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Workings Stiffs will be going out of print soon now that there are only a few copies left and so I've made the book available as on ebook. As I did for my short story collection, Dragged Into Darkness, I thought I'd let you in on the story behind the stories and what inspired me to write the stories for Working Stiffs--other than a contract). 
So please enjoy these tales behind the tales.
Feel free to share your thoughts on these inspirations with me.
"Old Flames Burn The Brightest"
I’ve been in the US over a decade 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.
"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 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.
"The Fall Guy"
This story started life as the short story, Fender Bender, that I wrote for a crime anthology called Small Crimes. The theme of the anthology was that small crimes lead to big things. I love these sorts of scenarios. My story was the tale of Todd Collins, a down-on-his-luck guy, who backs into a drug dealer's car and to pay off his debt, he has to steal a car for a drug kingpin which triggers a whole series of events.
Blue Cublicle wanted to do the book, and they wanted Fender Bender in it—but bigger. This gave me a great canvas to work with. I took the concept of escalation and I took it another stage further. I load the problems on Todd's shoulders and he has spend the rest of the story trying to resolve them. The problem is that every action has an unequal reaction. Todd is forced to go outside of himself to cope with the tumbling dominoes he started by reversing into someone's car.
That's the thing that tickles me most about The Fall Guy. All Todd did was back into a car and drive away, but he ends up traveling half way around the country, becoming embroiled in a number of people's lives, their grudges and desperate situations in order to solve his own. When the story reaches its dizzying climax, it seems unreal that it all originated from a single and minor infraction. Now that's escalation baby! J
Todd does a lot of things throughout the story, but there is something that he doesn't do. I didn't realize it until the end of the story. I even went back to double-check and it was true. See if you notice what it is. If you think you know what Todd doesn't do, email me and If you're right, I'll send you a prize.
I sincerely hope you enjoy The Fall Guy and all the stories in Working Stiffs, because it was a lot of fun to write.
Check out ebook version of Working Stiffs at:
http://www.smashwords.com/..books/view/5543
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B..002VWKG2C
9:57 PM
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