Simon Sez

Book of the Month: Shelf Life

2012-03-05T08:11:00.001-08:00

I’m fading…kind of.

I received a very sweet letter from one of my publishers last week. I’d ghost written a book for them a few years ago. They got in touch to tell me that they were remaindering the remaining print run (essentially selling the remaining stock to the likes of Half Price Books) and that they were not picking up the option to do a reprint. Essentially, this is the end of the road for that book. They told me not to take the news personally and it was no reflection of me. I thought that was sweet. Other publishers haven’t been so caring of my feelings. Those letters chose the tone of a football coach—we’re junking your book, now walk it off, pussy.

That’s not the only book of mine to fall on the endangered list. I found out there are only four copies of WORKING STIFFS left. THE SCRUBS went out of print last year. There aren’t any plans to reprint THE SCRUBS, although we are talking about a new edition of WORKING STIFFS. And in 2010, all my Dorchester/Leisure paperbacks came off the shelves when they had their financial meltdown.

So in recent years, I’ve seen a lot of my work live out their publishing lifecycles. I’m not particularly upset by that. I have to make space for new work, but at the same time, I do have an attachment to my books. I put everything into their conception and birth, so it’s hard not to be a little teary eyed when they disappear.

But I’m not too downbeat. Just like Dracula, no book truly dies. Rebirth is always around the corner. Just like energy, they cannot be destroyed, they can only change form. Last year, I resurrected my extinct backlist as eBooks. Foreign editions are still coming out and I hope to share some news about further resurrections soon.

So while a part of my work is fading, I’m not concerned, because there are new and wonderful things on the horizon lighting my way. If they weren’t, then I might be a little less upbeat. :-)

A Little Something For the Weekend

2012-03-02T07:35:00.000-08:00

I want to live in a town like Alice's.

"Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise."
~Alice Walker

Hump Day: Down In Alphabet City

2012-02-29T09:04:00.000-08:00

For a borderline spaz such as yours truly, the US road systems are a godsend. There's a logic behind them all that makes it easy for a stranger like me to navigate—with the exception being freeway on and off ramps. This is where American roadways fall down. You want to get on the freeway heading east? No worries—head west for three miles, turn around twice, Evel Knievel it over a broken bridge, detour through México and buy three oranges from a man with an eye patch, then merge with the flow of traffic.

What makes the rest of the system great for a Johnny Foreigner, like me, is that most cities number or alphabetize their streets. 5th Street will follow after 4th Street and C Ave will come before D Ave. It's simple and effective. Bravo American road planners! This all works as long as those planners don't just think about today, but tomorrow and the day after. They have to think to infinitum or the system breaks down.

This became abundantly clear last year when I drove down to Fresno to speak to the San Joaquin Valley chapter of Sisters in Crime. That's about a 400-mile round-trip for me, so I drove. I didn't mind the drive. It was a chance to see parts of California I don't get to see often. The deeper I drove into the valley, the higher the heat climbed. By the time I joined I-5, all the fields had turned yellow. The bristling hills looked like they'd been covered in teddy bear pelts. Things turned a little freaky when I reached Los Baños. On CA-152 turnoffs came thick and fast for Road 2, Road 3, and so on. I did a double take when the road sign pointed me in the direction of Road 15 ½. How very Harry Potter, I thought. Am I on my way to Hogwarts and not Fresno?

I giggled to myself at my very original humor and drove on. Giggles stopped when the next sign announced Road 15 ¾. How very wrong, I thought.

Oh dear, I was driving through faux pas country. After Road 15 ¾, there were a string of fractional streets. Things had gone very awry. Unfortunately, when this happens, there's no going back. You can't renumber the streets or you'll have frustrated mail carriers opening up with automatic weapons. Oops, that's already happened. Did anyone check into a possible link to the renamed streets angle during the investigation?

It doesn't get any better with alphabetized streets either. Everything looks pretty sweet when it comes to A Street, B Street, but what if Jim in planning is dyslexic and misses a street? You are forced to squeeze in a street name, but what—A ½ Street? For example, in between 17th and 18th Streets in San Pablo, there's Tyler Street. Oops! And although I like my alphabet cities, the value of the lettering system runs out pretty quickly. There are only 26 letters in the alphabet. Then what—AA Street? Hmm, a street like that is asking for trouble. People are going to turn up to meetings for that. Even if a city preserves and goes along with its BB Street and CC Street, and so on, it's likely speech impediment groups are going to think this is an elaborate joke at their expense.

So let this be a warning to any budding urban planners out there—think before you create your conurbations. But don't think too hard. I could do with the laughs.

Book of the Month: Moments of Weakness

2012-02-27T06:09:00.001-08:00

From time to time someone will take me to task over my characters—usually my protagonists. The usual complaint is over my hero’s “goodness.” The remarks usually center on, “You know, if your main guy had done the right thing in the beginning, he wouldn’t have gotten himself into all that trouble.” And those people are right. My good guys have usually done something to put themselves in the position they find themselves in. It’s somewhat of a personal belief. If you stray from life’s straight and narrow, then life’s probably going to bite you in the ass and keep biting.

I’m happy with this trait of my stories. Squeaky clean characters blazing a trail for all that is good and right don’t excite me. I like fallible people. People who know to put on oven mitts because they’ve gotten burned a couple of times, not because they’ve been told not to touch hot things without them. I guess I identify with these sorts of characters. I’ve committed a few minor infractions in my time and the repercussions have snowballed. I think it’s the gathering pace of the payback that intrigues me and drives my fiction. The fear and panic experienced when a situation goes sideways makes for great stories, if not for real life.

I must admit it has colored the way I look at the world. I’m not a glass half-empty kind of a guy but more a glass half-filled with something corrosive tipping over and spilling everywhere kind of a guy. I have a habit of predicting how a bad situation will get worse. Once you’ve tempted fate, it has its own gravitational pull that is inevitable.

The spark that ignites my storylines is a moment of weakness. The character is presented with a situation that nine times out of ten they’d ignore, but circumstances are skewed this one time. He’s out of a job. She’s just been dumped. These characters are in a weakened state when an opportunity is presented. Instead of blowing it off, they throw caution to the wind and act out of character. Naturally, it doesn’t pan out and it is going to take a whole lot of fixing to set everything right again. Moments of weakness are dangerous currency.

Lowlifes really underscores the idea of someone at their lowest ebb because of their human frailties. The story centers on Larry Hayes, a San Francisco Detective. He thinks his life has already hit rock bottom. He’s lost his family to divorce and he’s clinging to his career by a thread. All this stems from a painkiller addiction he can’t kick that he picked up from an on-the-job injury. But there’s another level for Hayes to fall as he finds out when he wakes up in an alley after a bad trip with no memory of the last four hours. He thinks this is the wakeup call he needs to turn his life around, but his problems intensify when he receives a call from a homicide inspector. Hayes’ informant, a homeless man named Noble Jon, lies dead two blocks away, beaten and stabbed. The eerie pang of guilt seeps into Hayes. During his lost four hours, he’s been in a fight. His knuckles are bruised and there’s blood under his fingernails. Is he Jon’s killer? The mounting evidence says so. To add insult to injury, his wife has employed a PI to dig up dirt on him to ensure she gets sole custody of their daughter. Hayes mounts an off-the-books investigation and disappears amongst the city’s homeless community to stay one step ahead of a murder charge. In a fight to save his neck, Hayes faces a much larger issue—stay on the path he’s on or turn things around? Despite his faults, isn’t that a character you’d want to read about?

I guess I like my shop-soiled heroes, maybe not to hang out with, but to read and write about. It has a lot to do with how someone reacts under insurmountable odds. There’s more at stake than the mystery or the crime to solve. The character’s soul is at stake as well. And I can’t help root for someone in that position. Everyone loves a comeback kid. I think I also identify with human frailty and characters like Larry Hayes. While I have never done any of things Hayes has done, I can’t say I couldn’t land myself in that level of trouble. I don’t think any of us can. We’re all capable of screwing up bad badly under the right (or maybe it’s wrong) circumstances. There for the grace of God go I and you—don’t pretend you’re infallible. We all have our moments of weakness.

That concludes Lowlifes's month in the spotlight. So I'll leave you with the first three chapters from the book. Enjoy!

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three

A Little Something For the Weekend

2012-02-24T06:50:00.000-08:00

This sums up my world view.

"The glass is always half empty. And cracked. And I just cut my lip on it. And chipped a tooth.”
~Janeane Garofalo

Hump Day: Tiny Red Raincoats

2012-02-22T06:24:00.000-08:00

Just seeing someone wearing a little, red, plastic raincoat gives me goose bumps. Now this doesn't apply to blue or green ones or adult-sized ones or ones made from natural fibers--just the ones made from plastic that are red and sized to fit a five year old.

The film fans out there will immediately know why I have this fear. I saw Nicholas Roeg's version of Daphne Du Maurier's DON'T LOOK NOW.

The movie's climax did it to me. When Donald Sutherland finally learns the identity of the person wearing the little, red raincoat that his dead daughter wore, I nearly collapsed a lung. Since then, little, red, plastic raincoats have given me
the willies.

I know now that I saw the film when I was far too young. It's not often that I say that. I saw a lot of scary movies when I was young, but this one had a profound effect. I find it amusing that when I saw the movie at my tender age, I totally blanked out the famous sex scene between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. I only realized that it existed when I saw the film years later (when I paid attention to those sorts of things).

Even now, I can't watch the film. I recorded it off the telly a few years back. I still haven't watched it. It's probably the only film I love that I'm afraid to watch.

Over the years, I've seen kids wearing the same little raincoats and I've had to literally cross the road to avoid them. Like Donald Sutherland, I have this urge to make sure there is a little child wearing it but at the same time, I don't want to see, just in case I find what he did.

My mum knows about this fear I have and she takes great pleasure in pointing them out to me. Obviously, I'm her favorite child.

There you have it. Some people fear terrorism, spiders or aliens from another world. For me, it's first graders wearing red raincoats.

Now that I've cut you in on this one, don't come to one of my signings dressed in a red raincoat. You wouldn't want to see me scream.

Book of the Month: TREATING PEOPLE HOW I WANT TO BE TREATED

2012-02-20T06:14:00.000-08:00

Lowlifes centers on a murder in the homeless community. As I wrote the story, it could have been easy to show the homeless in stereotypical terms as people lower down on the totem pole than the rest of society. I made it an aim of the story to show all kinds of homeless people, the likeable and the not so likeable.

I think the prospect of becoming homeless is a haunting one. A roof over our heads is such a basic need that it’s hard to imagine living without one. No one sets out to live on the streets, but life and circumstances can get away from us and there's nothing to say that any one of us couldn’t end up homeless, especially these days. It’s easier to fall off life’s tightrope than you think.

The reason this subject appealed to me is that I’ve encountered all sort of homeless people. A few years ago, I was riding my bike into work early because I had to attend an offsite seminar. Unfortunately, I’d forgotten my keys to the building. This resulted in to me changing out of my ratty cycling clothes and into my work clothes by a fountain. With the early hour, I could get away with stripping down to underwear without being caught. So I thought. Just as I was pulling on my trousers, a young couple came around the corner and saw me. They were obviously homeless. They used the central plaza to sleep and the water fountains to the clean up. They mistook me for fellow homeless person and a new one at that and proceeded to tell me where I could get food, what water was fresh to drink and wished me luck on getting back on my feet. It was such a touching exchange that I never shared the encounter with my bosses. I didn’t want the plaza being locked down to make it impossible for this couple to come and go.

A couple of years ago, my sister was in Denver for a conference. She was shocked to find that several of the hotel staff working the conference were sleeping rough on the streets at night. She got to talking to a couple of these people who were in their early twenties who explained they could afford to eat, but not to live anywhere. My sister struggled on a personal front with that harsh reality.

Quite recently, late at night, a man offered to wash my wife’s windshield at a gas station in San Francisco. At first, she said no, but after she filled up, she offered the guy a couple of bucks. He refused the handout and said he'd only take the money if he cleaned Julie’s windows, so she let him. While he worked, they talked. He explained he'd been laid off, the benefits had dried up and he had no money coming in. He refused to beg for money, but he was desperate to work, even if it was for loose change. It’s hard not to admire someone for that level of self-respect.

I guess I’m saying you can't judge person just by looking at them or by the situation you find them in. You have to talk to people first before you can make an assessment. I can't say every homeless person I’ve encountered is like the people I’ve described. Some homeless people have been rude, aggressive, crazy and/or unredeemable. So when I’m approached by a homeless person, I always engage them. I may not give on every occasion, but I never pretend the person doesn’t exist, because if the tables were turned, I would want someone to give me a moment of their time.

Discover My Other Side

2012-02-18T10:50:00.001-08:00

I'm happy to say that readers have been finding my eBooks from all quarters. Nook readers have been discovering my books of late. Two titles Nooksters have yet to find are ROAD RASH and THE SCRUBS, which are two of my darker tales that came out under my pen name, Simon Janus. Both tales blend hardboiled crime and horror. In ROAD RASH, a bank robber steals a car and goes on a road to redemption. In THE SCRUBS, an inmate volunteers for a prison sponsored experiment in order to save a child's life.

I hope the Nooksters amongst you will be intrigued enough to check these titles out.

A Little Something For the Weekend

2012-02-17T06:47:00.000-08:00

This one seems topical...some seventy years after it was said.

'If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has.'
~John Maynard Keynes

Hump Day: Gristle

2012-02-15T07:08:00.000-08:00

The other week I took Julie to task over her werewolf tendencies when it comes to meat. In a gesture of fairness, I suppose I should share something about me and meat issues. I don't do gristle. I'm sorry--I just can't eat it. I pick through my food and if I find any on my plate, I cut out.

And when I say gristle, I mean anything that can't be called meat. Now, I know there's nothing wrong with consuming it and some people believe it's good for you, but it doesn't mean I have to. Supposedly, I'm a member of the highest form of intelligence on this planet and that means I can pick and choose what I eat. I don't have to eat the skanky bits.

Obviously, Julie thinks I'm crazy. But I have standards. Being the scientist type she is, she does try to sell me a dummy sometimes.

"That's not fat, it's connective tissue."

Oh, connective tissue. That sounds a whole lot more appetizing. I don't think so.

Book of the Month: When the Chips Are Down

2012-02-13T10:05:00.000-08:00

Lowlifes centers on a washed up cop investigating the murder of a homeless man. When my collaborator moviemaker, Robert Pratten, approached me with the idea of a crime story set in the homeless community, it immediately appealed to my sensibilities. Regardless of your opinions regarding the homeless, the idea of becoming homeless is a scary thought and in these dire economic times, it’s something that could happen to any of us. That’s the great appeal of Lowlifes to me. That a calamity such as homelessness could strike any one of us.

It’s very easy to judge others and their decisions, but I believe we walk a fine line in our daily lives. I’ve spoken to book clubs where readers have remarked that they would never find themselves in the predicaments that some of my characters find themselves in. I say you just haven’t found yourself in awkward predicaments—yet. Circumstances bigger and meaner can strike us at any time and wreck our lives. Homelessness could be the result, but so could jail, divorce, loss and a host of other things. The upshot is that our lives can be upended at any moment.

So, when Robert presented me with a brief outline for the book, there were certain things I wanted to have in the story. The protagonist is San Francisco PD detective, Larry Hayes. He's lost his wife and daughter to divorce. He's lost his self control to a painkiller addiction picked up from an on-the-job injury. And he'll lose his career if he doesn’t get a handle on his life. It could be argued that Larry has fallen off the tightrope, but for me, he hasn’t. He stands on the precipice. His situation can get a whole hell of a lot worse. He can end up living on the streets like the man whose murder he's investigating or he can take a grip on his life and turn it around. Maybe sifting through an already ruined life reflected back at him will be the thing to help Larry find his balance and keep from falling.

I don’t necessarily condone the decisions that Larry Hayes has made when readers meet him on page one, but I sympathize. I don’t believe any of us can say we wouldn’t allow ourselves to end up in Larry’s position. Life’s rug can be yanked out from under us at any time. Luck, timing and due diligence ensures that it doesn’t happen too often, but sometimes, luck plays against us and it all goes wrong in a hurry.

So let Larry Hayes’ story be a warning to us all that the ground under our feet isn't as stable as we take for granted.

WORKING STIFFS Is A #1 Bestseller & Props For TERMINATED

2012-02-11T08:18:00.000-08:00

Some nice press for WORKING STIFFS resulted in a nice sales book and yesterday the book became the bestselling anthology on Amazon.

I'm really pleased for the sudden success. WORKING STIFFS was a break out book for me, so it's good to see it doing well.

In other news, TERMINATED picked up a really nice review from the nice people over at Juniper Grove. This maintains the string of good reviews for this book. :-)

A Little Something For the Weekend

2012-02-10T07:05:00.000-08:00

This has always appealed to my sensibilities. :-)

"Life is suffering. Tee-hee, ha-ha."
~Toad the Wet Sprocket "Little Buddha."

Hump Day: The World Isn't Flat

2012-02-08T08:36:00.000-08:00

Congrats to the New York Giants for winning the Super Bowl at the weekend (even if the 49ers narrow loss still stings). However, I do take issue with their “world champions” status. Correct me if I'm wrong but all the teams in the NFL are in the US. Worse still, there aren’t even enough teams to cover every state in the nation. That hardly constitutes a national league, let alone a world one.

