Simon Wood's Blog - Posts Tagged "terminated"

All change please!! My next book Disgruntled has been renamed Terminated and will now be published next June instead of April. This means you'll have be in suspense a little longer, but that's what I'm all about.

[image error] won't hit bookshelves until the end of May, but it is available on pre order at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, etc. I hope people will check it out.

I'm pleased and proud to announce that my new thriller, Terminated, is now available.

Jacket blurb:
"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."

The book should be in bookstores, big and small, across America and Canada, as well as some supermarket chains. I believe it will be available in the UK in limited release. Amazon UK, Tescos, Ottakers and Borders are the likely contenders there. For direct links to some of the stores carrying the book, pop over to the Terminated webpage.

Below are the times, dates and places for my upcoming book tour. So, if I'm coming to your town, please drop by and say hi.

Here's my signing schedule:

M is for Mystery
86 Third Ave
San Mateo, CA
Saturday, June 5, 2010, 2pm
(as part of the Sisters in Crime Showcase)

Seattle Mystery Books
117 Cherry Street
Seattle, WA
Saturday, June 12, 2010, Noon

Mysterious Galaxy
7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd.
San Diego, CA
Sunday, June 13 2010, 2pm

The Poisoned Pen Bookstore
4014 N Goldwater Blvd. Suite 101
Scottdale, AZ
Tuesday, June 15, 2010, 7pm

Public Safety Writers Assoc. Convention
Las Vegas, NV
June 17-20, 2010

San Francisco Mystery Bookstore
4175 24th Street
San Francisco, CA
Saturday, June 26, 2010, 2pm

Orinda Books
276 Village Square
Orinda, CA
Wednesday. June 30, 2010, 4pm

Mystery Bookstore
1036-C Broxton Avenue,
Los Angeles, CA
Saturday, July 10, 2010, 1:30pm

Book 'Em
1118 Mission St.
South Pasadena, CA
Sunday, July 11, 2010, 12:30pm

If you've not read one of my books, I hope you'll give this one a try. I think you'll like it.

Regards,
Simon Wood
TERMINATED (Out Now!)
http://www.simonwood.net
http://www.facebook.com/simonwoodwrites
http://twitter.com/simonwoodwrites

Relationships with our coworkers are a vital part of life. Considering that we spend a third of our day in the workplace, they have to be. No wonder we build friendships with workmates. That's great. Unfortunately, the flipside of personal relationships in the workplace is that they can turn sour--and violent.

I've seen workplace violence up close. At my last job, my employer took out a temporary restraining order against an employee after he threatened to harm a number of staff members (myself included). Let's just say that's a tad awkward when you bump into that person in a mall. Oddly enough, a restraining order has little power in that situation, but running does. Back in the UK, a firm I used to work next to had a problem with one of their people. When they let him go, he tendered his resignation by throwing an office chair through a second floor window. A few days later, he came back at night and drove a car through the main entrance.

According to government statistics, twenty people are murdered at their place of work every week in the US. Retail jobs top the list as the most dangerous profession and women are the most likely to be killed. Now, the majority of these deaths aren't committed by one coworker upon another, but it gives you an idea of how dangerous the modern workplace is. By the by, if you want to know which profession suffers the least from workplace violence, it's mineworkers.

But it wasn't incidents like these that became the inspiration for my latest thriller, Terminated, but what companies are doing to combat workplace violence. Workplace violence isn't good for business. Not only is it disruptive, upsetting and frightening, it's also expensive. And in the world of commerce, money talks. It's the expense which is forcing companies to employ some interesting tactics. Some companies in high profile industries are hiring private security firms to handle claims against violent and potentially violent employees. The security firms provide protection for those threatened and their families, but that's not the intriguing part. The security firms also investigate and run background checks on the accused. If the investigators find any dirt, indiscretions or infractions, this is used to build a case against the violent employee. The evidence is then used as part of a criminal case or it's just dangled in front of the troublemaker to force that person leave of their own accord, unless they want their dirty laundry aired to the world. The whole notion blew me away. I was amazed at what a company has to do to prevent a potentially volatile situation.

