The Flexible Truth of Saving Grace: Guest Post by Simon Wood

USA TODAY bestselling author, Simon Wood is a California transplant from England. He's a former competitive racecar driver, a licensed pilot, an endurance cyclist, an animal rescuer, and an occasional PI. He shares his world with his American wife, Julie. Their lives are dominated by a longhaired dachshund and six cats. He's the Anthony Award winning author of Accidents Waiting to Happen, Paying the Piper, Terminated, Deceptive Practices and the Aidy Westlake series. His thriller THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY is in development to be a movie. His latest book is SAVING GRACE. Curious people can learn more at http://www.simonwood.net.

SIMON WOOD:
THE FLEXIBLE TRUTH OF SAVING GRACE 

I hadn't intended to put my heroes, Scott Fleetwood and Tom Sheils, through the fictional wringer for a second time but something cropped up.

When I start a book, I don’t build it around a character or plotline. I’m premise driven. More often than not, that premise is a real world one. TERMINATED was built around the issue of workplace violence. ACCIDENTS WAITING TO HAPPEN explored corruption in the life insurance industry. It was survivor guilt for THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY. And for my latest book, SAVING GRACE, it was the manipulation of the free press.

Now before you go rolling your eyes, it’s not what you think. This has nothing to do with the current fake news claims. I’ve been looking into this issue for a quite some time. The tough thing about writing a book is it takes a long time from concept to final product. Who knew an election cycle would muck things up for me?

My interest dates back ten years when there was a kidnapping of a child in Portugal. Planted stories and media manipulation marred the investigation, which hasn’t been solved even today. The more insidious side to this story was that people profited monetarily from the incident. My writer’s radar became attuned to the issue and I came across more instances of abuse from within and outside the media. I’m sure you’re aware of some instances.

The subject was too enticing to ignore. If I was going to turn to the world of media and evil shenanigans, there were two characters I could turn to—reporter Scott Fleetwood and special agent Tom Sheils of the FBI. They were protagonists of a fan favorite, PAYING THE PIPER. I’d put these guys through hell in PIPER, and it’s that notoriety that gets exploited in SAVING GRACE.

No longer a reporter, Scott Fleetwood is still recovering from the aftermath of tangling with the notorious kidnapper, the Piper, when a new foe emerges from the shadows. The Shepherd announces to the San Francisco Independent that he has snatched a young girl from a vacationing family. The Shepherd has two demands for the safe return of the girl—a cash ransom and for Scott to act as his intermediary between the family and himself. The kidnapping brings in Special Agent Tom Sheils and his team to work the case and watch over Scott. The Shepherd promises the girl’s safety as long as Scott follows the rules of his game. Forced to trail the kidnapper’s twisting lead—and haunted by a previous victim he failed to save—Scott is desperate to keep the past from making a brutal comeback.

Each of the Shepherd’s demands are played out on the world’s stage for everyone to see with Scott as the star of a perverse reality show. As the stakes get upped, Scott realizes he’s a pawn of a much larger scheme.

I won't say how the media is being manipulated in SAVING GRACE. For that you’ll have to read the book. And when you have, come talk to me and I’ll tell you about the facts behind some of the lies. You can learn more about the book here: http://simonwood.net/book/saving-grace/

Deceptive Practices and Divine Intervention? Guest post by Simon Wood

Simon Wood is a California transplant from England. He's a former competitive racecar driver, a licensed pilot, an endurance cyclist, an animal rescuer and an occasional PI. He shares his world with his American wife, Julie. Their lives are dominated by a longhaired dachshund and six cats. He's the Anthony Award winning author of Working Stiffs, Accidents Waiting to Happen, Paying the Piper, Terminated, Asking For Trouble, We All Fall Down and the Aidy Westlake series. His last thriller THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY has been optioned for a movie adaptation. He also writes horror under the pen name of Simon Janus. Curious people can learn more at http://www.simonwood.net. 

