Simon Wood

Posts Tagged: no show

NO SHOW’s Terry Sheffield is a bit of a hopeless romantic.  I mean the man crossed an ocean for love.  So naturally, he’s the kind of guy who’d make a mix tape (am I dating myself?) for that special girl in his life.  So based on his experiences, here’s what I expect to find on his NO SHOW playlist:

1.       Breakfast in America” – Supertramp
2.       Sara(h)” – Fleetwood Mac
3.       Ain’t No Sunshine (When She’s Gone)” – Bill Withers
4.       Wish You Were Here” – Pink Floyd
5.       Lies” – The Black Keys
6.       She’s Not There” – The Zombies
7.       Revenge” – Sparklehorse
8.       Hold Your Tongue” – Jump Little Children
9.       Cold As Ice” – Foreigner
10.   Rescue Me” – Fontella Bass
11.   American Woman” – Guess Who
12.   I Will Follow You Into The Dark” – Death Cab for Cutie
13.   Trouble” – Ray LaMontagne 
14.   Psycho Killer” – Talking Heads
15.   Oscar Mayer Bologna” – Daniel Bedingfield

Readers of the book should recognize the significance of these songs and song titles, so if you have suggestions for Terry, call them out.  I’m sure Terry will appreciate it.  🙂

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I have a quick bargain book alert.  NO SHOW and TERMINATED both highlighted titles over at Amazon this month.  And in that only they have special pricing throughout the month.
 
NO SHOW: Just $1.99
Englishman Terry Sheffield has just arrived in San Francisco to start his new life with Sarah, the investigative journalist he married after a transatlantic love affair. But Sarah never shows up at the airport…  When Terry reports his wife as missing, the police chalk it up to a new bride with cold feet. Then one murdered woman after another turns up, all with something in common: they had exposed scandals just before their deaths…and their names appear on a list that Sarah composed. As a journalist, Sarah’s exposed her share of scandals, and Terry realizes that she’s not missing—she’s on the run. To find her before the killer does, Terry must explore the dark recesses of his new homeland and rely on the help of some new friends. But as his search brings him closer to finding Sarah, Terry realizes she’s very different from the woman he thought he married.
 
TERMINATED: Just $0.99
Gwen Farris crossed the wrong coworker when she gave Stephen Tarbell a poor evaluation.  That was all it took to push Tarbell over the edge.  He already believes Gwen stole the promotion that was rightfully his.  He won’t let her take anything else from him.  Now it’s his turn to take…and take.  By the time he’s finished with her, Tarbell plans to take her job, her family—even her life.
 
To some people, it’s more than a job…


I hope you’ll take advantage of the bargain pricing while you can.

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I have a quick bargain book alert for my UK readers.  Several of my ebook titles—ACCIDENTS WAITING TO HAPPEN, PAYING THE PIPER, WE ALL FALL DOWN, TERMINATED, ASKING FOR TROUBLE, DRAGGED INTO DARKNESS, DID NOT FINISH & HOT SEAT—are only £1.99.  I don’t know how long the special pricing will last but take advantage of me while you can…book-wise that is.  J
You can find all the titles here: 

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Wives are great things, especially when it comes to pointing out your mistakes.  Last year, my little Julie came to me and pointed to my books and said, “Notice the similarity?”

I stared at my titles and saw the obvious straight away—their sheer awesomeness.  Apparently, that wasn’t what she meant.  She told me to describe them.  I did, then I groaned, then I went to mope in a corner.

Hand on heart, I do my best to be original, to think ahead, to see the big picture, but sometimes I’ll drop the ball.  In this particular case, I managed to drop the ball several times.

So what’s my big mistake—car chases.

My first novel, ACCIDENTS WAITING TO HAPPEN, opens with the hero being run off the road.  My second novel, PAYING THE PIPER, opens with the hero racing across San Francisco after hearing his son has been kidnapped.  My third book, WE ALL FALL DOWN, novel opens with joy riders chasing after a man only to watch him commit suicide.  TERMINATED broke the cycle with a job evaluation interview.  Then I do fall off the wagon again with THE FALL GUY and ROAD RASH which do feature cars at the beginning but don’t have chases though.