But the NFL isn't alone in its worldly claims. The NBA determines the World Champions of basketball while boasting the same number of non-American teams taking part as their football counterparts. Baseball does slightly better with its World Series as it can boast two teams from Canada (although there was move to eliminate one of the Canadian teams a few years ago). Still it's hardly a global sporting battle--transcontinental at best. And the NHL's ice hockey championship is just as international as baseball by allowing the Canadians to come south of the border.

And ESPN had the nerve to scoff the Rugby League World Cup a few years back because it only had sixteen nations taking part. Well, that's fifteen more than take place in the Super Bowl.

To illustrate the point, the organizing bodies of America's big sports are the NFL, NBA and NHL. The 'N' stands for national. Major League baseball has two leagues, the National and the American. This is what clued me into the fact that they aren't world sports bodies.

This issue isn't new. I do remember an NFL official being asked to justify this point. His answer was that players from other nations take part and the game is open to anyone in the world. The fact that very few foreign players are in the league isn't really an issue. A round of applause for a quick comeback, but it's hardly an answer. It's like saying we sent invites but nobody came. I’ve heard other justifications for world champion status such as the NFL is the best football league across the planet; therefore the winners are by default world champions.

I don't know what it is about American sports that they have to add some prestige to the championships by gluing "World Title" to the front. Just saying it doesn't make it so. I do think the NFL and NBA titles get tagged with a global moniker because baseball has the World Series, which as far as I can ascertain was something to get the two national league champions to play each other. You're already the national champion, so what else is there to play for?

Before you accuse me of sports snobbery, I don’t say any of this to belittle American sports. I really like American football (go Colts!) and I'm quite partial to basketball. I just wish they'd call traveling infractions now and then. Baseball is fun if slow sports are your thing and ice hockey is great if you like fighting. So, it's not like these sports don't have their appeal to foreigners.

Now, I know several sports have branched out of US borders. Baseball has found a home in Japan and in a number of Latin American and Caribbean countries. American football did have a World League for a time. Basketball is played throughout Europe, as is ice hockey, but there is no world trophy in these games, at least not in the same way as you'll find in soccer, rugby or cricket.

Sadly, America is missing out on a truly special part of the sports experience—international competition. This June will see the European soccer championship finals. Over fifty nations played each other for two years for only sixteen nations to go to June's finals. It's hard not to get wrapped up in the moment. Last year, it was the Rugby World Cup. In two years, it's the Soccer World Cup and over a hundred nations are battling in the preliminary stage games as I write. Forget your team pride. It doesn't compare to your national pride during a world tournament. With a little bit of drive and the development of a world body, there could be a NFL World Bowl, a real baseball World Series and an IBA Basketball World Cup. Now wouldn't that be fun. Wouldn’t that be something to crow about? Come on American sports, it's time to join the party.

Book of the Month: Lowlifes

2012-02-06T07:36:00.000-08:00

LOWLIFES is February's book of the month. It's a crime novella set in San Francisco. Unlike my other books, it wasn't my idea. Someone came to me with a story idea and this was the result...

Storyline: San Francisco Detective Larry Hayes thinks he's hit bottom when he wakes up in an alley after a bad trip with no memory of the last four hours. This is only the beginning of his problems. Two blocks away, Hayes' informant, a homeless man named Noble Jon, lies dead, beaten and stabbed. The eerie pangs of guilt seep into Hayes. Is he Jon's killer? The mounting evidence says so. Hayes mounts his own investigation to stay one step ahead of murder charge and disappears amongst the city's homeless community.

What They Are Saying About the book:
“A terrific pulp-fiction piece that reminds us just how easy it is to fall off life's tightrope.”
— SJ Rozan, Edgar Award winning author

"Inspector Hayes, a complex, likable cop, finds himself in a world of trouble. Lowlifes grabs you on the first page and is nonstop action to the end.”
— LJ Sellers, author of The Detective Jackson series

"Lowlifes provides a gripping , Rashomon-like look at the murder of homeless police informant Noble Jon. Innovative use of multiple media and alternative technology amps the verisimilitude while providing a deeper insight the characters' desperate motives. An intriguing twenty-first century murder mystery."
— Mark Coggins, author of The Big Wake Up

"Simon Wood's inventive and original LOWLIFES takes you on a tour of San Francisco no tourist gets to see. The ride's as thrilling as a high-speed chase down Lombard Street, and just as twisty. Don't miss it!”
— Kelli Stanley, author of City of Dragons

Over the coming weeks, I'll share a little on how this book came about and what happens next. Enjoy!

A Little Something For the Weekend

2012-02-03T06:05:00.000-08:00

Time to grab life by the scruff of the neck and make something of it.

"Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass."
~Maya Angelou

Hump Day: Meet My Wife, The Werewolf

2012-02-01T06:58:00.000-08:00

Let me just say my wife, Julie, is a lovely person, perfect in every way--well, not in every way, but I'm willing to overlook many of her short comings. I'm generous like that. However, there is one thing I can't ignore and that's when it comes to her and meat.

In the TV news world, if it bleeds it leads. When it comes to my dinner plate, if it bleeds it goes back to the kitchen. I like my meat to come out of the kitchen with more than a suntan. Julie's different. The girl's a carnivore and a werewolvian one at that. She's a meal away from running around on all fours and baying at the moon.

"I used to eat raw hamburger when I was little," she says proudly.

That's wonderful, my angel. Wow, am I a lucky boy or what?

Julie has gotten my little foible of wanting my food cooked. When she cooks and cuts the meat open and a trickle of red leaks out along with a yelp, she looks at me with a frown and says, "I'll put yours back on for a couple of more minutes."

Yeah, you do that, wolfgirl.

But I forgive her and her animalistic ways. She is who she is. Although, I do get a little worried about having an open cut around her.

Book of the Month: Making A Killing

2012-01-30T07:07:00.000-08:00

It’s the end of the month so ends the spotlight on WORKING STIFFS. I have to say this book holds a special fondness for me. One of the stories, My Father's Secret , garnered an Anthony Award, which was nice. The good critical response served as a calling card which helped in part to land a book deal for my novels. Finally, I’m a short story fan.

I do have to thank Blue Cubicle Press publisher and editor David LaBounty for the book. I was trying to sell him another different book but after reading one of my stories he came up with the workplace crime theme. I do think his influence made the book what it is.

I hope my blogs have piqued your interest to check the book out. The paperback is down to its last few copies, so if you want one, I suggest you snap one up while you can. The eBook will keep its legacy alive. However, the good news is that a new paperback edition in the offing. I do have an offer I’m considering.

I also hope that you'll spread the word about WORKING STIFFS too. You shouldn't keep this book a secret. In the meantime, you can read a couple of stories about the book.

A Break in the Old Routine
My Father's Secret

A Little Something For the Weekend

2012-01-27T06:49:00.000-08:00

Yay, I'm a character...and it's why I have kevlar vest!!

“If you don't have enemies, you don't have character.”
~Paul Newman

DID NOT FINISH: New Edition

2012-01-26T06:09:00.000-08:00

There's a trade paperback edition of DID NOT FINISH out in the UK. The US edition will be out later this year. And for those who asked, the ebook edition is also now available around the world.

Trade Paperback(UK only)
Kindle ebook US
Kindle ebook UK
Nook
Kobo

Hump Day: Garbage Disposal Units

2012-01-25T08:28:00.000-08:00

Garbage disposals give me the willies. Something that lethal shouldn't be in the home. It's like keeping a chainsaw in a baby's crib. You just know there's going to be tears.

Maybe it's a product of my English upbringing, as they don't exist in England, or maybe I've seen too many American horror films, but I just don't trust those things. I know there is an on/off switch, but there are ghosts in machines, faulty wiring, and malicious wives. Who's to say that when I stick my hand in there, it won't suddenly switch itself on?

When I first moved to the US, I never went near the disposal in our apartment. Julie would catch me trying to sneak food items out to the trashcan.

"Where are you going?" she'd ask.

"Nowhere."

"What's in your hand?"

"Nothing."

"Show me."

Julie forced me to face my fear and I do use the disposal now and again. There was a moment of joy a couple of years ago when the disposal choked on a chicken bone and died. Good, I thought, that's the end of you. But Julie insisted on a replacement. The new one spits at me--and only me--when I use it.

From time to time, the thing jams, but I don't go near it. I let Julie fix it. Let her find out what I know, the hard way.

Book of the Month: Is It Safe?

2012-01-23T07:54:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about the perception of safety the other day. Julie doesn’t like it when I leave the front door unlocked when we’re in the house. She doesn’t want anyone storming the castle gates while we’re at home, so she puts her faith in a deadbolt. A two inch slug of steel not even an inch in diameter will keep her from harm. She doesn’t worry (but probably will after this blog) that there’s nothing stopping evil doers from chucking a rock through any of our floor to ceiling windows and entering the house that way.

I started thinking about other safe things in our lives.

When the little red man tells me not to walk, I don’t. The little red man knows all about danger. That’s why he’s red. When I ignore his advice, my heart rate is up a few beats.

Down on the BART system, a row of yellow bricks tells me I’m safe from the speeding trains if I stand behind the yellow bricks, I’m safe. And I do feel safe. The moment I stand on those yellow bricks, I feel queasy. I’ve put myself in danger. A train could hit me. Someone could bump me and send me sprawling onto the electrified rails. Those yellow bricks have some power behind them. It’s really silly. The bricks have no power. My safety can’t be measured by the width of a row of yellow bricks. There’s so much other contributing factors that can take their toll on me.

How many of us fear earthquakes, tornadoes, being struck by lightning or an in-law coming to stay? While these things exist, there’s little chance of them affecting us?

I look around me without my safety goggles on and reexamine my environment. There are so many things I perceive as safe. Harm won’t come to me because I am not putting myself in harm’s way. Theoretically, that is. But boy, isn’t it a tenuous belief system? I am safe on the sidewalk because sidewalks are safe. There’s nothing to say a car won’t plow into me or I won’t trip and fall into road, but I don’t think about these things because the sidewalk is my talisman.

It all comes down to perception. If I perceive danger everywhere I go, then I will see danger everywhere. Perception is reality. If I think safe, then I am safe. I guess there’s a little bit of the Pavlov’s dog syndrome at work inside us all.

I quite like it when my thinking goes off the rails like this. I cross my eyes and I see the emperor without his clothes on. This is useful when it comes to the stories I tell. I like to unpick a character’s world until it unravels by attacking all the things that these people hold dear. Basically, I break down their perceptions and belief system. Life is a tightrope and I like to twang the cable while there are people on it—fictionally speaking that is. WORKING STIFFS serves as a good illustration for this thinking. Several of the stories take this theme to heart. We catch these characters on their worst days on their life, professionally and privately.

I hope I haven't given of you worriers out there something worry over. If I have, don't. Now, sleep tight and I'll see you in your dreams.

A Little Something For the Weekend

2012-01-20T05:44:00.000-08:00

Next time, don't throw out that busted crockery.

“Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than a whole one”
~E. B. White

Hump Day: Moths

2012-01-18T08:32:00.000-08:00

I hate moths. I hate their fluttery wings and that powdery crap that comes off on your skin when they touch you. It's like they're made from a pharaoh's wrappings. There has to have been some ancient curse placed on them. Think about it. They only come out at night and they seek purification by entering a naked flame. Walk into the light my children. All is good.

Now this fear isn't totally irrational. I have good reason to fear these scumbags. About twenty years ago, I awoke and reached over for a glass of water and drank from it. Something was in the glass. I spat my drink back into the glass and flicked on the light. My room was filled with hundreds of moths clinging to the walls and ceiling and a bunch had fallen into my glass of water. I leapt out of bed and rinsed my mouth out, but I couldn't wash away the taste of moth out. Since then I've made it my duty to kill moths. I spray them with deodorant. It dries out their wings and they die an arid death.

When I was in Costa Rica in '96, I did get the chance to test myself in my own personal Fear Factor. In a nature reserve called Rara Avis, this Belgian researcher has this moth and butterfly habitat containing all these rare Central American species. I went in and there were these huge moths. Each wing was the size of an open hand. One came fluttering towards me.

"There are only three of these in the region," he told me.

"There are only going to be two in a minute if it gets any bloody closer," I mumbled.

The Belgian didn't hear but the moth did and veered off.

It's not all bad news. Nicole Kidman is afraid of butterflies. I think we should hook up and protect each other, as I don't have a fear of butterflies or Nicole Kidman.

Book of the Month: You Made Me A Criminal

2012-01-16T06:58:00.000-08:00

Some people give me odd looks after they’ve read something of mine. They see me, they read the stories and they merge the characters and me together and see the same person. They don’t see easy-going, Simon. They see evil-doing Simon. I’m not evil doing. I’m actually very nice. I rescue animals off the street, I pay my taxes and I’ve never held up a bank (well, not in California and besides, I was very young).

Consider this quote from Cemetery Dance for WORKING STIFFS: “Consistently surprising and well-written, Working Stiffs proves Simon Wood is a criminal genius. We should all be glad he’s writing this stuff and not doing it.”

This isn’t the kind of quote I should have on a tee shirt when I visit the FBI.

That’s the problem. Readers blur the lines between the characters we scribblers create and the scribblers. I’ve been told on several occasions that I’m not a nice person based on my stories. I’ve been asked if I’ve cheated on my wife when they’ve read about a character’s infidelity. As shocking as these statements can be, I can understand them. I’ve said myself. When I tell a story, I don’t base my characters on people I know or people I’ve read about, but I place myself in the shoes of those characters and view the world how they view the world. So for all intent and purposes, I am the good guys in my stories and I’m the bad people in my stories.

But that doesn’t make it me.

I’m not living out my fantasies on page because I fear capture if I committed them in the real world. I’m not outlining my future crimes. I’m not a depraved person getting my kicks on paper. I’m nice, easy going, animal rescuing Simon. But I can conjure up crimes and motives for killing and invent people react to those circumstances and I am empathic to their sensitivities. If I was faced with the crisis of conscience that a character is faced with, I can see their point of view and follow it. that character can be a good person doing the wrong things for the right reasons or a bad person doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons. I can see it from their perspectives. But am I like them? no. would I act like them if their position? Perhaps. But the people on the page aren’t me. a lot of writers I’ve met and befriended are nothing like the people they write. Most horror writers I know are some of the most down to earth people I know. Eavesdrop on conversation at any World Horror Convention and you’re going to hear them talking about pets and their kids and not how to dismember a body a dozen way from Sunday.

Granted, characters are the writer’s alter egos and altered egos. They are the people they would like to be, possibly, but they are also the kind of people we wouldn’t like to be. But at the end of the day, there is a big distance between the writer and his darker characters—well, certainly in my case. I cant speak for everyone.

At the end of the day, I’m a storyteller and like Marvin Gaye says, I need every kind of people to tell my tales and that includes the bad ones. So the next time you read a nasty character and you start comparing the writer to that character, put some distant between the two. I know we do.

A Little Something For the Weekend

2012-01-13T07:33:00.000-08:00

Some perfumes aren't pretty.

"Desperation is a stinky cologne."
~Police Chief Grady (from Super Troopers)

Hump Day: Puppets

2012-01-11T08:16:00.000-08:00

"Tell them about the puppets," Julie said. "Go on. Tell them."

So I'm telling you. This pet peeve isn't mine. It's Julie's. And it's a peeve she has with me when it comes down to me and puppets. Seeing as we're chatting about my youth, this seems to be the perfect time to bring this pet peeve up.

I have a nasty habit that bugs the crap out of Julie. I'll wax lyrical about a TV show from my childhood. I blew it when I tried to explain the show Thunderbirds.

"There used to be this show Thunderbirds and it was the best. I love the technology. They were one of the first people to show aircraft with a swept forward wing design, which was a Barnes Wallace concept."

Of course, Julie didn't have a clue what I was talking about, so I hunted down a DVD to show her. I sat her down and played it for her.

"They're puppets. I can see their strings."

"I know. Isn't it cool? They applied this to all their shows. Can you imagine how expensive the show would have been if it was real life?"

"You didn't say this was a puppet show."

"I didn't know I had to."

I tried to explain the marvel of imagination to her, but she couldn't get by the strings issue.

My sister compounded matters when she sent me replica Clanger and Bagpuss dolls for a birthday.

"What are those?" she asked.

I explained.

"What is it with you and puppet shows?"

"Nothing. They're just shows I liked when I was a kid."

I have a habit of retaining silly crap that strikes a chord, so I still know the songs from Fingerbobs. I often serenade Julie with the Fingermouse song and others.

"Who's Fingermouse?" she asks.

"Well, Rick Jones, a.k.a. Yuffy, would tell all these stories with the aid of Fingermouse, Flash and Gulliver."

"Is this a puppet show?"

"No," I say sheepishly.

"It is. It's a damn puppet show."

"Not really. Rick Jones, a.k.a. Yuffy, used to wear a glove and attach a paper cone that sort of looked like a mouse's face to his index finger and I'm not sure that constitutes as a puppet under the Geneva conventions."

But by then she's walked off in a huff.