SIMON WOOD:
DECEPTIVE PRACTICES AND DIVINE INTERVENTION? 

Damn my dyslexia!!! Usually it's a problem (a.k.a. a pain in the arse) but for once, it did me a good turn. The idea for my new book DECEPTIVE PRACTICES came from a misread. A couple of years ago I was flipping through the TV Guide on my television and I came across a TV movie called The Green-Eyed Monster. The description said it was about a wife who hires an organization to beat up her cheating husband. That was right up my alley so I watched it. The movie had nothing to do with what I'd read. It was about a woman who fixates on her next-door neighbor’s husband. I went back through the TV Guide and found the description was accurate to the movie I just watched. How the hell I'd read what I thought I read I have no idea. The descriptions weren't even close. It's one of those frustrating things that comes with dyslexia. You start reading something, your imagination takes over and rewrites it all for you, and you end up with something completely different. I remember being in engineering school during a class where we had to read some chapter from a book and when we came to dissect it I seem to have been the only one in the class who'd read something completely different. Like I say, dyslexia is a pain in the arse.

When something like this happens, it usually comes with a large chunk of frustration. How can my brain be that far off on its interpretation of just a few sentences? What is wrong with me? Why can't I just read the words in front of me? You really shouldn’t be let out in public without a seeing eye person to help you! But this time around I wasn't so pissed off. Had my brain just handed me a book idea? What if a woman did hire an organization to beat up her cheating husband? I did a quick search on IMDb to make sure I hadn't read the right thing but on the wrong channel and found there was no movie like that made. I let this idea grow for a bit and came up with the concept that there was an underground business that operated on a similar basis to the scared straight documentaries in that if you hired them, they would beat some sense into a wayward spouse with the aim of turning them around or getting some marital revenge. The ideas started coming and I developed a company name and their sales pitch: Do you have a cheating spouse? Has counseling failed? Want to get even with them? Then hire Infidelity Limited to teach them a lesson…

And DECEPTIVE PRACTICES was born. I know, I know it sounds like a crazy business idea but if I were to attach an app to the concept, I probably have a billion-dollar company. If it's got an app then it's legitimate. I think that's how it works.

Naturally I can't have a plot line that is that straightforward. I have to toss a few hand grenades into the mix. So the plot line for the book goes like this: Olivia Shaw is living a nice suburban life until she discovers her husband is cheating on her. When her sister suggests Infidelity Limited can offer some closure, Olivia buys their sales pitch. Olivia learns how Infidelity Limited really works when her husband turns up dead and she’s drawn into a dark web of blackmail and murder — just like all their other clients. Now, Olivia finds herself the prime suspect in her husband’s death and as the police close in on her, she has only one option—take down Infidelity Limited.

Usually dyslexia is nothing but a problem for me, but for once it gave birth to a book so I can't knock it too much. So here's to the next misread and all the ideas it conjures up!

I encourage you pick up the book, and I hope you like it.

Making of a Monster: Guest Post by Simon Wood

Today I welcome back one of my favorite friends and writers, Simon Wood. Simon Wood is a California transplant from England. He's a former competitive racecar driver, a licensed pilot, an endurance cyclist and an occasional PI. He shares his world with his American wife, Julie. Their lives are dominated by a longhaired dachshund and four cats. He's the Anthony Award winning author of Working Stiffs, Accidents Waiting to Happen, Paying the Piper, Terminated, Asking For Trouble, We All Fall Down and the Aidy Westlake series. His latest thriller is THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY that came out on March '15. He also writes horror under the pen name of Simon Janus. Curious people can learn more at http://www.simonwood.net. 

SIMON WOOD: Making of a Monster

Marshal Beck is the villain is THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY. He's a monster—he abducts and kills women—but he's not a traditional monster. He's not a rampaging nutcase. He's thoughtful and lives by a manifesto—that just happens to involve murder.