This situation became the inspiration for Terminated. The book chronicles a personal grievance at work that takes on a life of its own. In the book, Gwen Farris has the unenviable task of managing Stephen Tarbell. Tarbell is already bent out of shape because he believes he should be manager, not Gwen. The ignition source for the conflict is an annual performance evaluation. When Gwen issues Tarbell a poor evaluation, he tells her to change it--or else. Gwen goes to her bosses, this only serves to inflame the situation, and it all goes downhill from there.


Now the book's scenario may come over as extreme, but it isn't. Looking through reports of real life incidences of workplace violence, the flame that has ignited a firestorm in the workplace have been as simple as an off color joke, a remark about someone's girlfriend/wife/daughter, a humiliating prank, and an interoffice romance gone wrong, just to name a few. If you can name it, it's been a source of conflict in the workplace. I came across the most astounding incident by pure luck after I finished the book, which surrounded Marta Bradley and Alan Chmurny. Chmurny was Marta's boss and they enjoyed a friendship for a number of years. An incident occurred to change that which resulted in Chmurny stalking Marta's every move for four years. His crimes against her escalated from vandalism to breaking and entering and ended in a failed murder attempt. Chmurny ended up committing suicide in the courtroom after a guilty verdict. What was the reason for all the emotional wreckage? Marta had said publicly that she hadn't liked Chmurny's deviled eggs at a company picnic.

Writing this book has been quite sobering. The workplace seems like a safe environment where we feel we know our colleagues, but how well do we really know them? It's a dangerous world out there and the greatest threat you face might not be from a hostile nation abroad, but the other side of your cubicle wall.

The traveling and the blogging is over, but I wanted to give a shout out to the great bookstores that hosted my travels over the last few weeks. They all have autographed copies of TERMINATED. So if you're local or you really want an autographed copy, then please support these stores as I'd walk through fire for these people. Well, maybe not, but you get the gist. :-)

You can find signed copies at:
Seattle Mystery Bookshop - http://www.seattlemystery.com/ (Seattle, WA)
San Francisco Mystery Bookstore - http://sanfranciscomysterybooks.com/ (San Francisco, CA)
The Mystery Bookstore - http://www.mystery-bookstore.com/ (Los Angeles, CA)
Book 'Em - http://www.bookem.com/ (Pasadena, CA)
The Poisoned Pen - http://www.poisonedpen.com/ (Scottsdale, AZ)
"M" is for Mystery - http://www.mformystery.com/ (San Mateo, CA)
Mysterious Galaxy - http://www.mystgalaxy.com/ (San Diego, CA)

For people in the Bay Area, you can find signed copies at a number of East Bay branches of Barnes and Nobles.

Horror fans might not be familiar with Simon Wood, the author of Terminated, but they may recognize his pen name, Simon Janus. Under that name Wood has written some excellent small press horror novels, one of his more popular was the excellent novel, The Scrubs. Being a huge fan of Wood’s horror output I was extremely curious about his thrillers and wondered if I would care for them as much, so when this one was released I jumped on it.

Terminated is an action packed thriller that centers on the story of Gwen, a newly promoted Manager Of Quality Assurance at Pace Pharmaceuticals. One of Gwen’s tasks is to give performance reviews of the employee’s who work for her, and one of those employees is Stephen Tarbell, a man she had beat out for the promotion.

Tarbell’s performance review is poor and unfortunately for Gwen, he doesn’t care for it at all. Tarbell believes he was the best person for the job and that Gwen only received the promotion because she was woman. He asks her to change the review and when she refuses, Tarbell decides to not only get mad, but to get even.

Like a freight train leaving the station with a full head of steam, it doesn’t take long for Terminated to reach full throttle. From the very start of this locomotive-like thriller there is no let up in the action or the tension. For instance, in the lead off chapter of the novel readers are jolted when reading of Tarbell’s first assault on Gwen, and from there on, the novels plotting escalates, subjecting the readers to a steady pounding of emotional and physical violence.

Wood’s does a superb job creating tension throughout Terminated with action scenes that are inventive and believable. His characters are realistic, especially Gwen, who is written as a smart, professional businesswoman who never sacrifices her sensibilities as a mother and a wife in her struggles.

If you’re a Simon Janus fan you owe it to yourself to pick up Terminated, and if you’re a lover of superb action oriented thrillers, Terminated will be right up your alley.

T.T. Zuma for Horrorworld
Published courtesy of Horrorworld.org