Now Julie won't have anything to do with my puppet stories or shows. Anything that has strings, fits over someone's hand or is made of clay is taboo. This is the reason why I watch my Wallace and Gromit DVDs late at night after Julie's gone to
bed.

So Julie has a pet peeve. I don't see it as my problem. She's one of those people who peeks behind the curtain to see the wizard. I'm quite content to believe in the magic...

New Books on Kobo

2012-01-10T16:31:00.000-08:00

At last, Kobo has made PAYING THE PIPER, TERMINATED and WE ALL FALL DOWN available for download. Yay!

Book of the Month: Little Things

2012-01-09T09:58:00.000-08:00

Like with all my books, the stories have origins in something from real life. WORKING STIFFS is no different and as a story collection, it has a bunch of inspirations. Here's some of the stories behind the stories.

Old Flames Burn The Brightest
I’ve been in the US approaching eight years now and during that time, I’ve gained a bunch of friends, but this has been at the expense of my friends back home. I’ll be digging through some box of junk for something and come across something else that will make me all nostalgic, and I get to wondering about all the people I’ve lost touch with. What are they doing? Have they changed? Are they married or divorced or both? In my mind’s eye, they haven’t changed. They’ll always be the same people I knew back in England, forever frozen in 1998.

But these people can’t be the same. During my brief trips back to England, even my friends I still see have changed. Their lives have moved on and I haven’t been around to witness it. I don’t think I’ve changed, but I’m sure those people see differences in me too. It's odd to think about, but true.

But with the writing, there’s a chance I may re-encounter lost friends. It’s happened already. Now and again, I’ll get an email along the lines of—aren’t you the Simon Wood I used to go to school/beat up once/stole my cat?

I still have hopes that I’ll bump into these lost friends and that was the inspiration of Old Flames Burn The Brightest. Colin Hill encounters a never-was girlfriend, Denise. He hopes to rekindle something that never existed, but Denise isn’t the same person Colin used to know and unfortunately for Denise, neither is Colin.

My Father's Secret
This was an easy story to write because Raymond Chandler told me what to write. I have an old BBC recording which features Ian Fleming interviewing Raymond Chandler. Fleming and Chandler discuss the differences in their work and what inspires them to write what they do. During the interview, Chandler describes how mob hits were arranged in the U.S. I thought, wow, what a great idea for a story.

I used the mechanics of a mob hit for the skeleton of the story, but I added the complication of the relationship between father and son. Don’t go reading anything into the relationship between my own father and me. Rarely does anything from my own personal experiences make it directly to the pages of my stories. Rather, certain facets of life and people tug at my sensibilities.

So thanks, Ray. I owe you a gimlet.

Parental Guidance
Where do you get your ideas from?

It’s a familiar question I’m asked. Literally anything can inspire a story. With Parental Guidance, it was a TV advertisement. It just goes to show that TV advertising works—just not the way they hoped.

The ad was for credit consolidation. It was one of those cheesy, homemade adverts that do the product or service being pimped no favors. The ad was simple. A family, consisting of husband, wife, and two kids, sit in front of the camera while the father tells how his life was out of control because of credit debt until he turned it all around thanks to blah-blah credit counseling. The ad ends with the father saying, “I took control and my life has never been better.”

It was such a creepy line to end the advert on that it gave me the chills. There was just something about the actor’s delivery, like he was trying to let us in on his real secret. The story came to me before the ad break ended. I wanted a tale of keeping up with the Joneses with a difference. I wanted a tarnished tale about what it means to keep up with not only the Joneses but the world in general, but I wanted darken it with the uneasy sentinment I felt after hearing the father’s last sentence.

A Break In The Old Routine
I people watch and I have a nasty habit of giving the people I watch a whole history. A Break In the Old Routine began life that way. I was riding BART into San Francisco and there was this striking women sitting several rows over from me. Watching her, I came up with a character prfolie for her. Wasn’t that nice of me?

I got an attack of the guilts when I went to get off the train and she got off with me. For a frightening moment, I thought this woman was going to call me out for staring. She didn’t and she went on her way, but I thought about what if she had called me on it? What then?

I have to give credit to Working Stiffs’ editor, David LaBounty for the success of this story. He took what I thought was a decent enough story and turned into something special. He read my draft and said that he felt the story should end differently. And he was right. I hope you agree.

The Real Deal
The Real Deal, like Parental Guidance, was inspired by television. And no, I don’t spend all day in front of the TV, just most of it. I watched an episode of Night Gallery which featured an old gangster trying to preserve his legacy. It was an interesting story with a lame ending. But the crux of the story, trying to preserve one’s own mark on history, stuck with me. A couple of years later, I watched an episode of Lonely Planet and travel icon, Ian Wright, traveled to Peru and went through a bizarre witchdoctor ceremony to cure him of all his ills. These two things clashed to create a story about an ailing businessman trying to save his equally ailing business empire.

Officer Down
This was one of those story ideas that once it came to me, I couldn't dislodge it. This image popped into my head of a police officer getting shot in the line of duty, but surviving because of his kevlar vest. The key thing that stuck with me was that tiny moment before being shot where you believe you're going to die, only to survive.

I was fascinated by how someone would cope with that juxtoposition of living when you believed you were going to die. Could a person continue under those circumstances? For the character in Officer Down, I decided he couldn't.

To pile on the pain, the police officer is shot with his own gun after he loses it in a tussle with a thief. The cop can't move on with his life until he gets his gun back and in doing so, he breaks the rules he was sworn to uphold.

A Little Something For the Weekend

2012-01-06T07:16:00.000-08:00

I'm getting deep for 2012 right out of the gate.

“Men can live without air a few minutes, without water for about two weeks, without food for about two months - and without a new thought for years on end.”
~Kent Ruth

Hump Day: Food Without A Face

2012-01-04T07:09:00.000-08:00

I'm a pet owner and I like give my boys something good to eat, so in addition to their dry and tinned food, I like to throw in a little bit of beef or chicken. Essentially, I like to up the food quality ante, but I seem to be alone in this. Others want to lower the bar.

My heart sinks when I'm in the pet food store and I wander down certain aisles that seem to contain nothing but animal extremities. There are bins and bins of pig snouts, cow hooves, and cow, lamb, & pig ears. I understand animals aren't people so they eat things I wouldn't eat, but come on. Is there nothing sacred?

Apparently not.

A new product came to my attention the other week--Lamb Lung Chips! Who the hell thought of that? Some budding Hannibal Lector? And furthermore, who thought lamb ones would be tastier than cow ones? And these are the parts they are willing to label. There are such things as: ear puffs, moo puffs, moo tugs and lamb crunchies. What these things actually are, I haven't a clue. My mind boggles at the possibilities of what will hit the shelves next. Maybe donkey knees?

I just hope the animals are dead when these people take the snouts and ears and what else is left from the creatures. I'm a regular donator to the ASPCA and other animal charities, and I don't want them to send me pictures of their latest cruelty case where they've discovered a farm filled with snoutless pigs, hoofless cows and lungless sheep.

This is really plumbing the depths. Can't we aim higher than this for our animals? Now I shouldn't get too high and mighty because I know someone will raise the uglier side of hotdog meat.

I know animals aren't fussy about this. They're quite happy to eat it if it's there. I suppose I'm squeamish about my food's origins. I like a nice steak, but I don't like thinking of it as some longhorn wandering around the meadows. My food has to be anonymous, without a face and packaged in 10oz portions. When I hand my dog an animal product with a recognizable feature, suddenly it's all brought home to me--that to sustain a life, I must take a life.

Ecologically speaking, I shouldn't be too distraught over the use of animal leftovers for food. At least nothing is going to waste. This trend for "no scrap left behind" is good news for pets, but bad news for burger joints.

Book of the Month: Working Stiffs

2012-01-02T07:27:00.000-08:00

It's a new year, a new month and a new book. January's Book of the Month is WORKING STIFFS.

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. 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.

WORKING STIFFS...Some jobs are worth dying for.

My Father's Secret from the collection won the Anthony Award for Best Short Story.

What They Are Saying About WORKING STIFFS:

“Warning: This book is 100% adrenalin. Wood is pure gold.”
— J.A. Konrath, author of Rusty Nail

“Consistently surprising and well-written, Working Stiffs proves Simon Wood is a criminal genius. We should all be glad he’s writing this stuff and not doing it.”
— Cemetery Dance

“For a lover of short stories, this collection was a full meal. Wood changes voices, demographics and plot lines like a teen changes clothes for a first date. Each story is a strong sampling of humans at their most human told with the finesse that comes from experience and a love of the genre.”
— Crime Spree

Over the month, I'll share some stories behind the stories and share my love for the short form. Enjoy!

A Little Something For the Weekend (New Year's edition)

2011-12-30T07:34:00.000-08:00

Not a good year for the world, so I'll be staying up to show 2011 the door.

"An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves."
~Bill Vaughan

A Little Something For the Weekend (Xmas Style)

2011-12-23T04:52:00.000-08:00

Christmas is around the corner, so it's a time for thinking about presents.

"Every day is a gift, even if it sucks."
~Sherry Hockman

Hump Day: Fruit & Veg

2011-12-21T08:52:00.000-08:00

I drive Julie to distraction with this one. She'll hold up a radish or something and say, "Will you eat this and if so, how will you eat it?"

I have issues with fruit and vegetables. I don't know where it stems from, but I'm picky. Let me throw out a few of examples.

I hate oranges, but love orange juice.
I love bananas, as long as they aren't cooked.
Carrots are great cooked, but raw, blah!
Strawberries are great, but only cold.

I think it's a texture thing. You know some vegetables taste like wood unless they're cooked, while others are nothing better than sludge when cooked.

So poor, little Julie stresses in the produce section over whether I'll eat this or that. Sometimes, I'll surprise her with "oh, I love those." She'll get excited but I'll follow up with, "But only if they're cut up real small."

Cleanliness is an issue too. If I think the lettuce is too old, or if it has a blemish on it, I'll chuck it.

Julie wants me to mention mushrooms, because I peel off the skins off mushrooms and I won't eat the stalks. She says, "What's your problem? It's only a bit of dirt." Yeah, but that's like saying, "Oh, that's just little bit of rabies." I'm sorry; I'm not eating dirt. If I wanted to eat dirt, I would have been born with a snout. So there. Anyway, mushrooms aren't vegetables. They're fungi. It doesn't count.

I think it has a lot to do with not liking vegetables as a kid. For me, fruit and vegetables need to be disguised. Fruit is best presented in pie form. I wouldn't recognize a vegetable if it was wearing a beef overcoat.

Of course, there are exceptions and for me, its apples. Apples are great as they are, as long as I don't have to eat the skin, and they're great cooked, as long as they're mushed.

Oh, and by the way, Julie says, "Aaarrrrhhhh!!!!"

Book of the Month: Lowlifes

2011-12-19T08:15:00.000-08:00

LOWLIFES is my under the radar book this week. This book is a little different from anything I've ever done before because it was multimedia project that involved a blog and movie as well as a book. The whole thing played out as a serial at the beginning of the year.

PLOTLINE:
LOWLIFES centers on Larry Hayes, a San Francisco Detective. He thinks his life has already hit rock bottom. He's lost his family to divorce and he's clinging to his career by a thread. All this stems from a painkiller addiction he can't kick that he picked up from an on-the-job injury. But there's another level for Hayes to fall as he finds out when he wakes up in an alley after a bad trip with no memory of the last four hours. He thinks this is the wakeup call he needs to turn his life around, his problems intensify when he receives a call from a homicide inspector. Hayes' informant, a homeless man named Noble Jon, lies dead two blocks away, beaten and stabbed. The eerie pang of guilt seeps into Hayes. During his lost four hours, he's been in a fight. His knuckles are bruised and there's blood under his fingernails. Is he Jon's killer? The mounting evidence says so. To add insult to injury, his wife has employed a PI to dig up dirt on him to ensure she gets sole custody of their daughter. Hayes mounts an off-the-books investigation and disappears amongst the city's homeless community to stay one step ahead of a murder charge.

LOWLIFES is a collaboration between filmmaker, Robert Pratten, and me. We used a different medium to tell the story. The book tells the story from point of view of the protagonist, a San Francisco Police Inspector. The short film gives the viewpoint of a PI investigating the cop. The fictional blog catalogs the thoughts and feelings of the cop's estranged wife. You don't have to read/watch all three to understand the story. You can quite simply read the book and not watch the movie and it'll all make sense—and vice versa. You can watch the first of the movie episodes below.

The serial is over and LOWLIFES is now available as book and ebook. You can learn more about the project at http://www.lowlifes.tv.

Thanks and I hope you'll enjoy the story in all its guises.

A Little Something For the Weekend

2011-12-16T07:28:00.000-08:00

Benny has some good career advice for us all.

"Be amusing: never tell unkind stories; above all, never tell long ones."
~Benjamin Disraeli

Hump Day: Suicide Lanes

2011-12-14T08:37:00.000-08:00

The suicide lane is the quaint name for the turn lane. It's a pretty clever device. Instead of dozens of dedicated turn pockets in the middle of the road, there's a central lane, which can be used by vehicles in either direction (hence the suicide reference) to get into to make a left turn. These are great when you have a commercial street with lots of entrances into businesses. Well, they would be great if the people where I live understood how they worked.

Some people seem to view the suicide lane as devil's magic. It may have something to do with all that yellow striping. These poor souls have an aversion to entering this lane as if crossing into it will cause their heart to stop. These people are so afraid of the suicide lane they would rather block two lanes of traffic than set a tire inside the suicide lane. They wait until a suitable line of traffic has built up behind them (somewhere in the range of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade) before zipping across the suicide lane in front of a bunch of oncoming traffic.

Then, of course, there are the people who are quite happy to use the suicide line--all of it. Somehow the yellow striping signifies that this lane belongs to them and it's free to be used as a private highway. They are more than happy to travel for miles in it, swerving around other vehicles who are rude enough to use their personal lane.

So suicide lanes are great things, but another example of when good ideas go bad. Remember I'm the outsider in this scenario. Don't make me come down there and show you how its done.

Book of the Month: Terminated

2011-12-12T08:12:00.000-08:00

This weeks's forgotten Book of the Month is Terminated. The book came out paperback in 2010 just as the publisher hit financial troubles. I was on tour promoting the book when the book was pulled from the bookshelves, so it never really got a fair shake in the bookstores, which is a shame as I think the book is a good one. It's a thriller that centers on workplace violence.

PLOTLINE:
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.

Terminated…to some people, it's more than a job.

Praise for Terminated:
“Wood writes like a dark, demented angel.”
— Ken Bruen, bestselling author of Once Were Cops

"A supremely gifted writer.”
— Jason Pinter, author of The Darkness

"Simon Wood knows how to create tension, he knows how to build three-dimensional characters and he has proven he can tie everything together in a high octane climax."
— Book Browser

"Simon Wood packs his books with suspense, surprises and superb storytelling."
— Ed Gorman, author of The Midnight Room

"This author is a master at taking a simple situation and making it suspenseful.”
— Midwest Book Review

"Simon Wood takes the idea of workplace harrassment to terrifying levels.”
— Bookgasm

"Grabs your heart and squeezes."
— Fresh Fiction

"The tension is unbearable and it gets worse as the pages fly by."
— I Love A Mystery

"Another winner for Simon Wood.”
— Spinetingler magazine

As customary with a lot of my books, the inspiration came from an unusual source. I learned that firms are using private security firms to deal with workplace violence and there's a good reason when twenty people are killed at work every week. You can read more on my research here.

I hope that's grabbed your attention and you'll check the book out. If it hasn't, you're welcome to check out the first five chapters here:

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five

A Little Something For the Weekend

2011-12-09T07:17:00.000-08:00

Do you have friends as good as this?

"Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty."
~Sicilian Proverb

Hump Day: Nearly Sports

2011-12-07T08:33:00.000-08:00

I don't consider myself a sports snob, but I'm sorry some sports aren't just sports--like cheerleading. There are cheerleading competitions in the US. There's even a push for it to become an Olympic sport. Now I don't mean any disrespect to cheerleaders, some of my best friends are cheerleaders and all that, but you guys support a sport not lead it. So sorry, cheerleading doesn't belong in the Olympics or any other competition.

The one sport that has stunned me is competitive eating. It's now televised on ESPN. They've gotten organized. There's a major league for extreme eaters. Like NFL, MLB and NBA, this sport has a logo. Major League eaters have the silhouette of a guy's arm putting a burger in his mouth. The International Federation of Competitive Eating, Inc. has a crest, which consists of twin griffins sharing a hot dog, an ice cream cone and crossed ketchup and mustard squirt bottles. Check it out if you don't believe me at http://www.ifoce.com. Sports needs a quantitative element, goals, points, what have you, but how many hot dogs or buffalo wings I can cram down my neck in five minutes isn't a scoring point. Even if it is, it makes for the worst TV sport spectacle. Not because watching these guys chow down makes my stomach ache, but because it is all over in ten minutes or less. That's a light meal when it comes to TV viewings, which means there has to be fifty minutes of in-depth analysis about the eaters and their training to sate our hunger.

And then there's the Spelling Bee. Don't get me started on televised spelling. Seriously. Don't.

Book of the Month: Paying the Piper

2011-12-05T07:40:00.000-08:00

I’m doing something a little different for the December Book of the Month feature. I’m shining a light on a couple of books that readers have yet to discover. Today’s spotlight title is Paying the Piper.