For me that’s the crux of a villain or a monster. They can’t be megalomaniacs or indiscriminate psychopaths. There has to be something more to them than that. Moustache twirling villains just don’t do it. They need to have an added dimension not only to be interesting but in order to be scary. So I put a lot of thought into an antagonist.

So how was Marshall Beck made?

I have to be careful about what I say here, as he's inspired by a couple of acquaintances. While neither of these two people have ever met, they both have a tendency to view the world in black and white terms which lead to them to make sweeping and harsh judgments that would likely result in some form of capital punishment for large sections of society for failing to live up to their ideals if they were in charge. I should mention that the guilty have ranged from terrorists to jaywalkers. It’s kind of amusing because it’s nothing more than hyperbole.

But what if it wasn’t? What if they were serious? What if they thought the laws in place failed to punish people for certain crimes, so they personally exacted the punishment society chose to ignore? It’s an exaggeration, but one I wanted to explore.

To add more flavor to the character, I turned to an urban legend from my childhood. As a child of the 70’s, things that happened within the family home stayed within the family home whereas today child services would have been called in to investigate. I grew up around a couple of brothers that I can’t say I particularly liked. They were always mean, but they were their father’s sons. Their father was mean-spirited. The rumor was that when the sons stepped out of line, the father beat them with a switch made from a thorned blackberry vine that grew all around their house. Whether it was true or not, just the idea of a barbed switch is scary. It’s been something that’s stayed with me, so when it came to the weapon Marshall Beck would use on his victims, I took that switch and made it bigger and badder.

Marshall Beck is a man who deals out punishments. Marshall Beck isn't hidden from the reader. You get to see the world as he sees it through his distortion. To him, what he's doing is just and not out of bounds. He doesn’t see the distortion, even if we do. The reason for this is simple. No one sees themselves as the villain. They're the heroes of their stories. It may be a conscious or unconscious delusion. Delusion or not, they don’t see themselves as the bad guy.

So that’s Marshall Beck—part exaggeration, part bogeyman and part manifesto. I hope you'll read THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY and ride his dark highway until he selects the wrong woman and it all comes to an end.

A Friend in Need: From Simon Wood

Thriller writer Simon Wood is truly a good guy. Simon is donating the royalties earned on the eBook version of The Fall Guy during the month of January to Karen J. Laubenstein. Some of you know Karen from the Anchorage Bouchercon which she organized or from her amazing photos of Alaska or from her upbeat comments on Facebook -- in spite of the adversity in her life. Karen's husband has been diagnosed with early onset dementia. It's been a hard time for the family over the past few years, but they finally have an appointment at the Mayo Clinic in February. The money Simon raises will go toward covering the trip to the Mayo Clinic.

Here are the details:
http://simonwoodwriter.blogspot.com/2014/01/shelf-life-friend-in-need.html

Karen is a very special person. Be sure and friend her on Facebook to see her amazing photos and learn more about what makes her so special!

I'm Not the One With the Accent: Simon Wood Guest Post

Today I welcome my friend author Simon Wood. A former racecar driver, licensed pilot, animal rescuer, endurance cyclist, and occasional private eye, Simon Wood is also an accomplished author with more than 150 published stories and articles under his belt. His mystery fiction, which has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, has earned him both the prestigious Anthony Award and a CWA Dagger Award nomination. In addition to No Show, his books include Accidents Waiting to Happen, Working Stiffs, Asking for Trouble, Paying the Piper, We All Fall Down, and Terminated. Originally from England, he lives in California with his wife, Julie. People can learn more at www.simonwood.net and you can find No Show here.

SIMON WOOD:
I’M NOT THE ONE WITH THE ACCENT

My new book, NO SHOW, deals with an Englishman coming to the US and his life being thrown into turmoil when his American wife goes missing the day he arrives in America. His search for her is hampered by his foreigner status. This is a topic I am well-informed about. I’m English, married to an American. I now live in the US. One obstacle I faced when I first moved to the US is the language.  George Bernard Shaw said, 'England and America are two countries divided by a common language.' and despite the fact we watch each other’s TV shows on a regular basis, that truism is as true today as it was then. And it’s something I learned the hard way.

