that was then, and now that I’ve retired again, I moved to the Pacific Northwest. I no longer write special feature articles for newspapers and magazines, ending the stress of deadlines. Now it’s about deer clear-cutting the garden, Canadian honkers on the chimney, squirrels chewing the sprinkler heads, the siding, the deck, and raccoons stampeding on the roof in the dark of night. Such is the bucolic life of living in a pine forest. Go figure.
Still, this gives me plenty of time to do what I like to do best—reading and writing. So, following the publication of a memoir about my horse and running him in the Triple Crown, I ventured into fantasy writing. I published Into Madness, Book One in the Born from Stone Saga, in the fall of 2020. Book two, Heart’s Divided, is currently in the works. I’ve also written a story about dragon racing featuring Tivet, a dragonet like no other.
Please read on for a brief look into Casual Lies’ fantastic adventure.
Married to a jockey, I learned my trade as a trainer in the competitive, male-dominated sport of horse racing while attending California State University, Sacramento, until I earned my degree in Criminal Justice. All the while, I worked hard, hoped, and dreamed as I guided the young horses in my care.
Twenty years passed this way, and one morning, in a snowstorm at a January Thoroughbred sale in Kentucky, lightning struck. My eyes met those of a tiny, fuzzy, inquisitive seven-month-old colt, and there was no going back. A short time later, I signed the sales tag. I had no way of knowing that I’d just gotten lucky—really lucky. In fact, I’d struck the mother lode of horse racing.
In writing Casual Lies—A Triple Crown Adventure, I wasn’t writing to an audience exclusively composed of horsemen and women. I wrote to a far wider audience: those who love horses and delight in the beauty and pageantry of horse racing.
Casual Lies – A Triple Crown Adventure gives a candid glimpse behind the Network camera lenses on the first Saturday in May when arguably the most famous horserace in the world is run—The Kentucky Derby. With its pretty horses, colorful crowds, and excitement that virtually heaves off the screen, every year’s event is an extravaganza to the senses.
The book is a true-life story about the headstrong, talented, and charismatic colt that took me to that event, not as a spectator but as a participant.
Casual Lies never met anyone he didn’t like, and his ardor for life was a powerful motivator whenever I began to doubt the wisdom of staying our course, and hope had started to fade. Together, we challenged the very pinnacle of the Thoroughbred world. I learned from the adventure of a lifetime that believing you can is crucial in achieving a dream, no matter how improbable that dream might seem.