PLOTLINE:
The Piper is the Bay Area’s infamous child kidnapper. When the Piper selected crime reporter, Scott Fleetwood, to report on his latest child kidnapping, Scott thought he had the world in his grasp, but he held nothing. Scott had been duped by a wannabe. By the time the FBI exposed the hoaxer, time had run out, leaving the real Piper only one course of action—to kill the child. With a murder added to his résumé, the Piper vanished leaving Scott to take blame from the public and the investigating FBI agent, Tom Sheils. But now, eight years later, the Piper’s back, with very specific targets in mind—Scott’s young children. Scott can have his children back as long as he can pay the ransom. The hard part is that ransom isn’t measured in dollars, but in blood.

Paying the Piper…some debts can’t be repaid.

Praise for Paying the Piper,:
“Wood keeps the pages flying, even as his plot gets more and more complex, accelerating nicely toward an elegant climax.”
— Publishers Weekly

"Revenge fuels Wood's fast-paced thriller and the good guys deliver a winning finale.”
— Oakland Tribune

"Tense, fast-paced, and near impossible to put down."
— Sean Chercover, author of Trigger City

"Simon Wood might not be a household name right now, but if his books continue at this pace he might soon be.”
— Reviewing The Evidence

“Hard to believe this is Wood’s sophomore effort. Delightfully twisty and an amazing climax.”
— Book Bitch

“An action-packed thriller that never slows down.”
— Midwest Book Review

“This is a finely crafted thriller.”
— Bookgasm

This is a book I'm quite proud of. I wanted to do a book which involved kidnapping, but I wanted to do something a little different from the usual kidnap and ransom style story. I didn't want the ransom to be money and I wanted it to be commodity far more difficult to obtain. To help me with the story, I talked with the FBI and they shared the tricks of the kidnapping trade. I think it helped make a difference to the story as their insight and experience really helped develop to devious plot.

If you've not read one of my books or need deciding what to read next, then I hope you'll give Paying the Piper a shot.

A Little Something For the Weekend

2011-12-02T07:19:00.000-08:00

This applies to the ladies in the house too. :-)

“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
~Marcus Aurelius

Hump Day: Famous Last Words

2011-11-30T08:09:00.000-08:00

Movies and books have kicked up so many iconic lines over the years. Some I really love and I wish I'd said them. Not one to be deterred, I've made it my aim shoehorn in some of my favorite movie lines in my conversation at some point in my life. Not to just quote them, but use them because they're apt to the conversation I'm having at the time. I may have to manufacture some situations to be able to squeeze some of these in, but I think all these are doable at some point.

Here's what I hope to say one day:

1. This was no boating accident.
2. These aren’t the droids you're looking for.
3. Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown.
4. I see dead people
5. Nobody puts 'Baby' in a corner
6. You're going to need a bigger boat.
7. I find your lack of faith disturbing.
8. I'm the Dude. So that's what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing.
9. Soylent Green is people!
10. Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.
11. I am a Death Dealer.
12. Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!
13. You could warn them...if only you spoke Hovitos!
14. I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
15. I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

That's my list, but what about yours. What famous lines do you hope to say in real life?

Book of the Month: Fess Up. What Did You Do?

2011-11-28T06:05:00.000-08:00

I have a thing about indiscretions, white lies, small crimes, because no matter how much we think those mistakes will remain hidden, they have a habit of coming back to haunt us. I’m sure Anthony Wiener, John Edwards and many others have thought their secrets would remain secret, but as Ben Franklin once said, “Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” That is someone speaking with experience and with a few absent friends.

As I mentioned the other week, the inspiration for THE FALL GUY is based on college incident where a friend thought he could get away with driving into someone’s car and getting away with it. And I’ve mentioned other errors in judgment in connection with my other books. These mistakes and subsequent lucky escapes from them snowballing into something more serious have made me a more honest person—or somewhat more careful about the risks I take. You won’t see me texting anything or photographing anything and leaving it on my phone. You’d think people would have wised up to this by now.

Seeing as this last post in conjunction with THE FALL GUY, I thought I’d turn the tables. I’ve shared some of my past mistakes that I feel I can talk about in good conscience. Now it’s your turn. It’s time for you to fess up to some your minor transgressions. The ones that could have turned nasty and/or ones you’ve atoned for. Don’t worry, I don’t want you to share anything that'll still get you in trouble. Just something where the statute of limitations can’t touch you. :-)

So come on, what have you done? I promise not to tell.

This concludes THE FALL GUY's month in the sun. I hope my stories have piqued your interest to check the book out. I also hope that you'll spread the word about the book too. You shouldn't keep this book a secret. In the meantime, you can read this excerpt.

A Little Something For the Weekend

2011-11-25T03:29:00.000-08:00

One we can all agree on. Happy Black Friday to everyone.

"Why is there so much month left at the end of the money?"
~John Barrymore

Hump Day: Big Bird

2011-11-23T06:29:00.000-08:00

I despise Big Bird. I don't care that he's an employee of the Children's Television Workshop. The second I see that long-limbed, yellow freak, I develop a sudden bout of Tourette's syndrome and I want to go Bobby De Niro on that poulet's ass and gut him like a Thanksgiving turkey.

I don't know where this hatred came from but it's always been there. Yes, Big Bird has plenty of personality but it's bad personality. He's got no social skills. He barges into conversations about the letter C or the number 7 like he's an authority on the matter and takes over. It doesn't take a genius to know he doesn't know anything about the subject. And no one ever slaps down the overgrown canary--and yes, it is a canary. Someone should be honest with Big Bird and say, "B-Bird, you're an annoying moron. Get lost." If no one wants to volunteer, I'll do it.

I'm not the only person who feels this way. I came across a great cartoon where Burt, Ernie, Oscar and the other Sesame Street regulars are sitting around the dinner table with Big Bird's cooked carcass on the table. The caption above is: Happy Thanksgiving. Now that would be something to give thanks for.

Book of the Month: A Road Story

2011-11-21T08:30:00.000-08:00

I love road stories. THE FALL GUY is a road story. The book’s hero, Todd, goes on the run to escape a mobster but he keeps running into trouble. There's a certain vulnerability when you're traveling as Todd aptly illustrates. You're invariability somewhere you don’t know. Which means you're unlikely to have a support system in the form of friends and family you can turn to and you'll be unfamiliar with the way a new place works. So in essence road stories are scary.

I travel a lot promoting my books, so I’m forever traveling to places for the first time. Most times nothing happens, but on occasion something does.

A few years ago, I was in southern California for a book signing. I didn’t know California as well as I do now, so I wasn’t really aware that book signing wasn’t in the nicest part of the state. I got my first inkling when I pulled into the motel, which boasted armed security on duty. Something that sounded both comforting as well as disturbing. Although despite the boast, I never saw anyone armed. Well, not working for the motel, that is.

Money was a little tight and I wasn’t in a position to find somewhere nicer so I checked in. I let the desk clerk behind the bulletproof glass know that I had a reservation. He pulled out my reservation and told me, “It’s $60 a night for credit, $75 for cash.”

He let the terms of his offer hang in the air. And there was a pretty good reason for that. The cash rate was more expensive than the credit rate. One, there shouldn’t have been a difference credit and cash. And two, the cash rate was more expensive than the credit rate, which was a little odd seeing as cash deals are usually cheaper. Always one for a bargain, I paid with my credit card.

I was tempted to test the cash rate alternative. If I’d paid cash, would my stay gone on the register? Would I have been asked for a valid form of ID? Would I have been given extra towels and told not to leave any DNA behind? It’s hard to say, but it would have been interesting to find out.

You could argue that I simply misunderstood the situation but an hour with my fellow motel roommates said otherwise. There were a couple of rooms where the medium of shouting was used to communicate. My arrival seemed to unsettle one customer who never left his room and just watched the comings and goings from his window. One person seemed to be using his stay to fix his pickup and used his room to work on the various parts he removed. One of the rooms was filled from floor to ceiling with TVs, stereos and other electronic goods still in their boxes. The guy “staying there” was forever removing or replacing stock.

The vibe was so uncomfortable that I found myself in that awkward position of not knowing whether it was safer to leave my valuables in the room or in the car. The best solution seemed to keep everything vital on me and let fate decide the rest. I was happy to put some miles between me and the motel when I checked out the following day.

So what's the conclusion to this tale? Will I be returning to this motel? No. Will I be using this in a story some time? You betcha.

As road stories go, a pretty good one. That’s one of mine. Now tell me one of yours.

A Little Something For the Weekend

2011-11-18T07:09:00.000-08:00

The world is very uptight at the moment and hopefully some Roman wisdom will loosen everyone up.

“Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans; it's lovely to be silly at the right moment.”
~Horace

Hump Day: Americans and Worcestershire Sauce

2011-11-16T07:18:00.000-08:00

I caught the Food Network on TV and I witnessed yet another American slaughter the pronunciation of Worcestershire sauce. It sounded like someone was pressing a boot heel down on the word and it left the celebrity chef's mouth all squashed and drippy sounding.

I am sick and tired of hearing Americans make a balls of saying this English county's name. Nine times out of ten, I hear something that sounds like the wind blowing through trees. Wahsheeshishsor sauce assaults my ears. It's like fingernails being drawn down a chalkboard. So for the Americans out there, we're going to have a short elocution lesson in English--okay?

Now, let's break this word down into manageable bite size pieces. Phonetically, repeat after me:

Wuss-stir-sheer Sauce.

That was good. Now, let's try it again.

Wuss-stir-sheer Sauce.

Now go out into the world and drop this word into everyday conversation at least ten times a day. Not only will it be good practice for you, it will spread through the Americas like a virus, but a good one. Go make me proud.

New Book Alert: THE FALL GUY

2011-11-15T06:54:00.000-08:00

The paperback edition of THE FALL GUY is out today. It's an awesome looking paperback and a pretty good story too according to the praise.

“Elmore Leonard would be proud to have writen this twisty, action-packed tale.”
— Cemetery Dance

"Crime hasn't been this much fun or unpredictable since the second-story man John Dortmunder squeezed himself into a dishwasher.”
— The Drowning Machine

You can read an excerpt here.

So I hope you'll pick up copy. It'll be something nice to keep you warm during Thanksgiving. :-)

Book of the Month: Hit And Runners

2011-11-14T06:47:00.000-08:00

The paperback edition of THE FALL GUY comes out tomorrow, so I thought I'd share the story behind the book.

For every seventeen-year-old male in the UK, the number one purchase is a car. It’s a rite of passage--the first step towards adulthood and independence.

I was in engineering college when I turned seventeen. My birthday occurred late in the school year and several of my friends had already turned seventeen, passed their test and gotten cars--albeit jalopies for a couple of hundred quid.

John was the first of us to get his wheels, a ’72 Ford Cortina. Instead of running for the train to get to and from college, we rode with John. The convenience of car ownership was all too apparent to me, even by proxy. The responsibility of this convenience came a few weeks later. We’d returned back from lunch to the college parking lot. John found a stall behind the science block and went to park. He backed the car up, doing all the right things, but his skill deserted him and he reversed into the side of the Vauxhall Cavalier. There was no mistaking the buckling of sheet steel.

We all froze and waited for John’s reaction. Panic spread across his face. He had just kissed goodbye any possibility of a no claims insurance bonus.

“Do you think anyone saw?” he asked us.

The parking stalls were pretty secluded from the main parking lot. We looked around and saw no one.

“We’re going. Cool?”

We didn’t reply, just nodded. John burnt rubber and parked on the street a couple of blocks from the college. We walked back to our afternoon classes. John told us we weren’t to talk about this. He was stern, but I noticed his hands were shaking. He knew the crime he’d committed and the one we were accomplices to.

I was beginning to think we’d gotten away with it by mid-afternoon, until the cops interrupted second period. Two officers walked in with one of the college lecturers and some kid I didn’t know. One of the cops asked for John by name, but not the rest of us.

My heart was pounding, so I couldn’t imagine what John’s was doing. Unlike most college kids, we had more to lose than the rest. We were employed by an array of big name companies underwriting our college education and paying us a salary.

John came back thirty minutes later, looking sheepish. We were forced to wait until break to find out what had gone down with the police. We’d thought our crime had gone undetected but we were wrong. One of the other lecturers had witnessed the fender bender from the classroom. The lecturer not only knew us, but he knew the name of the second year student who owned the Cavalier. Giving the cops their due, they were pretty cool about it all, all things considered. They weren’t pressing any charges as long as John paid for the damage. They would be checking in with all parties to make sure amends were made.

John made good on his error and the event never made it back to our respective employers or parents. We all learnt our lesson. It was a stupid thing to do and we were damn lucky to have gotten away with it.

About a year later, a form of retribution came knocking. Kevin (who’d been in the car with us) came back from lunch to find a broken headlight and a note under his windshield wiper. The note said: People think I’m leaving you my name and address. I’m not.

No one had witnessed the incident and Kevin was left to carry the expenses.

These two incidents have always stuck with me. It’s one of those situations where I’d been on both sides of the equation, even if it was by proxy. So when it came to writing The Fall Guy, my thoughts fell upon these two incidents and the storywas born. In the novel, the down on his luck protagonist, Todd Collins, backs into a Porsche and leaves a note not dissimilar to the one Kevin found under his windshield. This sets in motion a series of calamities, which winds up with Todd being indebted to organized crime and spending the rest of the story trying to get the monkey off his back.

I don’t know if I wrote the story as a penance or a warning to others, but it may have something to do with a theme that occurs in many of my stories. A crime, even a little one, can’t remain covered up for long. I learned that when I was seventeen.

A Little Something For the Weekend

2011-11-11T07:02:00.000-08:00

It's Armistice Day, so this is a fitting quote, but also The Soldier is one of my favorite poems.

"If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field. That is for ever England."
~Rupert Brooke from The Soldier

KENT HOLLOWAY ONLINE: Let Me Introduce You To...Simon Wood

2011-11-10T14:18:00.000-08:00

Kent Holloway interviewed me to his "Let Me Introduce You To..." series. So please enjoy. You can find it here.

Hump Day: ARTICHOKES

2011-11-09T06:17:00.000-08:00

A few years ago at the World Horror Convention, I was on a panel about personal fears. I have quite a few, mainly irrational, but who doesn't. Julie is scared of emus and ostriches and ants. I can't tell you the number of times Julie calls out, "Simon, there's ostrich in the bath. Come get rid of it." I knew I should have never moved next to a flightless bird sanctuary. Anyhoo, over the coming months, I'll address some of my fears. This month's fear is artichokes.

Artichokes scare me. I don't like the way the way they look, the way they feel or the way they taste. They are repellent and every one of them should be destroyed.

The reason...they aren't from this planet. Don't laugh. Take a real close look at these abominations. What 50's sci-fi monster movie didn't start off with something that looked like an artichoke? Show me one other plant that looks anything like an artichoke. The first time I cut one of these things down the middle to examine the cross section and it scared the crap out of me. Each layer of petals changes color from green to purple to expose the most frightening part of the artichoke--the choke itself. Don't tell me that fluffy, furry disc isn't designed to burst out and fly down my throat to take over my mind.

Touch one. I dare you. It doesn't feel like flora. Rub the petals together and it squeaks. It feels like rubber. That's a special coating to protect its alien flesh from our atmosphere.

I don't understand why people eat them either. They taste like ass for a start, boasting all the flavor of shoe leather. I think I must have different taste buds than everyone else. I taste their truth, while everyone else tastes their alien lies that with every bite contaminate you, infect you, control you. Because that's what they want ultimately--control. They need us, because they don't have legs to get around on. They might be smart and devious, but they're fallible. The Triffids learned this and so will the artichokes. Death to the artichokes, for they are our enemy. Kill one today.

Book of the Month: The Fall Guy

2011-11-07T06:29:00.000-08:00

November's Book of the Month is dedicated to my latest release, THE FALL GUY. It's been out as an ebook for a while, but the paperback edition comes out on the 15th.

Of all my books, this story has an interesting path to publication. It started life as a short story called Fender Bender. The editor of WORKING STIFFS read the story and loved it and didn't want it to end, so I expanded it into a full length piece, taking the story into a completley different direction. So here's the 411 on the book:

Todd Collins has 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 when he fights back.

When you're down on your luck, life never wants to cut you a break.

“Elmore Leonard would be proud to have writen this twisty, action-packed tale.”
— Cemetery Dance

"Crime hasn't been this much fun or unpredictable since the second-story man John Dortmunder squeezed himself into a dishwasher.”
— The Drowning Machine

"Tightly crafted. Wood delivers the goods!”
— Reviewing The Evidence

“For a novice reader of Wood's work, this is an excellent place to start.”
— Hellnotes

I hope you'll stick around for the stories about Todd's race across the country to save his own neck. :-)

A Little Something For the Weekend

2011-11-04T09:52:00.000-07:00

I'm glad I'm not the only who feels this way. :-)

"My attitude is never to be satisfied, never enough, never."
~Duke Ellington

West Coast Crime Wave

2011-11-03T06:15:00.000-07:00

Bstsellr.com is a digital book company and they've released their first title, West Coast Crime Wave. It's a short story anthology featuring tales of crime and corruption up and down the West Coast of the US. The collection features stories by Steve Hockensmith, Naomi Hirahara, Steve Brewer, Bill Cameron, David Corbett, Nick Mamatas to name just a few. The book features a tweaked version of my story Officer Down, which appeared in Working Stiffs. Currently, it's available for the Kindle and Nook.

