Thomas Pluck's Blog, page 21
July 9, 2015
Thrillerfest: Craftfest day one
I’m covering Thrillerfest for Criminal Element this week. My recap of day one is posted here.
Tagged: Thrillerfest
July 6, 2015
True Detective S2 Episode 3: “Maybe Tomorrow”
My recap and review of last night’s episode of True Detective is up at CRIMINAL ELEMENT. This one took a Twin Peaks turn but quickly reversed course, not entirely for the better. However it added a new character played by one of my favorite actors, Fred Ward.
July 5, 2015
Treasure of Ice and Fire: Verdical Dreams volume 2
My story “Item #214: a Curiosity” will appear in David Cranmer’s second tribute anthology in memoriam of his nephew Kyle Knapp, Treasure of Ice and Fire: Verdical Dreams volume 2. Kyle was a talent lost too soon in a tragic house fire, and I’m honored to offer this surreal cryptozoological tale in his memory.
Here is the cover. I’ll update with a release date when I know one.
Tagged: Beat to a Pulp
July 4, 2015
June 29, 2015
True Detective S2E2: “Night Finds You”
My review of last night’s episode of True Detective is up on Criminal Element:
“We get the world we deserve.”
Tagged: Criminal Element, Nic Pizzolatto, Noir, True Detective
June 22, 2015
True Detective Season 2, episode 1: The Western Book of the Dead
My recap and review of True Detective season 2 will be on Criminal Element every Monday morning. Here’s the first episode, The Western Book of the Dead.
It takes an Ellroy tack, gives us more characters: 3 cops and a crook, including Rachel McAdams, and keeps its despair on full throttle.
Tagged: California, Noir, True Detective
June 10, 2015
Pluck Smash
A birthday gift from artist Dyer Wilk (who also created the cover of Get Plucked).
I loved The Incredible Hulk as a kid- Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno.
Thanks, Dyer!
Now, to get back on that diet so I resemble this a little more closely…
June 9, 2015
.44 Magnum birthday means… Get Plucked!
Today I’ve reached that milestone… not sweet 16, far from it. Not even 33, the Rolling Rock year… no, today is my .44 magnumth birthday! And while I won’t drink a magnum of champagne or shave my mustache into a Tom Selleck Magnum P.I. lip broom, I am proud to announce the release of a new collection. My funniest, most twisted stories- from pulp and crime capers to spoofs, apocalypse, and Brown Sugar Brookdale, my Shaft-meets-Billy Jack biker kung fu bad-ass!
My newest story collection includes a tribute to Elmore Leonard, where a computer nerd and an Island barmaid race against the mob; a shifty construction foreman encounters zombies and sex dungeons in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy; visitors review the Overlook hotel from THE SHINING; a psychotic virus hunter plans to unleash apocalypse during the panic of 2012; a kid who hides in the woods to scare urban legend hunters gets a surprise of his own, and eight more twisted, dark and funny tales.
It is available for:
Kobo E-readers through Watchung Booksellers, and BookPeople
These stories have never been collected before, and includes “Pope Lick Nuisance,” a new story that’s never been published. Kick off your summer with some laughs and squirms, and Get Plucked!
Tagged: Elmore Leonard, Get Plucked, The Shining
June 5, 2015
Death by Nostalgia
“It isn’t necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice. There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia.” – Frank Zappa
I’m reading READY PLAYER ONE – a fun book, but a dystopian novel where nostalgia saves the world – and it clearly shows how sniffing our own farts can doom us to the self-fulfilling prophecy of dystopia.
I agree with David Brin, that this sense of inevitable doom expressed in our pop culture is a bad thing. It was an expression of Cold War dread, when nukes were aimed at us as we slept in our beds; but it continued long after, and now it seems more attuned to environmental catastrophe. Haunted by the short-sightedness of fossil fuel billionaires and the horror dreams of evangelical doomsday cultists who think Armageddon will bring on their eternal Reich in the afterlife, we feel there is no other future except the blasted wastelands imagined by popular culture in the ’70s and onward.
Working together has been made to seem so difficult that we’d rather give up, prep for doomsday, and assume we’ll be one of the blessed few left fighting for ever-dwindling resources on a planet we sucked dry and tossed aside like an empty bag of Capri Sun.
Dystopian tales also distract us from the fact that we’re living in one. “At least we’re not in the Hunger Games.” No, I’d hate to have to send someone to the capital to fight for resources, for example, when my state is flooded or pummeled by a hurricane…
Tagged: dystopia
May 31, 2015
Noir at the Bar Manhattan on June 7
The lineup:
Galal Chater
Rob Hart
James Ray Tuck Jr
Jen Conley
William Welles
Thomas Pluck
Ken Wishnia
SJ Rozan
Richie Narvaez
Tim Hall
Jason Starr
Todd Robinson
Join us at Shade, 241 Sullivan St. in Manhattan, corner of West 3rd. Easy walk from the blue ACE line and the 9th Street PATH station. The fun begins at 6pm, and ends only when we run out of noir.
Tagged: Back in the New York Groove, New York City, Noir
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