Simon Wood

Posts Tagged: we all fall down

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DECEPTIVE PRACTICES comes out November 15. Not only is it a new book but it’s also the fourth and final installment of the Bay Area Quartet. The series wasn’t linked by character but by location. I wanted to explore my environment so I broke the Bay Area into four sections and put a book there. DECEPTIVE PRACTICES explores the East Bay (my neck of the woods). The other books in the series being PAYING THE PIPER (San Francisco), WE ALL FALL DOWN (Marin County) and TERMINATED (Alameda).

I hope you’ll check out DECEPTIVE PRACTICES and the other books in the series.

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In recent years I’ve been really lucky.  Several of my books have been embraced my readers and really taken off.  And that’s been fantastic.  However, not every book has done as equally as well.  A few remain undiscovered.  So this is a little tough to accept as every one of them is a beloved child…even if it’s a redheaded stepchild.  Now I know not every book will do as well as others.  Any number of reasons can hold a book back from storyline to style.  So I get it.  It’s not personal.  That said I think people are missing out on some of my books, so I’d like to shine a light on four of my books that I think are worth your time and consideration.

WeAllFallDown400WE ALL FALL DOWN: Hayden Duke is a young man on the fast track.  He’s just signed on with Marin Design Engineering to work on a very high-level project.  But before Hayden started, one of MDE’s employee’s committed suicide.  And he’s not the only one.  Is it the pressure?  Or is there some other connection?  Has Hayden Duke just put himself on the fast track to an early death?

e-scrubs2xTHE SCRUBS: Jeter, the notorious serial killer with a sixth sense, holds court inside London’s Wormwood Scrubs Prison. He’s the focus of the “North Wing Project.”  Under the influence of a hallucinogen, Jeter can create an alternative world known as “The Rift” containing the souls of his victims.

Pardons are on offer to inmates who’ll enter The Rift.  Michael Keeler has nothing to lose and little to live for.  He’s sent into The Rift to learn the identity of Jeter’s last victim.

Road-Rash-500ROAD RASH: James Straley might think his life is cursed, but it doesn’t compare to what lies ahead of him on life’s highway. He’s on the run with the proceeds of a botched bank robbery. It’s all he has. His crew is dead and his getaway car just died on him. He’s on foot with the cash when he comes across a two-car pileup. There’s no saving the drivers, but he can save himself and steals one of the wrecked cars. But he boosts the wrong set of wheels. Within an hour of driving off, he develops a rash that eats away at his flesh. No doctor can help him–only the car’s original owner. If Straley wants his skin back, he must journey on the road to redemption, which ends in the heart of Central America.

work-2BstiffsWORKING STIFFS: In this collection of short stories, the workplace is a dangerous place. The unscrupulous are primed and ready to take advantage of the innocent and naïve. A slight indiscretion can cost the employee everything. A new position can turn a person into someone they are not. Those at the top can be toppled and those at the bottom can be crushed.

Until now, Vincent’s father has kept one side of the business a secret from his son. Vincent is about to learn the family business. On the most important day of his career, Sam’s world will unravel when he helps a woman in distress. Todd has failed in every job he’s undertaken, but that changes when he backs into a drug dealer’s car. Now he’s in hock with organized crime and can only get himself out from under if he works for them to pay off his debt. Kenneth Casper is ailing and so is his business empire. His shareholders circle like vultures. Casper pins all his hopes on a Peruvian shaman with a miracle cure.

I hope you’ll check out these books.  You won’t be disappointed.

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WeAllFallDown400September seems to be promo month for several of my titles.  So please take advantage of several of these month long discounts.  You have no excuse not to pick me up cheap.  😉

PAYING THE PIPER

The ebook edition of my kidnap thriller filled secrets, lies, mistakes and redemption is £1.00 at AmazonUK.

TERMINATED

The ebook edition of my workplace violence themed thriller is £1.25 at AmazonUK.  This book was inspired by an incident at my wife’s old.

WE ALL FALL DOWN

The ebook edition of my chase themed thriller is $1.99 at Amazon.  Think THE FIRM but with engineers instead of lawyers.  Seriously though the book was inspired by a series of suicides in the UK in the 80’s.