I hope you'll check it out.

Hump Day: Mulling

2011-11-02T07:51:00.000-07:00

I've just finished up the follow up to DID NOT FINISH this weekend, so I'm between books. Before I start a new book, I enter a phase which I call Mulling. So here's a piece I wrote from a few year ago. Enjoy.

"What are you doing?"

"Something."

"Well, it doesn't look like something."

I had a lot of conversations like this in school with teachers that usually led to one of those "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" kind of lectures. Sadly, my footwear never came with "bootstraps," so needless to say my school years weren't my best. Daydreaming was an issue that I didn't shift until I went to college. Now the daydreaming is back--in career form (of sorts). Daydreaming is even tax deductible. You just can't daydream without a bag of Ruffles in your hand.

Now that one book is in the bag and I'm embarking on the next, I'm in that daydreaming phase, where I'm piecing ideas, themes, scenes and other stuff together before I start outlining.

Normally, when Julie comes home at night, I'm banging away at the keyboard and she knows her little man has been hard at it since 9 a.m. At the moment, when she comes home, I'm stretched out in front of the TV with a cat or two on my chest.

"What have you been up to today?"

"Working."

"It doesn't look like you're working. It looks like you're vegging out."

"I'm being conceptual. I'm forming a story, wrapping my head around the idea. You know me, measure twice, cut once."

"So it's been a DVD day."

"No, it hasn't." I sit up and a kitten slithers off my chest. "I have been working. I'm mulling things through is all."

"Simon, what's that pile of Dr. Who DVDs sitting on the floor?"

"They help me mentally cleanse my palate."

"And this empty Ruffles bag?" she says, picking it up.

"Brain food." I snatch the bag from Julie and aim a sleepy kitten at her. "Julie, you have no idea about the creative process. I am mulling. Mulling is an important part of the writing process. Now move, I can't see the TV."

Julie's an angel, but she can be mean sometimes--don't you think?

The problem is that we live in a quantifiable world. We need results. Tactile ones at that. When I'm in the throes of a book and Julie asks, "How much have you done?" I can answer, "Twelve pages," or "Three thousand words" or "Two chapters." These are things the world and Julie can hang their hats on. Me included. I like quantifiable. There's traction. Forward motion. Progress. Industry. A paycheck.

Mulling doesn't inspire the same response. Mulling is intangible--like air. It's there, but you can't see it. But just try and go through a day without it, and you (and I'm looking at you, my old teachers and Julie) will be begging me for some of that intangible stuff. Yeah, too bloody right you will.

So I'm mulling and I'm going to take my time with it. There's no point in going off half-mulled. That would be ridiculous.

I think I've explained myself sufficiently. Now where did I put my Ruffles and those kittens?

Yours in front of the TV,
Simon

Book of the Month: Halloween--My Other Sister

2011-10-31T04:15:00.000-07:00

ROAD RASH is October's Book of the Month, but I'm going off piste today as it's Halloween. People always ask where my stories come from. Sometimes it's not where the stories come from, but what things happen to me to make me the person I am. This story is true and helped instill the sensibilities I possess as a person and as a scribbler of spooky stories. So maybe this piece isn't as off piste as I thought. Please enjoy MY OTHER SISTER.

MY OTHER SISTER

I was seven when I met my other sister.

As a child, it wasn’t uncommon for me to wake up during the night craving something to drink. I usually slept with a glass of water or juice on the nightstand next to my bed. On this particular night, I’d drained my glass and found I still hadn’t quenched my thirst. I hopped out of bed and, glass in hand, left the bedroom I shared with my sister, three years my younger. I switched on the landing light so I wouldn’t disturb anyone and trotted downstairs to the kitchen. I made myself a drink and took it back up the stairs.

As I reached the top of the stairs and turned to face my bedroom, a full-length mirror next to my sister’s bed reflected my image. I wasn’t alone in my reflection and I froze. Behind me was my sister wearing her black polka dotted nightdress. She was lying on the top stair, her face stricken in pain, reaching out to grab my bare ankle. She fixed me with her totally black eyes. There were no whites in her eyes at all, just solid black. Her mouth opened and closed as if trying to say something, but no words made it out.

My mind whirled. How had my sister followed me down the stairs and sneaked behind me without me noticing? What had caused her eyes to turn black? My mind snagged on the falseness in the reflected image, preventing me from answering the questions. For to the left of the mirror, my sister slept soundly in her bed, her face turned away from me. The fact she was wearing a flowered nightdress and not the polka dotted one only confirmed the impossibility of the distressed girl in the reflection being my sister.

My other sister’s hand continued to reach out for me and was within inches of grasping me. I couldn’t tell if she existed only in the reflection or whether she was right behind me. I didn’t dare turn my head to find out. In the reflection, my view of her was at least twenty feet away, but if I turned to face her, then those black eyes would be right on top of me.

Whether my other sister really meant me harm or just needed my help, I didn’t have the courage to find out. I bolted for my room, throwing my drink into the air and screaming all the way. This meant running directly at the mirror and if my other sister existed there, then I was running straight towards the creature and not away from it. In the mirror’s reflection, my other sister made a desperate lunge, missed me and collapsed on the landing, but she lacked the strength to give chase. I hurled myself on the bed and buried my face in the pillow and bedclothes.

My screams woke my sister and my parents. My mother had to pry me from the mattress that I clung to in the fear that it wasn’t my mother who had me, but a false mother like the false sister I’d seen in the mirror. Even when she managed to unpeel my fingers from the mattress, I refused to open my eyes in fear that I was in the arms of a phantom. But when my mother shushed me and rocked me, I knew no false mother would treat me with such tenderness and I opened my eyes.

“What’s wrong?” my mother asked. “Why all the screaming?”

Through my sobs, I choked out the event I’d witnessed. My mother showed me that my sister, although crying herself from being rudely awakened, was okay, and more importantly, that her eyes were okay.

“You were dreaming,” my mother insisted.

How could it be a dream? I’d made myself a drink. I told my mother this.

“Well, whatever you saw, it isn’t there now,” she said.

“How do you know?” I demanded.

“Because we would have seen it when we came into the room. Come on, come look.”

My mother tried to show me, but I clung to my bed. She wrenched me free and I went with her, even though I dug my toes into the carpet. She showed me that nothing lurked on the landing, other than my father cleaning up my spilled drink.

At some point when I’d calmed down, my parents put me to bed, but I failed to fall asleep straight away, fearing my other sister would return to get me. Finally, exhaustion claimed me and I slept through until morning.

After that night, I developed a fear of mirrors after dark. Once the sun had set, I averted my gaze or closed my eyes when passing a mirror. I wanted to hang something over the mirrors, but I didn’t want to expose my fear. If I woke during the night needing a drink, I let my thirst go unquenched. Nothing would get me out of bed after dark. I never wanted to meet my other sister again. I feared my escape might not be guaranteed.

Two weeks after the incident my sister was struck down by a nasty bout of flu, which kept her, confined to her bed for several days. The nightdress she wore when the flu hit was her black polka dotted one.

I don’t know if the phantom sister I saw was a premonition of some kind, but I never saw my sister in that stricken pose on the stairs during her influenza bout or at any other time and she never possessed those black eyes. I wonder if the phantom was some form of guardian spirit trying to warn my family of a threat to my sister’s welfare? Regardless, I didn’t look into a mirror at night for another seven years fearing a repeat encounter with my other sister or some other phantom that lurked in mirrors.

Eventually, when I summoned up the courage in my teens to stare into a mirror at night, I saw nothing, although I broke out in gooseflesh fearing that I would. Now, I’m in my thirties, and if I’m honest, I still fear what I’ll see in a mirror. If I have to get up at night, I don’t turn on the lights and I keep my eyes averted. My other sister has never shown herself again, but I can never be sure it will stay that way...

Hopefully this tale has put you in the mood for your Halloween celebrations. If you're looking for something a little spooky to read, I hope you'll pick up
ROAD RASH or my other darker titles THE SCRUBS and DRAGGED INTO DARKNESS.

Halloween is the end of the month and the end of ROAD RASH's time. Please enjoy an excerpt from ROAD RASH and my other horror tales.

Road Rash excerpt
The Scrubs excerpt
Acceptable Losses from Dragged into Darkness

November should be an exciting month when I introduce a new title and a new book release.

Bibrary Book Lust Interview: HALLOWEEN INTERVIEW: Simon Wood (author of The Scrubs)

2011-10-30T15:42:00.001-07:00

The lovely people over at Bibrary Book Lust recently reviewed THE SCRUBS and loved it. They loved it so much they interviewed me for Halloween. Enjoy the creepy answers.

HALLOWEEN INTERVIEW

A Little Something For the Weekend

2011-10-28T07:30:00.000-07:00

This one is for Harold Camping who said the end of the world was going to happen last Friday.

"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.'
~Charles M. Schulz

Naming Names: Who Will Be Appearing in HOT SEAT

2011-10-26T18:09:00.000-07:00

A little while ago, I asked people to donate their names to my next book, HOT SEAT, which is the follow up to DID NOT FINISH. Well those names have been picked and here's who will have a walk on part in the book.

Mike Whelan
Edward Stores
Jenni Oglesby
Jack McGowan
Ryan Green
Jim McLeod
Robert O'Neal
Roy Carroll
Carrie Gordon Watson

Hump Day: Strange Plants

2011-10-26T07:06:00.000-07:00

With Halloween around the corner I would share something a little creepy for hump day. Recently, Julie took me to California Carnivores, a carnivorous plant nursery. She knows weird plants spook me out, but she thought I'd like it. I think she did it because she wanted to see me squirm.

That's what marriage does to a person.

The folks who ran the nursery had the same warped sense of humor. Skeletal body parts were scattered over the displays. Gruesome monster busts poked up from the ground. Bats and other winged creatures dangled from the rafters. I think you get the gist. Nice people by the way.

I'm okay with Venus flytraps, they seem quite normal, but it's those flesh dissolving pitcher plants and the sticky honeydew things that creep me out. I don't even like the touch of an orchid.

It got me wondering why. They're plants. It's not like they can uproots and chase after me. Though, at the back of my mind, I believe there is some South American plant that can walk, but it's no Carl Lewis.

But there is a flesh eating plant--although it is only fictional--and it is there I lay blame. The first horror movie I ever saw was THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS starring Howard "bless my beautiful hide" Keel. I was six and the dramatic score woke me, so I padded downstairs and sat with my mum and watched it on the telly. To this day, I can still picture with perfect clarity the first triffid breaking free of its planter box in the botanical gardens to claim its human victim.

No wonder I don't trust any plant with any sort of powers beyond that of a lettuce.

A Little Something For the Weekend

2011-10-21T06:53:00.000-07:00

I can't find who said this, but I do like it. :-)

"Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused."

Book of the Month: Leopards Can Change Their Spots

2011-10-17T08:33:00.000-07:00

From time to time someone will take me to task over my characters—usually my protagonists. The usual complaint is over my hero’s “goodness.” The remarks usually center on, “You know, if your main guy had done the right thing in the beginning, he wouldn’t have gotten himself into all that trouble.” And those people are right. My good guys have usually done something to put themselves in the position they find themselves in. It’s somewhat of a personal belief. If you stray from life’s straight and narrow, then life’s probably going to bite you in the ass and keep biting.

I’m happy with this trait of my stories. Squeaky clean characters blazing a trail for all that is good and right don’t excite me. I like fallible people. People who know to put on oven mitts because they’ve gotten burned a couple of times, not because they’ve been told not to touch hot things without them. I guess I identify with these sorts of characters. I’ve committed a few minor infractions in my time and the repercussions have snowballed. I think it’s the gathering pace of the payback that intrigues me and drives my fiction. The fear and panic experienced when a situation goes sideways makes for great stories, if not for real life.

I must admit it has colored the way I look at the world. I’m not a glass half-empty kind of a guy but more a glass half-filled with something corrosive tipping over and spilling everywhere kind of a guy. I have a habit of predicting how a bad situation will get worse. Once you’ve tempted fate, it has its own gravitational pull that is inevitable.

The spark that ignites my storylines is a moment of weakness. The character is presented with a situation that nine times out of ten they’d ignore, but circumstances are skewed this one time. He’s out of a job. She’s just been dumped. These characters are in a weakened state when an opportunity is presented. Instead of blowing it off, they throw caution to the wind and act out of character. Naturally, it doesn’t pan out and it is going to take a whole lot of fixing to set everything right again. Moments of weakness are dangerous currency.

ROAD RASH’s hero is James Straley. He’s a bank robber. When a bank job goes wrong, he's on the run when he stumbles across a car wreck. Instead of helping the victims of the wreck, he steals one of the vehicles at the crash site. Not particularly likable of him, but he’s a ruthless and desperate man. But in that desperate moment, things change for Straley. He's struck down with a rash that makes his problems up until seem like small fry. This is his tipping point. He either continues on a path to ruin or change his ways. Over the course of a story, Straley makes the biggest change of any character I’ve ever written. He starts off as a nasty piece of work and becomes something quite different by the end, figuratively and literally.

I guess I like my shop-soiled heroes, maybe not to hang out with, but to read and write about. It has a lot to do with how someone reacts under insurmountable odds. There’s more at stake than the mystery or the crime to solve. The character’s soul is at stake as well. And I can’t help root for someone in that position. Everyone loves a comeback kid. I think I also identify with human frailty and characters like James Straley. We can all do bad things, but how we atone for our mistakes makes us redeemable and interesting.

Yours vulnerably,
Simon

A Little Something For the Weekend

2011-10-14T07:40:00.000-07:00

I have to turn in my current manuscript over the weekend, so this one strikes a chord.

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
~Douglas Adams

THE SCRUBS Is Everywhere

2011-10-13T13:19:00.000-07:00

People seem to have a thing about THE SCRUBS today. It's book of the day over at Pixel of Ink and Bibrary gave the book a really nice review. I hope you'll check out the links.

Hump Day: Cell Phones

2011-10-12T07:43:00.000-07:00

I hate cell phones. A technological marvel has become the 21st century equivalent of the cigarette. If you don't believe me, watch people light them up at the end of a plane flight.

My problem with cell phones is that no place or event is sacred or private. The phone can go anywhere and people forget the world can hear them. To show the limitlessness of place and respect for others, here are a couple of sample conversations:

"Hey, Terry, what's going on? Me, I'm in the airport, taking a leak. You too? Snap, brother."

"No, you haven't caught me at a bad time. I'm at grandma's funeral. No, I didn't like her, but I'm hoping to get a slice of the inheritance pie, you know what I mean. Anyway, I gotta go, buddy. I'm in the middle of the eulogy."

Cell phones have become status symbols. Who can forget when you could by a shoulder holster for your cell phone? You looked as if you were packing heat and not just a lack of personality. Thank God those days are gone, but we've moved on to the more tedious. Now we have Bluetooth headsets. People can go around looking like a castoff from Star Trek. Now when I see someone talking to themselves, I don't know if they're a street crazy or not. I have to put effort into finding out.

Okay, I sort of see how having a plastic thing clipped to your ear can look cool, but you need to have the right ears for it. I see too many people with weak ear cartilage wearing them. Every time they move, their ears waggle and bend from the weight of the earpiece. A far from cool look.

Personally, I want cell phone users to be treated like smokers. If they are considered polluters then excessive cell phone users should be too. So I would like to see restaurants and public places having "cell phone user and non-cell phone user sections." That way those that love 'em can be together and away from me.

By the by, do I have a cell phone? Yes. Isn't hypocrisy great?

ROAD RASH Leaves Its Mark

2011-10-11T20:39:00.000-07:00

Fictious Musings gaves ROAD RASH a nice thumbs up in its review. I think it took the reviewer by surprise, but in a good way. You can check out the review here.

Book of the Month: CURIOSITY WILL BE MY UNDOING (BUT IT WILL MAKE FOR A GOOD STORY)

2011-10-10T08:26:00.000-07:00

ROAD RASH plays to my two storytelling loves—crime and the supernatural. I don’t do it often, but I love to blend the genres. It’s the story of bank robber, James Straley. He 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 saves himself by stealing one of the wrecked cars. Unfortunately, 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.

The book started out as a short story and was one of a number of stories I’d been writing with the theme of road travel. I’d been examining the whole aspect of road travel by writing stories that ranged from cars to bicycles, from traffic offenses to road regulations and everything in between. I used these stories to put a dark twist on an aspect of our lives we take for granted. Road Rash was one of a number of tales I’d written based on turning a common term on its head. I liked the idea of road rash being something that could be contracted from the roads if someone wasn’t careful. I submitted the story to an anthology and the editor loved the story, but said it needed to be a book and an exotic twist would knock it out of the park.

When it came to the exotic twist, I knew just what to use. I’m quite an empirical person. I like to write about things I understand, things I’ve actually taken part in or things I have some experience with. So, I hoard experiences to the point of going out of my way to take part in things whether I need them for a story at the particular moment or not. So naturally, when someone offered my wife and I the chance to attend a Santeria ritual while we were traveling in Guatemala, I jumped at the chance.

