Simon Wood

Posts Tagged: Hitchcock

NEW BOOK RELEASE: Father Figure & Tenths of a Second

I’m pleased to present two new and improved releases—FATHER FIGURE & TENTHS OF A SECOND.  These short stories are available in audio and ebook format.  The stories are quite different. FATHER FIGURE is a Hitchcock Presents style crime piece while TENTHS OF A SECOND is very much rooted in the Twilight Zone.  Which is a good thing as shows formed my storytelling sensibilities.  🙂

father figureFATHER FIGURE: Childs is a son of a bitch and a bastard—literally as well as figuratively—but what he really is, is a small time con man. He’s about to upgrade to the big time and go after the score of his life by bilking the software mogul, Charles Reston, out of every penny he can get. He’s going to do it by convincing Reston that he’s his illegitimate son, which shouldn’t be too hard as the billionaire is his father. However, the problem with the long con is that you get a little too close to your mark…especially when you’re looking for a father figure.

Available from:
Amazon
AmazonUK
Audible
iTunes

Tenths of a Second audibleTENTHS OF A SECOND: Martin Warwick is a down on his luck racecar driver. His only accolade is to make the other drivers look good with his mediocre performances.  It’s not that Martin is a bad driver. He’s just not had the breaks.  He needs a better sponsor which would get him a better car and a little luck to put him ahead of the pack.  The break comes in the form of the mysterious Mallory.  He doesn’t have money or connections.  He has a device to make Martin and any car he drives better.

When your hopes and dreams are just outside of your grasp, you’re willing to do anything, regardless of the consequences.  Martin is about to find out what the price of fame really costs—and he’s willing to pay it gladly.

Available from:
Amazon
AmazonUK
Audible
iTunes

If you’re looking for a story for the commute or to fill a lunch hour then these stories are just the ticket.  I hope you’ll give them a read or listen.

 

 

Categories: new book

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BACK STORY: Watching The Detectives

 

This month’s Back Story piece centers on my recent release, CRESTFALLEN.

When I decided to write, I wanted to write PI novels like Raymond Chandler.  There were two problems with that plan—one, I didn’t know what a Private eye did and two, Raymond Chandler is a bloody good writer.  So I tended to steer clear of PI fiction, mainly for the latter reason.  The problem was I wasn’t Chandler.  I didn’t have his experiences or his world view.  I had my own and it was more in line with Hitchcock’s movies—ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.  It was me in a nutshell—and I’m happy with my nutshell. 

However, I still wanted to write pulpy PI stories and I wanted to create my “Marlowe” character.  I came up with Peter Crestfallen about a decade ago.  I tested the waters with a short story.  It sold very quickly and I wanted to keep going but I needed to do my research.  I signed up for a couple of classes in Sacramento—“How to become a PI” and “How to find out anything about anyone.” Even if I never wrote another PI story, I thought the classes would be good research for other novels and stories.

Both classes were run by a woman who was a PI in the greater Sacramento area for a couple of decades—and she was awesome.  Just like Marlowe, Spade, Archer, Hammer, etc., she ran a lone wolf PI agency, but if you’re imagining a leggy redhead with cleavage to drown a football team in, then think again.  In appearance, she had more in common with Miss Marple than VI Warshawski.   

She taught us the mechanics of what you had to do to become a licensed PI in California and how to build investigation hours and credits.  The “How to find out anything about anyone” was essentially a public records class.  She detailed how to track people and find them through public records and how to protect yourself against being traced.  This was all very interesting stuff and useful to me in my other books.  I’ve used several nuggets of information in a number of them over the years.  However, her personal experiences were worth the price of admission.  She talked about her career and how it wasn’t like the movies.  I liked how she was the “go to” person when it came to serving papers on the unserveables. She got to people that other process servers couldn’t reach.  She had some nice tricks for catching people out. Her story about tailing a client’s husband to strip clubs became the inspiration for CRESTFALLEN’S KINK.  A number of her other tales made their way into the stories in some form or another. 

I took the classes for story purposes, not knowing that Julie and I would become PIs ourselves a few years later, but not in the traditional sense.  We worked for an agency and started off as mystery shoppers before ending up going undercover in casinos in Nevada and California trying to unearth staff who were stealing from their employers.  This work is very different from the modern PI who tends to work on the behalf of defense lawyers—read David Corbett’s books for an idea.

Having done some PI work and talked to a few modern day PIs, I was a little worried that the classic PI we know and love ($50 a day plus expenses) doesn’t really exist, so I took comfort that there was someone out there gumshoeing it like Marlowe.  So I hope you’ll give the CRESTFALLEN stories a shot and if you buy a copy, let me know and I’ll send you an audio edition of CRESTFALLEN’S WIDOW just to ensure I pick you up as a client.  J

Categories: book of the month shelf life

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NEW BOOK RELEASES: Tenths Of A Second & Father Figure

A couple of years, an audio book company bought the rights to a couple of original stories of mine.  Sadly, the company went bust a little while ago, but I bought the recordings before deletion.  The stories are quite different.  TENTHS OF A SECOND is a Twilight Zone-style story whil FATHER FIGURE is a Hitchcock Presents style story. Which is a good thing as these shows formed my storytelling sensibilities.  🙂

TENTHS OF A SECOND: Martin Warwick is a down on his luck racecar driver. His only accolade is to make the other drivers look good with his mediocre performances.  It’s not that Martin is a bad driver. He’s just not had the breaks.  He needs a better sponsor which would get him a better car and a little luck to put him ahead of the pack.  The break comes in the form of the mysterious Mallory.  He doesn’t have money or connections.  He has a device to make Martin and any car he drives better.

When your hopes and dreams are just outside of your grasp, you’re willing to do anything, regardless of the consequences.  Martin is about to find out what the price of fame really costs—and he’s willing to pay it gladly.

FATHER FIGURE: Childs is a son of a bitch and a bastard—literally as well as figuratively—but what he really is, is a small time con man.  He’s about to upgrade to the big time and go after the score of his life by bilking the software mogul, Charles Reston, out of every penny he can get. He’s going to do it by convincing Reston that he’s his illegitimate son, which shouldn’t be too hard as the billionaire is his father. However, the problem with the long con is that you get a little too close to your mark…especially when you’re looking for a father figure.

Neither of the stories have appeared in any other format, so if you’d like to listen to them, they are available to download here.  I hope you’ll give them a listen.  They’re fun stories and are nicely read.

 

 

Categories: Uncategorized

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