All I know about horse racing is what I learned reading Laura Hillenbrand’s excellent Seabiscuit and the movie based on it. Both were about an underdog horse and a down-on-his luck jockey who together won a big race and inspired many people to persevere during the Great Depression. When I was in college, I also read William Faulker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Reivers, which as I vaguely recall has something to do with horse racing, though the main story centers on three rascals who steal a car in rural Mississippi. I’ve also attended a few parties over the years at which the Kentucky Derby was televised, however I typically was too busy eating and bending an elbow to pay much attention to who crossed the finish line first.

In person, I’ve watched the ponies run (is that still an expression?) exactly once in my life. Several years ago, my wife and I spent an afternoon at Hollywood Park, a thoroughbred race course located below the final approach path of the west-facing runways at Los Angeles International Airport. The track isn’t there anymore. It was demolished years ago to make way for a professional football stadium. The only thing I remember from that day at Hollywood Park was making several $2 bets on different horses based on gut hunch and whether we liked the colors of the jockeys’ racing silks. Suffice it to say, fools and their money are soon parted.

All of which leads me to an email I received the other day from a fan in Australia named William who wrote to tell me how much he enjoyed Deep Fury, my most recent Cordell Logan mystery novel. He also was curious to know if I’d stolen the book’s title from an Australian race horse that also happens to be named Deep Fury. I was surprised. I’d never heard of Deep Fury, the horse.

“Mere coincidence,” I responded. “And what kind of name is that for a horse, anyway? What do they call him for short—Deep?”

William, who said he tends bar at a swanky hotel in Brisbane, disregarded my albeit rhetorical question and responded appropriately enough with a joke about a horse that walks into a bar. The bartender asks the horse, “Why the long face?”

I’m still working on a clever response.

Meanwhile, I’ve done a bit of research on my new equine relative. I discovered looking at pictures of him on line that Deep Fury the horse is quite a handsome lad. He’s a five-year-old bay gelding whose home track is the Sunshine Coast Turf Club on Australia’s west coast, about an hour north of Brisbane, near the totally cool-sounding towns of Currimundi and Caloundra. He’s run 27 races as of this writing and won two of them, earning purses totaling $95,200 Australian dollars, which is about $59,400 in US dollars. Not exactly Seabiscuit money but, hey, you’ve gotta start somewhere.

There’s a lesson here, I think. As a writer of mystery novels, I’ve always been fascinated by fiction, as with real life itself, can often take unexpected turns. My random connection to a horse named Deep Fury is a good example. It reminds me how fiction and reality can sometimes intersect in wonderous ways. In my books, I thrive on those kinds of intersections–the twists and subtle details that keep readers guessing in the same unpredictable yet plausible ways we all face every day.

Writing mysteries is about creating layers of intrigue, where nothing is ever quite as it seems. When my friend William first informed me of about Deep Fury, the horse, I figured it was just a coincidence in names. But the more I’ve pondered it, the more it feels to me like some small clue—a link between stories real and imagined, and in ways I could’ve never anticipated.

It is these kinds of unanticipated encounters where my belief in kismet is affirmed, and in the realization that the best stories often arrive from the most obscure places. It’s not always the obvious twists that matter, but the ones we least expect. Whether in a mystery novel or in real life, discovery is what keeps us moving forward. Who knows? The next plot twist might come from an email, a corny joke, or even a horse halfway across the world.