I don’t think I could have made this up if I tried, it was that wonderful and spooky. The community that practiced Santeria lived in the shadow of three volcanoes and a lake isolated them from the mainland. The only way of getting to them was by boat. We took a trip out to the island, which amounted to a shantytown. People selling handicrafts covered the jetty where we landed. A kid no more than eight said he knew why we’d come to the village and for a buck he'd take us to the witch. He led us through the dirt-covered streets and down an alley into an unfinished cinder block room. An effigy sat in a chair with a cigarette drooping from its lips and a trail of smoke leaking skyward. All sorts of knickknacks and trinkets surrounded it. A woman as old as time shuffled around in an adjoining room. A young woman asked us to sit on the floor and take part in some unknown ceremony. It goes without saying that it was more than a tad creepy and our nerves didn’t hold out, so we got the hell out of Dodge before something happened. I’m as superstitious as the next person. The imagery was very potent and the incident stuck with me and dovetailed nicely into the exotic element the editor wanted for Road Rash. I don’t pretend to understand half what I witnessed, but the incident inspired me to develop a great backdrop for James Straley when he's forced to travel to Guatemala. It gave the story a whole new different dimension.

James Straley wasn’t as fortunate as my wife and I, as he had stay for the ritual. The experience changes his life forever and hopefully it’ll change yours too when you read it.

Yours eagerly,
Simon

A Little Something For the Weekend

2011-10-07T06:04:00.000-07:00

Here's my noir lyrics of the week. A dare anyone not to smile when they listen to this song. :-)

"If you came to make trouble. Make me a double honey."
~Over The Rhine

Hump Day: Trawlers

2011-10-05T07:23:00.000-07:00

I hate trawlers. Now I'm not talking about the chaps who float around on the sea in boats putting fish on my table. No, I'm talking about the dimwits who gum up parking lots looking for a place to park. Trawlers have this need to park as close as possible to the store they intend on entering, and they create havoc in the parking lot. Trawlers fall into distinctive sub groups:

You have the Day Trawler. These people are quite content to sink their line for the day. They will block a lane and hope that someone walking by is the owner of one of the vehicles around them. Time is not an important consideration. They are quite happy to wait as long as it takes until someone comes out to open up a spot for them, regardless of the procession of vehicles now stacked up behind them.

Then there is the Stalker Trawler.This species selects its prey (usually me) then creeps along behind so that when I reach my car, they can have my parking spot. It's very disconcerting to have a car shadowing you in your blind spot. These trawlers don't even ask if you're leaving. They just loom up behind you, passive-aggressively urging to get out so that they can get in. These trawlers are easily dealt with though. I now walk down the line of vehicles one row over from mine. The Stalker Trawler trails behind me, eagerly waiting for me to pick out my car, then has to suffer the trauma of seeing me slip between the cars to another row leaving them to have to find a new victim to stalk.

Finally, there's the Circuit Trawler. They are the total opposite from the Day Trawler. They are content to drive around and around the parking lot at slow-slow speeds looking for a parking stall. The confusing thing is that they have range issues. Circuit Trawlers will drive by empty stalls and keep circling because the available stalls aren't close enough. The other week, I pulled into mall parking lot. It was busy, forcing to me to park a hundred yards from the entrance. The Day Trawler behind me continued to circle and circle while I walked all the way back to the mall and entered.

This last point highlights the futility of trawling. Sure, I'd love if a parking stall would open up in front of me every time I went anywhere. I would also love it if Salma Hayek and Angelina Jolie would carry me everywhere in a chair, but I'm not going to expect it. I guess trawlers think they're special--and they are. It's just that they are special needs.

DID NOT FINISH Wins Big With The Critics

2011-10-04T07:29:00.000-07:00

DID NOT FINISH has scored big with Kirkus, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. Here's what they said:

Kirkus:
"A killer who strikes in the middle of an event makes England’s car-racing circuit even more dangerous than usual.

"Aidy Westlake was orphaned by a car crash—his father and mother drove into a fatal accident on the way home from a race—but that hasn’t kept him from taking the wheel of a Formula Ford. A rookie driver in the middle of a crowded field, Aidy naturally looks up to Alex Fanning, whose performance so far favors him to win the Clark Paints Formula Ford Championship, and can’t imagine why Alex would be prepared to quit the circuit for his fiancée Alison Baker. The race that follows proves to be Alex’s last in more ways than one. Moments after the Ford driven by Derek Deacon, a brutish veteran competitor who’d already threatened to do whatever it took to win, nudged Alex’s car, it crashed and killed him. The other racers, close-knit to a fault, refuse to believe that Deacon bumped Alex on purpose. And the evidence supports them, because video footage of the crash has mysteriously disappeared from all the places most likely to have it, and Det. Len Brennan, of the Wiltshire Police, is obviously protecting Deacon. Aidy is determined to prove Deacon’s guilt, but when he and his only allies, his grandfather Steve and his mechanic Dylan, are threatened, beaten and arrested along with him, his detective work looks like a losing bet.

"Wood (Terminated, 2010, etc.) kicks off this new series with a streamlined narrative, a spot of believable romance and some deftly introduced tidbits about the British racing circuit. Think of Dick Francis’ early thrillers, especially Nerve, but with a lot more horsepower."

Library Journal:
"A third-generation racecar driver, Aidy Westlake might still be a rookie on the course, but his instincts for crime are right on track. He knows bully Derek Deacon threatened rival Alex Fanning the night before the race. Now Alex is dead, and Derek’s car was part of the fatal accident. Aidy is convinced it’s a homicide, and he goes to considerable lengths to avenge Alex’s untimely death, despite rebuffs from the police, race sponsors, and fellow drivers. With his best friend, Dylan, and grandfather Steve on his team, amateur detective Aidy keeps on digging until he manages to endanger those he loves. A breathtaking finale will linger long in readers’ minds. VERDICT Prepare to accelerate with Wood’s (Terminated) new series. His first-person narrative brings you close to the action and ratchets up the personal intensity."

Publishers Weekly:
"At the start of this agreeable first in a new car-racing series from Wood (Terminated), thuggish champion driver Derek Deacon threatens to kill a rival, Alex Fanning. When Fanning dies after Deacon collides with him during a race in a West Country regional championship, the police fail to interview vital witnesses, and authorities rush to label the crash an accident. In addition, someone orders the destruction of the official tape of the fatal race. Outraged, rookie driver Aidy Westlake begins his own investigation. Inexperienced but persistent, he turns up evidence of a criminal conspiracy that puts him and his friends in danger. Wood convincingly portrays Aidy’s awkward efforts at amateur detection as well as his gentle, tentative romance with the dead man’s fiancée, while entertainingly imparting information about the perils and exhilaration of single-seat Formula Ford racing. Dick Francis fans will find a lot to like."

Book of the Month: Road Rash

2011-10-03T06:22:00.000-07:00

October is Halloween month, so I thought I'd showcase one of my more creepier tales. So October's Book of the Month is ROAD RASH. It's one of my few tales that blends horror and crime. So this is what to expect:

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.

“Road Rash is a wild collision of crime caper and supernatural thriller that works on every level. Lightning-paced, darkly funny, deeply creepy, and highly recommended."
— Jonathan Maberry, NY Times bestselling author of The Dragon Factory

“Simon Janus understands the darkness inside us all and nails it to the page. Fast-paced and gut-wrenching, pedal-to-the-metal thrills."
— Scott Nicholson, author of The Red Church &

Over the coming weeks, I'll be sharing stories and background that led to the writing of this book. Stick around. :-)

A Little Something For the Weekend

2011-09-30T06:50:00.000-07:00

Why is Mark Twain so awesome? This is why.

"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
~Mark Twain

Hump Day: Flip-Flops

2011-09-28T08:18:00.000-07:00

I hate flip-flops. It is the most irritating footwear ever created. Who the hell designed these things? Someone explain how a foot-shaped length piece of foam or plastic with two strap things constitutes footwear. Please take note of the word footwear. It implies that it's an object that is worn on the foot. Flip-flops don't do this. There's a fine balancing act where the wearer has to try to walk carefully so they don't fly off and with their light construction and aerodynamic design, they carry on the air for at least twenty yards once they're airborne. The only safe way to wear them is to walk flat-footed and ball your toes up. Mmm, isn't that comfy.

The annoyance doesn't just end there. There's the slapping sound every flip-flopper makes when walking. Flap-flap, flap-flap. Here comes another fashion victim doing their best to convince themselves that a flip-flop is easy to wear, comfortable and great looking. These poor deluded fools.

The flip-flop does have one potential application that no one has explored. Forget three strikes for felons, those leg bracelets for stay at home inmates, and sex offenders' lists. Force these people to wear flip-flops. Can you imagine a bank robber trying to hotfoot it in flip-flops? He'll be down on his face before you can say "stick up." And what stalker can creep up on an unsuspecting person without the telltale flap-flap. The flip-flop has yet to work for society. This is where it can make a start.

Book of the Month: Father Figures

2011-09-26T06:57:00.000-07:00

For my wife, the stand out character in DID NOT FINISH is Steve Westlake. Steve is Aidy’s grandfather. Julie likes the relationship between Aidy and his grandfather. I suppose it’s because they don’t have a traditional relationship in that Steve takes over as Aidy’s guardian after his loses his parents when Aidy was a kid. He teaches Aidy everything about motor racing and acts as a confidant and friend. So Steve is many things to Aidy.

I can understand why Steve had an effect on Julie because Steve is based on two very important people in my life—my uncle Steve and my dad. My uncle Steve is my mum’s youngest brother and he was the cool the uncle when I was growing up. He always seemed like a free spirit and always made me believe we were all capable of anything. My dad is the opposite of my uncle Steve. He’s grounded and dependable. He was part of my pit crew and a steadying influence on me when things got crazy in the pits. He had a good engineering mind and his thoughts always gave me confidence when it came to coming up with solutions for the race car. It helped me be a far more focused and relaxed driver. And for that I’ll always be grateful to my dad.

By way of a thank you to my dad, I gave Steve an interesting quirk in that he looks like Steve McQueen. Now my dad doesn’t look like Steve McQueen, but he does possess a passing resemblance to Paul Newman (according to some) although he has pale grey eyes opposed to Mr. Newman's baby blues. I thought it would make for a nice tribute. :-)

I do like how Steve Westlake turned out. He’s a far more rounded character than I’d hoped to create, but I have my uncle and dad to thank for that.

This concludes DID NOT FINISH's month in the sun. I hope my stories have piqued your interest. In the meantime, you can read the first five chapters here:

First Lap
Lap Two
Lap Three
Lap Four
Lap Five

A Little Something For the Weekend

2011-09-23T06:47:00.000-07:00

Warning: Irony alert!!!

"If you say something clever, your name will live on forever."
~Unknown

Hump Day: Plummet

2011-09-21T06:48:00.000-07:00

A few years back, I was kneecapped playing soccer. I was about to clear the ball when a guy carrying an advantage of 30 pounds and 12 inches of height body-checked me. When he struck, my foot was planted in the turf with my full weight on it. My body twisted, but my foot remained firmly where it was. Something had to give: my knee. I suffered the most intense pain I had ever felt. My leg pointed 90 degrees in the wrong direction. I may have screamed a bit. The upshot was that I couldn’t walk for a few weeks and spent months in physical therapy to heal the damaged tendons.

My knee healed but it was never a 100%. It fatigued easily under heavy usage. I certainly felt all its flaws hiking the descent from the top of Sealy Tarns in New Zealand.

Sealy Tarns was the first major hike of my New Zealand vacation and I discovered my knee wasn’t up to the terrain. In preparation, my wife and I had walked several tough trails in Northern California with similar elevation changes -- with no knee problems -- but New Zealand was much meaner than California, with steeper inclines, rock-strewn trails, and rapid changes in elevation. The weather complicated matters, too. Although it was summer, conditions were more like winter, with snow a distinct possibility. The wind was severe enough that I had to climb on all fours at times so not to be blown off the mountain. Although the peak provided a stunning vista of a mountain range carved by a glacier, the wind and cold curbed our enjoyment.

Going up hadn’t been too bad -- tiring, but I hadn’t felt any ill effects. Coming down was a different matter. A few hundred feet down from the mountain’s 3000-foot summit, I realized my leg didn’t have the strength or stability to support my footfalls. After only 300 feet, I could see the hike down was going to be a lot slower than it had been going up…

Or maybe not.

Rounding a switchback on the footpath, my knee lost all sensation and strength. I pitched forward with my hands out in front, but as soon as I started falling, I knew I was going over the edge. I watched my hands glide past the 18-inch-wide ledge toward the abyss.

Faced with death, you’re supposed to have your life flash before you or relive an old experience. Well, this was my third close encounter with the grave and I’m sorry, but none of the above is true. As I went over the edge, my thoughts focused to a singularity with the coherency of a laser. I developed mental tunnel vision; all nonessential thoughts dissolved into the periphery. Only one thought obsessed my mind: No, not now, not today, I will not die. I didn’t know what I was going to do to save myself, but I was going to do something.

Instinctively, I snatched at everything. To my shock, my left hand latched hold of an inch-thick root belonging to a shrub. My descent stopped dead after a fall of only a few feet. I was left dangling by one arm against a sheer wall of sharp rock and loose dirt, which was held in place by wild grasses and shrubs. If I lost my grasp on the root, my fall would be some 300 feet to the next shelf, but with the severity of the mountain face, the jutting rocks would flick me beyond the narrow ledge. Where I would land next would be impossible to tell -- overhangs, terrain changes, and trees blocked the rest of the mountain. I was pretty sure that, once I started falling, there was little to halt the 2500-feet descent to the bottom.

My problems were compounded because my back was to the cliff face. The backpack I wore pushed me away from the cliff wall as my legs flailed to find a foothold. Since I didn’t know how long I could keep a grasp of the root -- or the root could keep a grasp of the cliff face, my heart rate went through the roof.

Julie dropped to the trail to aid me. She grasped my wrist on the hand that held the root. “Let go. I’ve got you.”

There was no way I was giving up my only strand of safety. I couldn’t see her, but there was no way she had me. Even though I know she’s strong, she ain’t that strong. There was a good chance I could take her over the side with me.

“Let go,” she repeated.

I didn’t answer. I thrashed my feet against the rocks and shrubs for a foothold. Julie said something else that I ignored. My feet found an edge in the rocks, but kept slipping off because of the awkward position I was in. After several attempts, my heels dug into something solid. I hitched myself up an inch to get the full strength of my legs under me. With three points of contact with the cliff face, relief washed over me. I breathed again, not realizing that I’d been holding my breath. For the first time, I believed I was going to get out of this one.

Julie still fought to take the hand clasped around the tree root. I thrust my other hand at her. “Take it,” I ordered.

She took it.

I was supported, but -- with my back to the cliff wall -- it was nearly impossible to climb up. To do it, I needed to be facing the other way.

“Pull me up,” I told Julie.

She heaved on my arm with both hands. As she dragged me back to safety, I turned my body, helping myself up by finding a new foothold in the rock. I never let go of my trusty root. I believed in that root more than anything on earth. Without finesse, Julie hauled me back onto the trail. I let go of my root and clawed at the footpath’s dirt. Once safe, we just lay there, catching our breaths.

Adrenaline coursed through me. My legs had been immensely strong during the rescue, but the moment I was safe, my crippled leg was useless. I could barely stand on it. For the remainder of the decent, I struggled. Where several rockslides had wiped out the footpath, I was forced to butt-scoot across them. I applied a similar technique to the numerous steep drops, where the path fell four or five feet rapidly. Unable to find a makeshift staff, Julie tried to be my crutch, but the needle-thin paths made it impossible. For much of the hike down, I leaned against the mountainside for support. My feeble stamina meant I couldn’t go more than 10 minutes without a stop. It was a torturous couple of hours. Limping back to the parking lot, my knee was mush. I stripped off my weatherproof and thermal layers and Julie bandaged my leg. I hadn’t let her bandage it on the mountain; I’d just wanted to get down.

A few days later, Julie admitted something to me. “There was no way your hand was coming off that root. Your knuckles threatened to burst through your skin. I tried to peel your fingers off, but I couldn’t get one to budge. I couldn’t believe your strength.”

Neither could I. It didn’t feel like I had held on that tight. I know for damn sure I was holding on for dear life. In all honesty, my grip felt light -- although in that frantic minute or so I fought to hang on, my hand never slipped a millimeter. To compound my miraculous strength, my arm and shoulder suffered no muscle strain or bruising. I’d had a Bruce Banner/Hulk moment, echoing the belief that we all possess superhuman strength we call upon in times of extreme stress.

It’s not the first time I’d experienced these tendencies. When I raced cars, I reacted quickly to avoid accidents. They seemed to happen intensely slowly to me, but later spectators remarked on the speed of my avoidance. Something sure gets awakened in me at times like this. I’m grateful for this survivor’s instinct. I’ve learned to trust it when it kicks in.

An event like this only reinforces my own belief that, irrespective of technological advances and perceived superior intellect, we humans rely on and use our primitive instincts a hell of a lot. Three millions years of fight-or-flight reflexes are hardwired into our brains and aren’t going anywhere fast.