American-English and English-English are very different. It’s more than the US’s predilection to drop the letter U from words like colour and to ration double L’s. Slang is different. Sentence structure is different. Pronunciation is different for the same words. The English accent, despite everything, is still relatively unfamiliar to the American ear. All these things made life difficult for me as an immigrant in the US.

I must admit I had a hard time adjusting when I moved to the US.  I would ask for something in a store, and watch the person nod, but see they didn’t have a clue what I was saying.  I remember being asked to write down what I wanted in a Starbucks after saying “Coffee, coffee, coffee” in a number of different ways. After handing the note over, the barista said, “Oh, you mean, coffee.” It was quite a humiliating experience. For about six months, I used hand gestures instead of words to get what I wanted, which seemed to get me further with fewer incidents.

This was a pretty sorry state of affairs. It wasn’t like English was my second language, but it was proving that American was. In a state of frustration, I complained to my wife. “What is wrong with everybody? I’m not speaking a different language.”

“Well, you kind of are,” she said tactfully. “You do have an accent.”

“A what? An accent? I don’t have a bloody accent. You people have the accent.”

“Yes, I know, but you have to appreciate the differences.”

“What differences?”

“You are a low talker. All English people are. You speak on a low and level tone. We don’t.”

You mean Americans are loud, I thought unkindly, but I accepted the point. I looked at the way I spoke and listened to Americans in conversation. I changed my lexicon so at least the words I used were the same ones everyone else used. I also changed the way I spoke. I didn’t affect an American accent, but I did speak up a tad and develop a Hugh Granty kind of an accent which was a little more formal than the way I spoke, because Americans seemed to understand him.

Fifteen years later, I speak fluent American, although I still speak it with an accent. My accent is now a little mellower on the American ear. I can laugh (most of the time) about my past problems, and I can even see where you lovely Americans are coming from and where my people go wrong when they visit the US. A little while ago I was having lunch with another ex-pat friend of mine, and we saw an English family having a hard time getting their order over to the waitress. My friend and I smiled.

“Fresh off the boat,” I remarked.

My friend nodded, and we offered our assistance.

This isn't the first time I’ve offered my translation services to English newbies. It’s almost like the scene from AIRPLANE where the old woman proclaims that she speaks Jive.

So now I’m very comfortable when speaking around Americans. Now I just wish they wouldn’t confuse me with an Australian nine times out of ten.

Literary Salon November 10: Simon Wood and Seth Harwood

Join Mystery Readers NorCal in Berkeley (CA) for a Literary Salon with Crime Fiction authors Simon Wood and Seth Harwood on Thursday evening November 10 at 7 p.m.

Simon Wood is an ex-racecar driver, a licensed pilot and an occasional private investigator. Simon has had over 150 stories and articles published. His short fiction has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, and has garnered him an Anthony Award and a CWA Dagger Award nomination, as well as several readers’ choice awards. He’s a frequent contributor to Writer’s Digest. He’s the author of WORKING STIFFS, ACCIDENTS WAITING TO HAPPEN, PAYING THE PIPER, WE ALL FALL DOWN, TERMINATED and ASKING FOR TROUBLE. As Simon Janus, he’s the author of THE SCRUBS and ROAD RASH. His current titles are DID NOT FINISH and THE FALL GUY. Curious people can learn more at http://www.simonwood.net

Seth Harwood received an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and went on to build a large fan base for his first novel, Jack Wakes Up, by first serializing it as a free audiobook online. Across iTunes, Podiobooks.com and sethharwood.com, his work has been downloaded over one million. His second novel, Young Junius, and a novella, Triad Death Match, are also available now.
You can contact Seth at his website, sethharwood.com, on Twitter, and through Facebook. He’s always happy to hear from a reader.

Join us at this Literary Salon in the Berkeley Hills for an evening of intrigue and suspense! To RSVP, leave a comment with email.