Goddess Fish Promotions Book Tour: Clementina

Clementina

by Simon Cann

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GENRE: Crime Thriller

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BLURB:

Leathan Wilkey has been hired to babysit Clementina, a seventeen-year-old whose rich daddy is going through a messy divorce and is over-compensating.

Leathan soon tires of her spending habits, her selfie obsession, and her social media preoccupation as his ward drags him from shop to boutique to jeweler, approaching each with the self-possession that comes from a lifetime of getting her own way and never once having to worry about money.

But when Clementina snaps her fingers and her boyfriend doesn’t come running, something is up. He doesn’t appear because he’s been murdered.

When Leathan investigates, he finds that the boyfriend has no background and met Clementina through a connection made by daddy’s business partner.

Daddy’s business partner who has been slowly and progressively putting daddy in a vice, grabbing more of the business, and who is now menacing Clementina directly to manipulate daddy.

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Excerpt:

Johnson McElroy and Orville Michael Mallet seemed pleased to have fixed a problem. A problem where I was having trouble understanding what really made it a problem.

The two men—one groomed to look like a logical and rational arguing machine; the other determined to display his individual creativity, which looked exactly the same as everyone else’s individual creativity—shook my hand at the door.

“You know the way out,” I said, as if I had a clue. I only knew how to enter and leave if I was driven by Reece.

The two headed for the elevator and I made my way through the cavernous entrance hall back to the open living space and the kitchen area. The kitchen area, which had more floor space than most apartments I had lived in.

“I should have a word with Clementina,” I said to Angeline Bautista, the housekeeper who had remained invisible while the two company men had been present.

“She’s gone out,” said the housekeeper.

“When?”

“While you talked.”

“Where?”

She shrugged.

“What did Reece say?”

She looked confused.

“Reece—the driver. What did he say?”

The confusion remained. “Nothing.”

“But he must have said something when he came up.”

“He didn’t come up,” she said.

“She went to him?” I could feel the hesitation in my speech as my brain tried to catch up with the situation and make sure my language was unambiguous for the non-native English speaker.

“No. She went out on her own,” said Angeline.

“When?”

“While you talked,” she said with greater emphasis.

“How long ago?”

She tilted her head from side to side. “Ten minutes?” she said. More a question than a statement.

I pulled out my phone and called Reece. “Does Clementina go out on her own?”

“Nope,” said Reece. “Daddy says no.”

“Well, she has.”

Reece swore under his breath. “I’ll be up.”

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Simon Cann is the author of the Boniface, Montbretia Armstrong, and Leathan Wilkey series of books.

In addition to his fiction, Simon has written a range of music-related and business-related books, and has also worked as a ghostwriter.

Before turning full-time to writing, Simon spent nearly two decades as a management consultant, where his clients included aeronautical, pharmaceutical, defense, financial services, chemical, entertainment, and broadcasting companies.

He lives in London.

Website: http://simoncann.com

B/N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/clementina-simon-cann/1123925440

Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Clementina-Leathan-Wilkey-Book-1-ebook/dp/B01FZJEDW6/ref=sr_1_6

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/simoncannauthor

Twitter: http://twitter.com/simonpcann

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Interview:

What group did you hang out with in high school?

The tea drinkers (seriously).

What are you passionate about these days?

Family, friends, and writing good books.

If you had to do your journey to getting published all over again, what would you do differently?

I fell sideways into being published—a colleague at work asked me to do him a favor and take over co-authoring a book from him. Dumb luck got me published. The second time I was published I sent a proposal to a few publishers and several asked me to go with them. Again, I was lucky. I got lucky, and for me it was comparatively easy to get published—for most authors this was not the case.

However, since I was first published, there have been big changes to the publishing world—it’s now much easier for an author to get published (easier because there are options that include self-publishing and technology has moved forward with ebooks and print-on-demand). The ease with which one can get a book out there has revealed a bigger difficulty—but a difficulty which has always been there: finding and connecting with a readership.

If I were to do anything differently, it would be to focus on building my readers group.

By the way, did I mention that if you join my readers group then I’ll send you some free books?  Just head over to my website (simoncann.com) and tell me where to send the books.

Ebook or print? And why?

For me—ebooks, because my house is full of paper books and my eyes aren’t what they were so I like being able to increase the size of type. I also love being able to carry around hundreds of titles in a device that’s smaller and lighter than a paperback.

For readers—whatever they want.

What is your favorite scene in this book?

There’s a scene about one-third of the way into the book where Clementina drags Leathan Wilkey to a boutique to buy some clothes.

Leathan has been charged with babysitting the willful seventeen-year-old Clementina. Clementina’s boyfriend has disappeared and Leathan has seen an opportunity to keep her occupied for a few hours. She thinks they’re looking for the wayward boyfriend—he knows that he’s distracting her from causing him problems.

The two track down the boyfriend to his hotel but he’s not there. Leathan wants to get into the boyfriend’s hotel room and realizes Clementina would be able to walk in. Clementina agrees but—as only a willful seventeen-year-old can—says she needs a new outfit as a disguise so that the lie she’ll need to tell in order to get in will be backed by the clothes she’s wearing. Leathan figures that two people asking for the boyfriend at his hotel within a few minutes would be suspicious and a brief detour for some shopping is just another way to keep his charge distracted, so he doesn’t argue.

And so Leathan and Clementina find themselves in a Paris boutique with a shop assistant running around trying to satisfy the teenager’s every whim.

The reason this scene is a favorite with me is that this is where the nature of the relationship between Leathan and Clementina changes. Before the scene, Clementina is a teenager resenting the handler her daddy has imposed upon her and Leathan is a thirty-something with a tiresome charge.

Somewhere in the scene—somewhere in a boutique in Paris as Clementina asks for Leathan’s opinion about the clothes she’s trying on—something changes and there’s a subtle shift, a recognition, an understanding, a new respect. Two individuals enter the boutique—a unified team with shared goal leaves.

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