If you don’t believe me, let me push you off a mountain.

A Little Something For the Weekend

2011-09-16T05:57:00.000-07:00

If you're not laughing at this, then you're...

“If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think.”
~Clarence Thomas

Hump Day: Milk

2011-09-14T05:54:00.000-07:00

I have issues with milk. The smell of it makes me heave, regardless of how fresh it is. It's totally psychosomatic with heavy tendencies on the psycho. Like most irrational symptoms, I can squarely place the blame for this one at the door of childhood. I started school in the 70's and in those days, every child between 5-8 years old got half a pint of milk in the morning.

The milk was delivered in the mornings and two milk monitors from the top year wheeled in the milk then went from class to class handing out delicious cow lactations. Sadly, on one such warm spring day, the monitors forgot to bring in the milk first thing in the morning and didn't get to it until the sun had a couple hours to work on it. When it got my bottle, it was warm to the touch and the foil cap was heaving at its seal.

"Miss, my milk tastes funny," I said.

"Drink it, Simon. You don't want to grow up being short, do you?"

"No, miss, but it tastes funny."

"You'll taste funny if you don't drink your milk."

So I drank, along with all my class chums and let nature take its course. Thirty minutes later, I made all my growth enabling milk reappear.

Since then milk, fresh, bad or whatever ignites a synapse in my brain that says, "Miss, my milk tastes funny"

I went a long time after that not drinking milk, but after too many years in the wilderness eating cereal dry, I returned to it. But I have set rules.

1. The milk has to be ice-cold
2. It must be deadly fresh. If it's more than a day old, then it's out the door (which annoys Julie to no end).
3. I can't inhale while I'm consuming it. Sounds tricky but it can be done.

Julie is a lifesaver, although she doesn't like her role. She's the person I can go to and say, "Does that smell off to you?"

"Simon, it's fine."

"Yeah, but is it off?"

At that point, she usually disposes of it. I think it's easiest for everyone concerned.

I always wondered what a kafuffle I would cause if I won the Indy 500. They'd hand me the victory milk and I'd have to say, "no."

But just as irrationally, I have a milk exception. I can drink chocolate milk. I can chug a pint of it with no
problems. I don't know why. I certainly don't smell that milk smell when it's chocolate flavored. What can I say? I'm an enigma.

IndieReader Quiz Me On THE FALL GUY

2011-09-13T09:30:00.000-07:00

IndieReader quizzed me on THE FALL GUY in a fun interview. Enjoy.

Book of the Month: Fast and Dirty

2011-09-12T03:29:00.000-07:00

Did Not Finish is a book that is very close to my heart as it’s a mystery centering on the world of motorsport. Twenty years ago, I raced open-wheel cars motorsport in the UK.

In the book, a death threat is circulating around the pits. Derek Deacon says he’ll kill his championship rival, Alex Fanning, unless Alex throws the championship deciding race. Rookie driver, Adrian ‘Aidy’ Westlake, doesn’t put too much stock in the threat. He figures Derek is just playing mind games. That changes when Alex dies on the track after banging wheels with Derek. A cover-up ensues. The police wrap up their investigation without following up on the death threat, TV coverage omits the crash and the racing community seems happy to ignore what they heard. Aidy is the exception. He feels obligated to expose the truth and finds himself dragged into a much larger conspiracy.

A real incident is the basis for Did Not Finish. I was competing in a regional championship where a rumor was floating around the paddock that a driver threatened to kill the championship leader if he didn’t win and, just as in the book, that driver died in a crash during the race. At the time, I felt quite helpless. There is a world of difference between an idle threat and an actual murder. What made the situation even harder for me to accept was that minutes before the race started, the driver who died had shared something with me that he hadn’t even shared with his family. It’s a confidence I’ve kept for twenty years.

Did Not Finish is not an attempt to expose a crime or rewrite history but illustrate life in the fast lane. Motorsport is an expensive game. To compete, you need more than just a bat, a ball and a pair of sneakers. You need a small army. Even at a grass roots level, it costs tens of thousands each year to own, maintain and race at a competitive level. Because of that, the desire to win gets amped up and tensions run high. Competition brings out our best, but it can also bring out our worst, so dirty tricks aren’t out of the question.

Naturally, there’s rule bending in motor racing and I can’t say I didn’t pull some stunts to help me survive in the sport. Other people I knew took more drastic measures, especially when it came to money. Some people borrowed heavily, in some cases turning to loan sharks. Others got involved in a variety of criminal pursuits to make ends meet. They ranged from misdemeanors such as theft to major felonies such as drug trafficking. Some individuals felt they had to protect their interests and did so by intimidating others or flagrant cheating. Some of the stuff that occurred is enough to make your hair curl. And in most cases, all these acts boiled down to people doing anything to hang on to their dream and win. It’s a siren song that’s hard to ignore.

Dick Francis showed the dark side of the world of horseracing, I’m hoping to do the same through Aidy’s adventures. He lives in the shadow of his famous father, the late, great driver, Rob Westlake, who died along with Aidy’s mother in an auto wreck after securing a Formula One contract. Raised by his grandfather, Steve, himself a retired Grand Prix mechanic, Aidy is following in his father’s footsteps.

As the series develops and Aidy makes his rise through the world of motor racing, he’ll be drawn into the various issues affecting the sport. And as he does, he’ll learn one thing—in motorsport, murder will always happen breakneck speed.

A Little Something For the Weekend

2011-09-09T05:54:00.000-07:00

This made me laugh out loud.

"I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road."
~Stephen Hawking

Hump Day: Choice

2011-09-07T05:52:00.000-07:00

I get anxious over choice when it comes to high-pressure situations such placing an order at fast food places. If the menu has to do a lap of honor around the building, then there's too much choice. The problem is I can't read it all. It's too much information for my little brain to take in, so I suddenly get nervous because I know I'm holding up the line. While the customers in front of me usually glance at the board and rattle off these extremely involved requirements, my first words are "Er...er...er..." and still are after two minutes. The upshot is that I usually have a psychotic break in the store and pick the first thing that stands out whether I want it or not. It usually goes down like this.

"Sir, have you made a decision?"

"Yes. I'll have a burger. No, a cheeseburger. Yes, I want a cheeseburger. No fries."

I get a confused look.

"Do you think I should have fries?"

"Sir, this is a Starbucks. We do coffee."

At this point, I begin to cry and run out of the store screaming, "Don't look at me like that."

Unlike several of my other irrational fears mentioned over the months, I do have the choice thing under control. I scan menus for different restaurants and I choose what I'm going to have well in advance. That way, I can go in, glance at the menu in a meaningful way, state my selections without any fuss and look damn cool about it at the same time. Ah, I'm in a Starbucks, I believe I'll have a tall white mocha, no whipped cream, if you please. Ah, I'm in a Pasta Pomodoro, I'll have a Caesar salad and the Penne Portobello, my good man/woman.

This works very well until Julie says, "Are you sure you want that? You like this too."

Then my house of cards come tumbling down. Cracks appear in my confident air. A facial tic starts to boogie. Confusion spreads across my face. A whimper develops and the waiter says, "I'll come back."

Variety might be the spice of life, but for some of us, it's just too spicy.

Book of the Month: Did Not Finish

2011-09-05T08:34:00.000-07:00

I'm very happy to announce that my Book of the Month for September is my brand new mystery, DID NOT FINISH. It's the first book in the Aidy Westlake mystery series set in the high-octane world of motor racing. The storyline:

When Derek Deacon threatens to kill Alex Fanning, his championship rival, rookie driver Aidy Westlake doesn’t put much stock in it – it’s typical of the intense competitiveness and aggression in their world. But when Fanning dies after making contact with Deacon’s car during a race, a conspiracy ensues: the TV coverage is edited and the police wind up the investigation without interviewing witnesses. Compelled to prove Deacon is the murderer, Aidy pushes for the truth and is drawn into a world of fraud, organized crime and murder.

Murder has never happened so fast.

Over the month, I'll share background stories and inspirations behind the book and the characters. In the meantime, you can read the opening chapter here and I hope you'll pick up a copy of the book. I'm very excited about this book and I hope you will be too. :-D

A Little Something For the Weekend

2011-09-02T05:47:00.000-07:00

With DID NOT FINISH hitting bookstores yesterday, it's time to be damned again.

"Publish and be damned!"
~Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

New Book: DID NOT FINISH Gets Its Start

2011-09-01T07:39:00.000-07:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines. My new mystery, DID NOT FINISH, set in the world of motor racing is out today. You can learn more about the book here and you can read a sample chapter here.

I hope you'll check it out.

Hump Day: I'm A Hero, You're A Hero

2011-08-31T06:52:00.000-07:00

Julie reminded me that she's still going through withdrawl for one of her favorite shows which got canceled, Heroes. If you’ve not seen it, it’s about the belief that people with special powers exist all over the world and in a time of trouble, these people will form together to rise up against a devastating evil. These are just ordinary people who exhibit the kind of special powers you’d find amongst the Fantastic Four or X-Men, but without the spandex and the need to wear their underpants on the outside. It’s all very thrilling.

The characters in Heroes have the ability to fly, heal themselves, predict the future, read people’s mind and stop time, just to name a few. All very sexy.

But that’s where the show falls down. They’re focusing on people’s super sexy superpowers. They don’t feature anyone with mundane superpowers. Mundane superpowers--is that an oxymoron?

People with mundane superpowers can make a difference too, you know. I suppose I’m a little hurt by the show, because they don’t feature a hero like me. I have special powers. I don’t like to brag about them or anything, but I have them. Sadly, those powers haven’t been incorporated in the show.

Unlike the superheroes in the show, I have two special powers. I’ve had them for a long time and I’ve yet to find a purpose for them, but I’m sure they’ll come in handy some day.

My first superpower is the ability to be ignored by automatic doors. I can stand in front of these things for a week and they won’t open. I can jump up and down and get nothing. I usually have to dart in behind someone before I freeze to death outside.

My second superpower is the ability to buy from a store any electronic or mechanical product expected to perform a function, get it home and find that it’s broken or a part is missing. I can choose from hundreds and still find the busted one. I’m the kind of person who’ll find a needle in a haystack, but the needle will be missing a point.

Yes, yes, these abilities are astounding. They are my gift and my curse. I fear I’ll pass these powers onto my children. I know I’m already passing it onto my pets. I was told my new kitten, Chase, was a boy. He is a girl--who has now been renamed, Chasemina. If I drop Chasemina, she lands on her side, head or back, never her feet.

As a mundane superhero, I fear my superhero name wouldn’t be Batman or Wolverine, but Dud and my trusty catchphrase would be “What are you going to do?” combined with a shrug at the end.

The problem is for people like me, our mundane superpowers embarrass us. We stay at home, afraid of the impact we can inflict on the world. I’m sure I’m not alone in this power. I bet many of you reading this exhibit powers you perceive as crap. I don’t want you to be ashamed of your powers. I want you to tell me about them. Like the televisual Heroes, we too could band together to prevent a mild inconvenience on the world, as we don’t quite have the stuff to avert a global calamity.

So I ask you, what’s your mundane power? Go on. Unimpress me.

Interview with Simon Wood, author “We All Fall Down” - IndieReader

2011-08-30T08:48:00.001-07:00

Indie Reader did a nice interview with me. Enjoy!

Interview with Simon Wood, author “We All Fall Down” - IndieReader

Book of the Month: The Dark Side

2011-08-29T00:06:00.000-07:00

My horror fiction and my crime fiction have always shared a common trait in that they feature ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, but another trait separates them. My crime fiction in most cases focuses on people who've courted danger. My horror fiction usually features people who've done nothing to invite calamity into their lives. They’re just merely victims of circumstance. Which I suppose is a little mean of me. So why go there? I suppose I don’t like Hollywood endings. Whether we like it or not, life is unfair and cruel at times. So, it’s not realistic that innocent people escape evil. The good guy doesn’t always win and the bad guy doesn’t always get his comeuppance. Every day the news proves this point again and again. In my own life, I’ve witnessed bad things happen to good people and it would be disingenuous for me not to reflect that in a story.

You could be mistaken for thinking I’m a dour and depressed personality type. Maybe I am, especially if I don’t get my coffee. :-) But I’m not. Not really. I have a belief that we can overcome anything, especially when we are faced with insurmountable odds. That’s what my horror fiction is all about. Dark and seemingly impossible forces can strike us at any time, but how we cope, endure and conquer those forces. It’s those people who are ripped from their world and put on the spot fascinate me. How a character deals with a traumatic event or their worst fears is exciting because those people will grow from the experience and ensuring they’ll never be the same person again. Some of those characters will triumph and some will buckle and fail. And in either case survival is never guaranteed, even for those that triumph. The dark side is cruel like that. :-)

This concludes DRAGGED INTO DARKNESS’ month in the spotlight. I hope you’ve enjoyed these essays and stories. September is another book, but I’ll leave you with one of the stories from the collection—ACCEPTABLE LOSSES. It’s probably one of my most requested stories and really highlights what DRAGGED INTO DARKNESS theme means to me. Captain John Clelland has struck the worst of bargains for the lives of allied soldiers. You can either read the story or listen to an audio adaptation of the tale here.

Thanks for reading.

A Little Something For the Weekend

2011-08-26T05:44:00.000-07:00

Something to ponder the next time you're at a restaurant.

"Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first."
~Ernestine Ulmer

Hump Day: Ground Rush

2011-08-24T09:08:00.000-07:00

I have a small talent for disaster. If I can be in the wrong place at the wrong time, I can do it. This is an incident happened while I was a student pilot.

GROUND RUSH

I hadn’t always been afraid of heights as a kid. In fact, I was a bit of a suburban monkey, forever climbing trees and running along rooftops. My fear struck during a business flight to Paris where I realized I was mortal and I stood no chance of survival if gravity got the better of aerodynamics. So I decided to learn to fly to combat my irrational fear.

I took to flying pretty well. Being a competitive person, especially with myself, I wanted to do well. I had to ace the milestones laid down in the course, one of which was the first solo flight. The target time to go solo is ten hours. I went solo after nine. Once I had that under my belt, I was mandated to accumulate a number of solo hours. I did so after a scheduled training class with my instructor. At the end of our exercises, he’d hop out and I’d fly off again.

Usually things went well, but on one particular day things didn’t go to plan. I was returning to the landing strip after practicing some slow flight exercises in the local area. I contacted air traffic to tell them I was coming back to land and they gave me clearance to rejoin the circuit. The circuit is essentially a traffic circle in the sky the planes join to take their turn to take off and land. I was halfway around the circuit and preparing for my descent when another plane (a twin-engined Piper) radioed in for a landing. Since the aircraft was the bigger and faster plane, air traffic wanted to get him down before me. He said he was five miles out and asked for a straight in approach, essentially allowing the pilot to circumvent the circuit.

I told air traffic that I was on “Base” which is the last leg before final approach. The other pilot quickly corrected himself saying he was only two miles out. Air traffic got a little nervous and asked if we could see each other. We both responded that we couldn’t. The pilot radioed in to correct his position again. He said he was right on top of the airport. Air traffic nervously asked where I was. Equally as nervous, I told them that I was about to turn onto final. There was a moment of hesitation from air traffic and I could understand it. They had a tough decision to make. Was it better to have someone competent get the plane down on the ground quick or keep the experienced pilot up in the air to prevent spooking the student pilot? They decided to give the twin engine priority over me, but asked again if we could see each other. We both said no again and given no other instruction, I reluctantly turned on to final. As I turned left, my wing lifted and there, about a hundred feet above me, was the twin-engine Piper and its pilot had no idea he was descending on top of me. Because of the positioning of our wings, we’d both been in each other blind spots.

We were seconds from a collision. With no time to explain the situation, I slammed the plane into a dive to avert the crash and radioed into air traffic to tell them what had happened. A shocked voice told me to get into the circuit again and come home. With a racing pulse, I said that I would.

It was then I realized I’d lost my visual bearings and I didn’t know where I was.

A beginning pilot relies entirely on visual cues, but after my avoidance maneuver, I didn’t recognize a damn thing. Although I’d flown over the same places a thousand times, not one seemed familiar. I found it impossible to reorient myself. My rampant adrenaline clouded my decision-making.

I radioed in to admit I was lost and if I didn’t get a handle on it soon I’d be lost in a big way. As if on cue, the late afternoon light failed when low cloud descended and a mist rolled in. Just to complicate matters, the airstrip couldn’t switch on its runway lights to help aid my return because they had been affecting repairs all day.

Panic gripped me. My mouth was dry and I was sweating like a pig. My fear level strangled my good judgment. I still had the plane in a slow descent. The plane’s altitude was 300 feet and I was heading for a crash landing in a field strewn with power lines. But that was cool. To get myself out of the hole I was in was going to take a lot of courage and at that moment, I didn’t have it. I considered how easy it would be to take a chance on crash landing the Cessna in the field. I understood that by doing this, there was a good chance I’d be killed, but at least I wouldn’t have to deal with the pressure of the situation. Simply crash and my anguish would be gone. It sounded like a plan and I let the plane drift downward. I was down to less than 150 feet when I accepted that a possible fatal crash wasn’t a viable plan, so I took the plane out of a descent and put it into a climb. Taking this action gave me no pleasure either. With the mist closing in, I didn’t know if my ascent would fly me directly into someone. That very much in mind, I leveled off at 400 feet safe in the knowledge that it was unlikely that anyone would be that low.