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

The trade paperback edition of my bestselling cat and mouse thriller is only $6.99 at the moment at Amazon.  It’s the story of two damaged people who deal with their trauma in completely different ways.

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“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” ~Sherlock Holmes

strangerI’m totally with Sherlock on this one…especially when it comes to the improbable.  I’m drawn to the weird, odd and bizarre.  I’m fascinated by the oddities in life that shouldn’t happen.  It appeals to my imaginative sensibilities.  Blame Roald Dahl and Rod Serling for making me believe in the crazy.  It’s the reason why I’m a rabid fan of the show BANSHEE but not LAW AND ORDERBANSHEE is crazy, intense and over the top and only works when the universe’s cosmic tumblers are off, whereas LAW AND ORDER is rooted in the now and the real, which makes it totally mundane to me (sorry Dick Wolf).  If I want mundane, I can pick up a newspaper or watch the evening news.  I want it weird.  I’m an escapist!  What can I say?

That’s why one criticism of my stories is that they push the limits of believability—and that’s true.  They do.  But for all that limit pushing, they don’t go outside the realm of the possible.  I go out of my way to pay attention to for the strange happening in the real world.   I think I have a fascination with the strange because I possess a small talent for calamity myself.  I have many firsthand accounts of how my life went off the rails.  One example was when I had a near fender bender on a roundabout which then developed into someone filing a fraudulent insurance claim against me.  That led to me being charged with half a dozen driving offenses and was topped off by the police handing me a confession they’d written for me to sign.  Seems a little unlikely but it happened to me…which you can read the complete account here.

So if it can happen to me, it must happen to others.

stranger2I’ve discovered some tragic and cruel twists of fate such as a Sacramento motorcycle cop who responded to a fender bender caused by  an elderly man who pulled out of a turn and tee-boned a car.  The cop felt bad for the elderly man and let him off with a warning instead of citing him.  The following week, the same elderly man did the exact same thing at the same intersection.  This time he struck and killed the motorcycle cop who’d let him off.  The weird what-if game that plays out in your head after that is what inspires my stories.

Things like this have been the inspiration for several of my books.  The trade of life insurance on the living which is the backbone for ACCIDENTS WAITING TO HAPPEN is a real thing.  Private security firms being involved with workplace violence claims which is the foundation for TERMINATED came from something that was happening with one of my wife’s employers.  The disturbing series of suicides in WE ALL FALL DOWN were inspired by similar ones that happened between coworkers in the UK in the 80’s.

And while THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY, PAYING THE PIPER, NO SHOW, etc. don’t have any direct link to an actual event, they are inspired by a way of thinking.  Namely, how can a seemingly mundane event get its strange on?

Now I know this outlook might not be to everyone’s liking but if you’re willing to go off-piste and embrace the improbable, then I think you’ll enjoy the ride.

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Are you British? Do you read ebooks?  Then this the place for you!

Several of my books are being promoted this month and having promotional pricing to go with it.

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 DOWN is only £1.49 at Amazon UK
“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 workplace violence thriller , TERMINATED, is only £1. at Amazon UK.

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.  Gwen has already survived one violent attack, fifteen years ago. But even that experience couldn’t prepare her for Tarbell’s relentless fury. Pulling a knife on her was just the beginning. Like a sadist peeling the wings off a helpless fly, Tarbell is determined to pick apart her life using every means of physical and psychological torment. 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?
 ACCIDENTS WAITING TO HAPPEN is on 99p over at Amazon UK.  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.”
I hope these have whetted your whistle to give them a read…
 

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Certain people, events and occurrences stick with me and no matter what I do, I can’t forget about them. The death of three men in Bristol, England is something I’ve never forgotten. They died a few months apart some time in the late eighties. They weren’t murdered and it wasn’t accidental. All three committed suicide.