Yes, I am a car nut and we live in a car centric world, but it wasn’t my intention to open all my books with some sort of car motif.  It kind of just happened.  Blame it on my subconscious.

In my defense, my first three books may have come out in that order but they weren’t written in that order.  ACCIDENTS WAITING TO HAPPEN might have been my first book, but WE ALL FALL DOWN was my second book, while PAYING THE PIPER was my fifth.  NO SHOW and a couple of other unpublished books were in between these three and none of them featured car chases, so don’t go thinking I’m a one trick pony.  Really…don’t.  I am good at this writing thing.  Just give me a chance.

The irony of ironies (in an Alanis Morrissette, ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife kind of a way) is that both of the Aidy Westlake motor racing books which would be totally legitimate in beginning with a car chase don’t!  Looking at the subsequent story lines I have planned, none of those begin with a car chase either.  That isn’t by design.  It just is.  :-/

When it comes to the opening of one of my books, I have one rule—start with a bang.  Throw the readers into the action with little or no preamble and make the opening dramatic—physically or emotionally or both.  That means cutting to the chase.  Maybe I took this chase point a little too much to heart.  I hope you’ll forgive me.  J 

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My books are on a bit of a roll at the moment, especially in the UK.  I think someone wants me to have a bestseller this Christmas.  I won’t argue with that.   J
December Specials:
PAYING THE PIPER is only 99p (in eBook form) this month over at Amazon UK with 40% off the paperback.
“For years, the serial kidnapper known as the Piper got rich by abducting children from San Francisco’s wealthiest families. When crime reporter Scott Fleetwood gets a call from a man identifying himself as the Piper and offers an exclusive interview, Fleetwood jumps at the chance. But the caller turns out to be a fake, and the rash decision costs the life of the real Piper’s latest victim.For eight long years, Fleetwood has lived with unbearable guilt—and the enduring disdain of the entire Bay area. Now he hears from the real Piper—and it’s not for an interview. The kidnapper has the reporter’s son. But he doesn’t want money…he wants blood. And he’s going to use Fleetwood to get it.”
WE ALL FALL DOWNis only £1.49 at Amazon UK (in eBook form) and $0.99 at Amazon this month with 40% off the paperback. 
“Hayden Duke just landed a coveted contract gig with Marin Design Engineering, largely thanks to his old friend, Shane Fallon. The dream job becomes a nightmare when Shane takes his own life in a seemingly drug induced stupor. The only clue to Shane’s death is an e-mail with an encrypted file he sends to Hayden. It’s a file people would kill to possess. Now Hayden’s got to risk losing everything…before he loses his life.”
My crime collection, ASKING FOR TROUBLE, is only a £1.00at Amazon UK (in eBook form).
“The road to crime begins with a single decision—the wrong one.  Not every decision belongs to the criminally minded.  Some belong to the ill-informed, the weak and the plain unlucky.  In these tales, trouble isn’t an indiscriminate force of nature.  It’s a manmade occurrence that comes when called upon.  The book features the CWA Dagger Award nominated, Protecting The Innocent.”
The first of the Terry Sheffield mysteries, NO SHOW, is only $2.00 at Amazon this month with 40% off the paperback.
“Englishman Terry Sheffield has just arrived in San Francisco to start his new life with Sarah, the investigative journalist he married after a transatlantic love affair. But Sarah never shows up at the airport… The police chalk it up to a new bride with cold feet. Then one murdered woman after another turns up, all with something in common: they had exposed scandals just before their deaths…and their names appear on a list that Sarah composed. As a journalist, Sarah’s exposed her share of scandals, and Terry realizes that she’s not missing—she’s on the run. To find her, Terry realizes she’s very different from the woman he thought he married.”
Bestsellers:

In the UK, ACCIDENTS WAITING TO HAPPEN has been climbing the charts over at Amazon UK.  The book has bouncing around the top 10 for the last week.  This was my first novel and after a decade it continues to keep riding the charts from time to time.  I think it’s because of the provocative storyline.
“Josh Michaels isn’t wanted dead or alive—just dead. That fact becomes shockingly clear when a stranger runs his car off the road. Instead of a helping hand, the man gives Josh a “thumbs down” and abandons him to what is almost certainly a watery grave. Luckily, Josh cheats death…this time. But when more harrowing “accidents” threaten his life, it’s clear he’s a marked man.  As his time and luck rapidly run out, he must unmask an insidious conspiracy bent on making a killing—in more ways than one.”
TERMINATEDhas also been selling well in the UK.  It spent a couple of weeks in Amazon’s Top 100 for a couple of weeks.  It slipped off a few days ago, but I urge you to check it out.  It might just save your life.   J
“Stephen Tarbell needed that promotion. But they had to go and give the job to his supervisor, Gwen Farris. Now Tarbell has had enough—and he’s about to put Gwen on notice. She has two choices: give him a glowing review on his performance evaluation or suffer the consequences. The company’s security firm says they’ll handle the situation, but whose side are they really on? And how do you stop a psychopath so consumed by hate he thinks he’s the one being persecuted?”
I hope you find something that takes your fancy…
 

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I’m rounding out my features on NO SHOW today, I’m sure you’ve heard enough about the book, so I thought I’d make it a fun one.  I guess we think of ourselves as worldly—and why not.  The world is at our fingertips.  Things happen instantly.  Communication with anyone on the planet is just a dial up away.  Our cultures have merged.  We live in the global village.  But sometimes we’re reminded that we’re not as worldly as we like to think we are.  Some people’s misconceptions about Britain I find amusing and I incorporated some of these into Terry Sheffield’s life for NO SHOW—something that annoyed a reader as being improbable.  Oh, I beg to differ.  I’ve been asked some odd things over the years, so here are a few things that have been said to me in all sincerity over the years.  Enjoy!

“Do you have Christmas in your country?” (A coworker asked me this).

“Let me get this right—you’re English and she’s American and you’re married—is that legal?” (A waitress in a Sizzler quizzed Julie and me on this).

“Why don’t you people have the same holidays as us?” (A former boss annoyed that Easter is a four-day holiday in Britain).

“You are officially our ‘metric’ guy?” (Said by a former supervisor).

“Do you celebrate the 4th of July in your country?” (A friend of Julie’s at a party).

“So you’re telling me that England, Britain and the United Kingdom aren’t the same thing?” (A lot people are confused by the subtle nuisances on this subject).

“Are you Australian?”  (This is the most asked question I get.  Sorry Australians.  I swear I’m not doing it on purpose).

I hope you’ve enjoyed at the various insights into what made NO SHOW and that it’s enticed you into picking up a copy. But if need a little more arm twisting, here are some reviews and the first four chapters:

 
Reviews:

Publishers Weekly
OmniMystery News
Bookgasm
Over My Dead Body
Book reviewer,
Elizabeth A White


Excerpts:

Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four

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The inspiration for No Show began with a real life incident that happened fifteen years ago today.  When I came to the US, it was for love (yes, awww…).  I had met an American girl in Costa Rica and we hit it off.  We carried things on after Costa Rica.  Every few months we would meet up in a different country. After a couple of years of this, we decided to take things to the next stage and settle in the same country as husband and wife.  I was the one with the fewest attachments, so I made the decision to leave England for America.  I left my job, sold my house, reduced my possessions down to what I could pack into a couple of bags and jumped on a plane.

I arrived at San Francisco International airport very excited at the prospect of a new life in a new country.  I entered the arrivals lounge expecting to see Julie with a ‘Welcome to America’ sign or some such thing.  Instead I saw a sea of strangers’ faces.  Julie wasn’t there.  I was disappointed not to see her, but I knew Bay Area traffic could be rough and guessed she was stuck in it.  The smart thing was to wait in arrivals because she’d be there in a minute.

Then the minutes piled up and my imagination began to churn.  There was late and there was late.  Had she gotten cold feet and changed her mind?  It was possible.  We were taking a huge leap of faith.  Had she had an accident?  If she had, I had no way of finding out.  And regardless of the outcome, what was I going to do now?

And this was where things got a little tricky.  I hadn’t concerned myself with the minutia of such details as bringing her address or her phone number.  I didn’t need to worry about such things, as Julie was my guide in the US the same way I was her guide in the UK. 

Just as panic was sinking its teeth into me, Julie arrived an hour or so late and full of apologies for the hideous traffic.  I’d arrived on a day when three events were taking place at the same time in the city.