I told air traffic that I was totally lost. They admitted they didn’t have visual contact and told me to work at it. That instruction felt like a kick in the guts and as much use as a chocolate teapot, but I did my best.

Still nothing looked familiar. Twice I blew over the runway from the wrong direction. Both times my sudden discovery of the airport came as a surprise. I tried to maintain a visual lock on the runway, but panic running riot through my brain meant I lost visual contact with safety within seconds. It was a miracle that I didn’t crash into someone flying like that. Air traffic admitted they were struggling to see me because of the mist and that they were clearing the runway and other aircraft until I was down.

I checked my gas gauge. I still had half tanks, which was good enough for another couple of hours of flying time. A couple of hours? The plane might be able to stay aloft for that long, but I knew my nerves wouldn’t. Stress would kill me long before then. I really had to get a grip and get the plane down.

I knew why I was so panicked. For the first time in my short flying career, I’d lost my safety tether. As a student pilot, I wasn’t much different than a baby bird that doesn’t venture far from its nest. I’d spent so much time in the circuit that it had become my beacon, my safety blanket. If I ever needed to feel safe, I knew where to go, but not anymore. Getting lost, I’d broken that link with safety. I was flapping around in the breeze with no hope of ever getting home safe. I flew aimlessly in circles draining away my fuel and hope reserves.

Just as I was at the point where I didn’t know what I was going to do, a helicopter announced he’d spotted me and had a view of the runway through a pocket in the clouds. Air traffic handed control to him without a moment’s hesitation. He told me to do exactly what he said and when he said it. I told this sky angel I was his to do with what he would.

Air traffic announced they had the on-site fire crew on alert (hardly a heartwarming thought) and they’d managed to jerry rig the electrics to switch on the main runway’s lights (a very heartwarming thought).

The helicopter pilot issued instructions: Turn left now. Stop. Maintain heading. Turn right now. Stop. Begin descent now.

As I crested a tree line over a hill, the runway in all its blazing glory came into view. I was coming in at an angle to the runway, but I didn’t care. I could wing a landing, even if I trashed the plane doing it.

Although it should have been easy to make a landing, it wasn’t. Because of the shallow angle I was approaching from, the runway’s perspective from the air was unusual, making it hard to estimate a descent rate to land. But I wasn’t about to screw this up now, not with the chance to walk away from this in one piece now within my grasp.

I homed in on the lights twinkling in the distance and brought the plane down, making one of the best landings of my flying career. The moment the undercarriage kissed the tarmac my jelly legs and rubber hands regained their strength. The relief I felt was so overwhelming that I wanted to cry. I radioed in that I was down safe and sound. I continued to give an Oscar speech thanking everyone and apologizing to the airport, air traffic, the helicopter and everybody tuned in to the radio frequency.

I parked up and tottered into the flying club’s main office where a number of instructors congratulated me and the chief flying instructor told me, “You just learned the most valuable flying lesson you’ll ever learn.”

And I knew what he meant. It had nothing to do with not losing my bearings but with dealing with stress and putting all the safety training they’d taught me into action and coming out the other side. On the way home a wave of euphoria swept me away and I couldn’t stop laughing and crying. This passed, but the exhilaration didn’t. My adrenalin levels turned me into a rubber ball bouncing off all the walls the next several hours.

Up until that day, I’d been pretty cocky about my flying. I was accurate and adept, but that meant I’d never had to deal with fixing a problem. But the near miss taught me a lot of things, not the least of which was how to be humble. Unfortunately, it never did cure my fears of heights.

Top 10 Again

2011-08-22T18:08:00.000-07:00

IndieReader.com compiles a weekly list of independently published ebooks and WE ALL FALL DOWN has made the Top 10 for the second week in a row. Well done to the little fella.

A Little Something For the Weekend

2011-08-19T05:08:00.000-07:00

A little motor racing philosohpy for the weekend.

"Some days you're a bug. Some days you're a windshield."
~Price Cobb

A Newbie's Guide to Publishing: Guest Post from Simon Wood

2011-08-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

I've known Joe Konrath a long time and he asked me to guest blog for him about my writing career and the challenges it's presented over the years.

A Newbie's Guide to Publishing: Guest Post from Simon Wood

Hump Day: Fun Facts

2011-08-17T06:45:00.000-07:00

I’m feeling frivolous. I hope frivolous doesn’t mind. Anyhoo, very few of you have met me, so you haven’t gotten to see or know me in all my splendor. To remedy this, I thought I’d share a few facts about me.

1. I wear mismatched socks. I don’t “bunny ear” the pairs together (who’s got time for that). Instead, I tug the first two socks I grab. My socks are usually of the cartoon variety, so I get away with the mismatch. I like to think of my socks as entertainment for my ankles.

2. I like being short and wish I was shorter. I’ve always been small. I’m used to being small. Small looks good on me. But at 5’-4”, I think I’m a tad too tall. It puts me in that tall-short category which is no place to be.

3. I find toilet humor damn funny. A good poo-poo joke will have me laughing like a drain.

4. Not a day goes by that I don't miss racing cars. I raced single-seaters from ’90-’93. It remains the best and worst thing I ever did. The highs can never be matched, neither can the lows. It made me a tougher, stronger person.

5. If I could be any fictional hero, I would be Dr. Who. I’m a lifelong Dr. Who fan. I think he’s the greatest superhero ever created. I still hope that one day my parents will tell me I’m adopted and I’m really a Timelord. It could happen.

6. Most things scare me from heights to buying coffee in Starbucks. I see the worst in everything. If it’s going to go wrong, it’s going to wrong around me. I have a talent for disaster, so everything worries me a little. Add to that a wild imagination, and within a handful of seconds, I’ve foresee a dozen outcomes.

7. I'm short-tempered--it's a height related thing. I have a short fuse. I like to laugh and joke and not take the world too seriously. If you ruin that for me, you’re going to hear about it.

8. I'm a bleeder, not a fighter. Pari has her brown belt in Tae Kwon Do. My fighting technique extends as far as the windmill.

9. Julie has longer legs than me. We’re about the same height, but if I have to get in a car after her, I have to scoot the seat forward. This amuses her.

10. I'm dyslexic and it took me 5 goes at spelling the word correctly. My reading age is grade 5 or 6, I think. Someone can read a book out loud faster than I can read a book with my eyes. This is a reason I listen to a lot of audio books.

11. I believe dessert isn’t food, but a way of life. Let them eat cake, that’s what I say.

12. I come from a massive family. Just going back two generations, my family is into triple-digits. We could have our own phone book. This contrasts heavily with Julie who only has one uncle and one cousin.

13. I am not the voice of the Geico gecko, although we are of similar height.

14. My favorite cereal is Special K. I know it’s a “lady’s” cereal, but I think it tastes good. When I was little I used to steal my cousin’s Special K before she got up in the mornings and hide it under a layer of cornflakes so she wouldn’t know. Sorry Hazel. One the plus side, I always fit into my jeans.

15. Despite being allergic to cats and dogs, I adopt defective animals from the pound. I have a longhaired dachshund that is allergic to people and about a dozen other things. I have one cat that can’t metabolize cat food, so I have to make my own. I have one cat with extremely long fingers and I do mean fingers. One cat insists on coming on walks with my dog. One cat is a dwarf because it was very sick during its developmental stage.

So there you haven’t it. I make as much sense as a VCR instruction manual. But these are the things that make me who I am and are the things have a tendency of working their way into my stories.

Now you know a little bit about me, let’s hear a bit about you. Give me a fun fact or two.

Book of the Month: Back Stories

2011-08-15T07:40:00.000-07:00

Every story has a genesis. Mine usually come from the world around me. Every good writer is a thief and I steal everything. I pinch from the lives of friends as well as my own. The news is always a great source of inspiration. Even other stories can spark a story. It's the ideas I go for. They're just the perfect thing to create a story. So for DRAGGED INTO DARKNESS, here are some of the stories behind the stories.

"Runway Three-Seven"

Sitting up late one New Year’s Day watching Rod Serling’s NIGHT GALLERY, I caught a particular episode about a plane in trouble. It was obvious from what was said that the writer didn’t research his subject too well. The story has the character call out a runway number that doesn’t exist in aviation, but the mistake prompted me to consider “what if.” This story was also a chance to exorcise a personal demon.

When I was flying student, I was returning to the landing strip after a mandated solo flight. As I was turning to make a final approach, another pilot radioed in to land. Unfortunately, he misread his location and we were on a collision course. Our two planes were within seconds of a mid-air collision when I spotted his plane descending on top of me. I made an evasive maneuver and when I’d recovered from that, I realized I’d lost my bearings. To compound matters, low clouds swept in and air traffic control and I lost sight of each other. The airport couldn’t switch on its lights because they were undergoing maintenance. I flew around for nearly an hour trying to find my way back, but with no luck. Panic really had a grip on me and I actually considered crashing the plane just so the ordeal would be over.

Luckily, a passing helicopter spotted me and he had the advantage of seeing both the airfield and me. He talked me down and the airfield cleared the runway for an emergency landing. I made a perfect landing in front of a row of fire tenders just in case things didn’t go well.

A lot of this real life experience became the heart of Neal’s plight in Runway Three-Seven. The emotional force this tale carries is what I felt and I hope you feel it too.

"The Sunseeker"

This was first story idea I ever thought of, long before I even thought about writing. It was during one those perfect summer days and I thought to myself, what if I was a total sun worshiper but was denied that pleasure? A story immediately popped into my head with the dilemma of what a sun lover would do if they were cursed to become a vampire.

The story has become one of my most popular, having been published four times. A lot of people ask about The Whistler character and if he will make a return. I don’t know myself, but I hope so, mainly because he was based on a real life person. In the late 80’s, psychiatric patients were being “released into the community.” My hometown was graced with the presence of several such characters, but one guy really stood out. I’d come out of a movie theater one night and I was walking back to my flat. Other moviegoers peopled the street, but one guy stood out. He stood over six feet tall with trousers that didn’t meet his socks, a raggedy Nike sweatshirt and bowl haircut. He didn’t walk; he strode and cut a swath through the crowd. He was some two hundred feet behind me when he started to whistle. I didn’t recognize the aria, but it was operatic. This guy was pitch perfect and possessed the power to project his music like he had a microphone. His ability was stunning to the extent that he stopped people in their tracks while they took in this amazing giant. I didn’t stop. I kept walking and walking fast, because for all the music’s beauty, there was a sinister edge to this man’s whistle. Nothing should have been that perfect. As I hurried, I felt him and his music close in on me. His music, which seemed to be right behind me now, enveloped me and I feared how long it would be before the Whistler got to me too. He caught me up. The intensity of his whistle hurt my ears. I couldn’t deny how much I feared this man and my fear was repeated on the faces of the people coming in the opposite direction. The Whistler overtook me, never once acknowledging my existence. A sense of relief flooded over me. As he left me behind, I felt safe again. I came across the Whistler on several other occasions, but I never heard him whistle again—and I hope I never do.

"Ladies’ Room"

At the 2004 World Horror Convention, I was on a panel about fears. I stated that I feared just about everything. I get nervous in a Starbucks because there are too many choices and the line of people waiting for me make a decision looks ugly. Ladies’ restrooms also make me nervous. Don’t ask why I have visited a ladies’ restroom in the first place. Let’s just move on. There’s something forbidden about a ladies’ restroom, for men leastways. These places aren’t for men, so if one ventures inside, then there should be consequences. What triggered this desire to write about this forbidden place was an incident a few years back when I was leaving a movie theater and I spotted the janitor leaving the ladies’ restroom and he seemed fine with being there. At the time, I was unemployed and the jobs I was willing to undertake didn’t rule out working in places that scared me. Hence a voyage of discovery awaits my hero in "The Ladies’ Room."

"The Hoarder"

This is a pretty short story, but it’s becoming a crowd favorite at readings. It’s a pretty shocking tale about a woman who can’t throw anything away. What makes this story that much more shocking is that Charlene Casey’s obsessive compulsive disorder isn’t fiction but a fact and so much so that it’s in a category all of its own. Hoarding is a disease. There are people who can’t bear to throw anything away and what seems over the top in the story is drawn from several case histories. It just goes to show the lengths that we can go to. I hope this story is a warning to us all.

The story is seen through the eyes of Dr. Birnbaum, who has made three appearances in my stories. I hope to produce a collection featuring Dr. B’s stranger cases. There are a lot of phobias out there and if one person is equipped to deal with them, it’s him.

"Hungry For More"

This tale is one of my few gross-out pieces and came from one of those daft backhand remarks I sometimes make. Eating in America is an experience. The amount of food and sheer size is intimidating to a small Englishman like myself, so my early experiences ordering food in diners and restaurants usually resulted in the sweats. Diner menus have a habit of showing pictures of food rather than descriptions and what looks big pictorially is usually even bigger in the charbroiled flesh. It’s not uncommon that I’ll receive a burger that I can’t get my mouth around, so my backhand comment was along the lines of, “How do you people eat these things?” The rest is disgusting history.

"In The Eye Of The Beholder"

I find phobias fascinating in a train wreck kind of way. It’s hard to turn away from one person’s inability to deal with a certain aspect of their environment. My fascination with hoarding came out in "The Hoarder." With "In The Eye of the Beholder," I was drawn to an article on Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). Basically, this is a where a person has a severe distaste for their bodily appearance. They go beyond thinking their butt is too big. In extreme cases, people feel their body is unbalanced and amputation is the only way to even things up. At the time, a story had made the news about a man who’d instructed a doctor to remove a leg because he could no longer live with his scarred leg after a bike accident. The actual scarring wasn’t that bad. I found the surgeon’s comments engrossing. He risked his medical license because he totally empathized with the man’s plight. With this story, I wanted to deal with perfection and imperfection. When I was thinking about where to set this story, there could be only one place—Hollywood.

"Acceptable Losses"

This is probably my most popular short story. It's been reprinted a number of times since it originally appeared in the paperback. I think the true nature of this story has an affect on people.

In June ’98, I was in Thailand and I visited a British war grave about a mile from the Bridge on the River Kwai. One of the people I was traveling with was an Australian girl. After we left the grave, she told me about her grandfather. He was a World War II veteran and never talked about the war—except once, when he was drunk. He’d explained to her and her family how he’d been one of the men that was charged with the task of picking up the bodies of fallen soldiers after the battles. I was riveted to her every word, which is astounding, considering she was giving the account second hand.

I wasn’t writing at the time, but her story stuck with me. Some years later, Horrorfind ran a war-themed contest and I wanted to use this traumatic event somehow. Unfortunately, I had a first half for this tale but not a second and it was another year before I came up with Clelland’s bargain with Oracle. The bargain creates a powerful dynamic. The story’s format takes on one of "effect and cause"—the effect being the bodies on the beach and cause being Oracle’s need for food. If the Bucket Boys’ task wasn’t distressing enough, the bargain Clelland has made with Oracle makes what the Bucket Boys do a thousand times worse.

"The Head"

This story started out as an experiment. I and three other writers began a round-robin story. We'd write a section then pass it on to the next person until we had a story. Unfortunately, the team lost momentum and the story fizzled out, but I felt strongly about the piece. I believed there was something to be salvaged and I asked if I could finish it. I added a considerable chunk to the story to complete it then pared it down to produce a contiguous and consistent piece. I think the reason why I wanted to see this story completed was that collaborating with three other writers had forced me to write something that I wouldn’t have normally written. This stretched me and I enjoyed the torture. I find it a very satisfying piece.

"The Shower Curtain"

When Julie and I moved from Sacramento to the Bay Area, we lived in an apartment and the shower curtain in the bathroom was made of a silk-like cloth. The bad thing about it was when you showered and got close to the curtain, it would stick to you and it didn’t matter how warm the shower was, the curtain was always cold, clammy and cloying. Its touch felt like skin flayed only minutes before from its owner. I came to hate having a shower in that bathroom fearing its deathly touch and with this hate came an idea. "The Shower Curtain" was written one evening while my hair was still damp.

"Faith"

After starting with a flying story, the collection also ends with a flying story. My flying experience makes me very susceptible to flying tragedies. One such tragedy that sent me searching for more information was the Alaskan Airlines flight from LA to Seattle, which crashed into the Pacific minutes after take off. The FAA published a transcript from the black box. The reports made by the pilots chilled me. I found it hard not to become emotional. These two men, when faced with certain death, were ice-cool under fire. The plane was coming apart on them and they were still making calculated decisions. Personally, I know I would have lost it. Even when hope had abandoned them and the plane was only seconds from impact, these guys were still professionals and the copilot’s last words still chill me.

He said, “Ah, here we go.”

So when I got the idea for "Faith," a story about what really keeps planes in the air and our feet on the ground, I decided to honor these men and all pilots who’ve died trying to overcome crashing planes. The dialog between the pilots during the crash scene is directly quoting the Alaskan's pilots. For me, it makes the piece all that more traumatic.

I hope you like these glimpses behind these stories.

A Little Something For the Weekend

2011-08-12T04:48:00.000-07:00

If this doesn't describe noir fiction, I don't know what does. :-)

"Just when things look darkest, they go black."
~Paul Newman