What drew my attention to these men was the circumstances of their deaths. All three died in the same city, and they were all working on the same government project. The first man walked into the sea. The second hanged himself from the Clifton Suspension Bridge. The third tied a rope around a tree trunk then around his neck, got into his car and drove away as fast as he could until he ran out of rope. Needless to say, the deaths made the news, albeit not on a national scale. The obvious questions were raised. Why did these men kill themselves? And did it have anything to do with their work? The questions went unanswered. The story sunk below the surface as swiftly as the first victim. Anytime anyone mentions Bristol or the Clifton Suspension Bridge, I think about these men’s deaths.

A lot of my fiction is inspired by real life events, but I don’t like to lift fact and fictionalize it. These men’s deaths intrigued me, but I didn’t want to go trawling through their lives for entertainment purposes. While I’m inspired by real life, I’m squeamish when it comes to using real people’s lives in my books. Due to the sensitive nature of the deaths, I was especially squeamish. Primarily, I want to entertain, not offend. These men were somebody’s husband, son, brother and friend. I don’t want their family and friends reading what is very real to them in a fictionalized venue. I do this because if I were in their shoes I wouldn’t want something very private to me made public irrespective whether it is public domain or not.

So when it came to writing We All Fall Down, I used the premise of a string of suicides for the backbone of the story, but that was it. The book is set in affluent Marin County north of San Francisco and the work the victims were involved in is completely different. I didn’t research these men’s deaths or their circumstances at the time. Instead, I preoccupied myself with reasons for anyone to commit suicide. I suppose this is a sensitive subject for me seeing as I’ve known three people who have killed themselves. While I was searching for reasons, a couple of unrelated news stories provided ample motive for suicide-or in this case, staged suicides.

Seeing as dead men can’t tell tales, I inserted a character with a similar background to my own to unearth the mystery. I’m a mechanical engineer by trade and through my middle to late twenties; I worked as an independent contractor to a number of firms. Although I was one of the team, I was an outsider. Office politics and rumor floated just above my stratosphere. Every now and then, I’d catch a snippet that explained the office dynamic. In We All Fall Down, Hayden Duke is hired on short contract to help a firm finish a hush-hush engineering project after one of the employees commits suicide. He knows there’s something up at the firm, especially when several other employees die. He takes an active role after witnessing the death of his college friend and the person responsible for getting him the job.

I didn’t set out to answer the question why three men killed themselves in Bristol. Instead, I’ve invented a story to satisfy my curiosity. Whatever the reasons behind the original deaths, I hope these men are truly at rest.

Categories: book of the month shelf life

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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 very happy to announce that the German language rights to my crime caper, THE FALL GUY, have been picked up for print, electronic and audio editions. It’s the story of Todd Collins. He’s failed in every job he’s ever undertaken, but that all changes when he backs his jalopy in a shiny, new Porsche belonging to a drug dealer. When the police stop the drug dealer for a broken taillight that Todd has caused and discover a cocaine shipment, a West Coast kingpin holds Todd responsible. On the run from organized crime, Todd discovers his true calling.

This story has gone from strength to strength in recent years.  It first started off life as a short story called FENDER BENDER.  A publisher liked the story so much that we build the concept for my short story collection around it for WORKING STIFFS.  The editor gave me one instruction: develop FENDER BENDER into a much larger story—and THE FALL GUY was born as a short novel. Author, Scott Nicholson, urged me to release it as a standalone piece and I’m in his debt because it took off an eBook and Comet Press picked it for a paperback release. So I’m especially pleased to see it get secure its first translation contract.

I don’t have a release date for the German edition, but I’m hoping it will be before the end of the year.  At the moment, translators are being auditioned for the job.  This is always interesting to see how a translator will bring the story to life in their native tongue.  I wish I was fluent in German to see how the story will be finessed from English to German.  One thing I’m pretty sure of is that the title will change.  All my translated books have come out with totally different titles.  ACCIDENTS WAITING TO HAPPEN became ABGEZOCKT(aka Scorched or Burned in English) and the Turkish edition of WE ALL FALL DOWNcame out as DEATH SONG.  So I’m intrigued to know what THE FALL GUY becomes.  J

I don’t know what the future hold for this story, but I hope it keeps on growing.  I think Todd is owed that much.

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