Crisis over.  Disaster averted.  OverdramaNoShow2tic imagination quelled.

Well, not quite.  Our missed connection taught me a valuable lesson—have a Plan B, because I hadn’t realized until that moment how carried away I was with the romance of what I was doing.  I suddenly became aware of how little homework I’d done for myself.  I didn’t know how America worked. 

The bigger question my overactive imagination kicked up was—what would I have done if Julie hadn’t turned up.  Got the next flight home?  Looked for her?  As these thoughts piled up on each other, I saw how unprepared I was for my new life.  I’d put all my faith in Julie and if something had happened to her, I was a lost.  Was this naïve of me?  Yes, but we take our eye off the ball sometimes.

When it comes to my books, I like to put characters in difficult circumstances.  Naturally, my thoughts came back to my first day in the US.  No Show gave me the chance to play with my neurosis and the paranoia of that day and explore the worst possible outcome—my wife going missing.

As for real life, Julie and I will have been married fifteen years at the end of this year and she’s yet to go missing on me.

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Mini-golf plays a part in NO SHOW.  It’s not something you expect to see in a mystery novel, but if I’m anything, it’s unconventional.

I have no interest in traditional golf, but I do love mini-golf!  It’s where Indiana Jones meets the game, making it a far superior game than ordinary golf.  Any idiot with a club can bang a ball 200 yards across an open field, but it takes real skill to get a ball in the hole after getting it through a windmill or around a castle.
   
Mini-golf was something I played as a wee one and stopped playing once my voice broke.  That changed when I moved to the US, where I found mini-golf is a staple of every kiddie arcade I came across.  One of the things about living away from home is nostalgia kicks in because you’ve yet to develop any touchstones in your new country, so you turn to the familiar and the comforting.  For me, my nostalgic touchstone was mini-golf.  
 
Since rediscovering my love of mini-golf, I’ve become somewhat of a connoisseur of mini-golf courses and Julie and I make a point of playing it wherever we travel.  Some of the standouts for us have been a “glow in the dark” course in Hawaii, a course on the edge of a graveyard in New Zealand and probably my favorite, a technically challenging course with actual water features in Seattle. 
 

The one course that really struck a chord with me was a gold-mine themed course outside of Sacramento which was partially subterranean for several holes.  Sadly, it closed down a few years ago and I don’t know if it even still stands.  I hope so, because it formed the basis of The Gold Rush, which is the fictional course that’s featured in NO SHOW and I’d love to get some photos of it for my records.


Some authors have book signings at stores.  I’m thinking I should have them at a mini-golf course.  If I did, would you want to play a round with me?  🙂

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Edenville is the fictional Californian city created for Terry Sheffield in NO SHOW. But while Edenville is fictional, it does have its roots in the real world, so here’s a photo tour of Edenville and a few of it’s landmarks.




This is downtown Edenville



The Dam at Lake Solano



Lake Solano and the scene of a grizzly crime

 


The Boat Ramp at Lake Solano and where the police and coroner gather



Solano Dam Road — Terry’s dark road


If you think you recognize the town, let me know and I might just give you a prize if you’re right.  🙂

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Well, the day has arrived. My new book NO SHOW is released today!  It’s the first book in what I hope will become a long running series featuring Terry Sheffield.  What that series will be about, you’ll have to read the book.  But here’s what NO SHOW is all about:

 Englishman Terry Sheffield has just arrived in San Francisco to start his new life with Sarah, the investigative journalist he married after a transatlantic love affair. But Sarah never shows up at the airport…
 When Terry reports his wife as missing, the police chalk it up to a new bride with cold feet. Then one murdered woman after another turns up, all with something in common: they had exposed scandals just before their deaths…and their names appear on a list that Sarah composed. As a journalist, Sarah’s exposed her share of scandals, and Terry realizes that she’s not missing—she’s on the run.
 To find her before the killer does, Terry must explore the dark recesses of his new homeland and rely on the help of some new friends. But as his search brings him closer to finding Sarah, Terry realizes she’s very different from the woman he thought he married.

The book is available in paperback, as an eBook and on audio.  You can find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Audible and all the usual suspects.  I hope you’ll pick up a copy and spread the word.

Over the next month, I’ll share stories about the book’s storylines, characters and inspirations.

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