Thomas Pluck's Blog, page 37

The Protect HERO Corps

They fought on a foreign battlefield to protect our nation. Now an elite corps of warriors is stepping onto the most important battlefield of their lives: hunting child predators and rescuing American children in danger.

The H.E.R.O. Child-Rescue Corps is an unprecedented new force in the global battle against child exploitation, abuse and human trafficking. Learn more on these pages about how some of America’s most tested and proven warriors are mobilizing to rescue children in danger. Then join us. There are many ways you and your company or organization can support the H.E.R.O. Corps mission.

Whether you make a direct donation to PROTECT, either one-time or using their convenient monthly/quarterly Paypal donation, or you buy PROTECTORS: STORIES TO BENEFIT PROTECT and get 41 stories by Andrew Vachss, Joe Lansdale, Roxane Gay, George Pelecanos, Ken Bruen, Dave White, Ray Banks, James Reasoner, Charles DeLint, Patti Abbott, Wayne Dundee, Michael A. Black, Johnny Shaw, Jen Conley and many, many more, you are helping fund this program that puts veterans to useful work fighting the online scourge of child predators.

Join us. Join PROTECT today.

Tagged: PROTECT, Protectors Anthology

Blade of Dishonor Playlist

When I write or edit a book, I make a huge playlist and put it on repeat. For my current work in progress that means a lot of Creedence and AC/DC. For Blade of Dishonor, I listened to a lot of classic rock, Japanese rock ‘n roll and pop, and some ’30s era roots music.

Here is a highlighted playlist that will make good accompaniment to the book.

“The Devil and Me” – Clutch

“Barracuda” – Heart

“I Just Want to Make Love to You” – Foghat

“Tick Tick Tick Boom” – The Hives

“Precious Deal” – Tomoyasu Hotei

“Setting the Woods on Fire” – Hank Williams

“American Girl” – Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

“Fighting My Way Back” – Thin Lizzy

“Boom Boom Mancini” – Warren Zevon

“When the Lights Go On Again All Over the World” – Vera Lynn

“Gimme the Prize” – Queen

“It’ll be a Hot Time in the Town of Berlin” – Bing Crosby/The Andrews Sisters

“Woman from Tokyo” – Deep Purple

“Howling” – Tomoyasu Hotei

“Dragon Attack” – Queen

“The Sentinel” – Judas Priest

“Man with a Harmonica (remix)” – Ennio Morricone and Apollo 440

Tagged: Blade of Dishonor

Getting schooled…

Getting schooled by champion mojo storyteller Joe Lansdale at Bouchercon.

He could kick Reeves’ ass…

Bouchercon

I will be at Bouchercon 2013, the yearly festival of all things crime fiction. If you’re going, I’ll be meandering from panel to panel, from coffeehouse to burger joint to bar, spreading joy and debauchercon.*

I will have copies of Blade of Dishonor and Protectors to sign and sell. Blade of Dishonor will also be available in the dealer’s room at the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza table. I’ll be at the Pulp panel with pals Josh Stallings and Les Edgerton, at the panel with Holly West, and I’ll have tartan hearts from Children 1st to sell to the cool folks who like helping kids.

This is what I look like:

Come say hi. I don’t bite. Unless you bite first. Waka waka.

 

*Debauchercon- defined as the area around me in a 10 feet radius during Bouchercon

Tagged: Bouchercon

Ninja pencils with signed copies of Blade of Dishonor

If you’d like a signed copy of Blade of Dishonor, Contact me via this Contact Form. Signed copies are $20 shipped, and come with a Ninja pencil as shown. Black eraser tip and a smooth non-reflective finish for stealthy midnight strikes on the page, they are also good for punyo strikes to the soft flesh of the throat just beneath the larynx, or left on the top step of the stairs as a deadly booby trap. They come unsharpened. Ask your neighborhood ninja to whittle it to a deadly point.

For an extra $2, you can get the coolest badge on the block: a Tartan heart from Children 1st Scotland. These snazzy cloisonne pins show your support for the 125 year old social organization to help at-risk children. I will also have these at Bouchercon.

Review: The Shogun’s Daughter

I got an early peek at the latest book in a great mystery series, the Sano Ichiro books by Laura Joh Rowland. Set in the Tokugawa shogunate, Sano is a samurai tasked as the shogun’s investigator of crimes and intrigue. And in this 17th entry, his arch-enemy has deluded the shogun into putting him in power, and Sano’s family learns what it is like to face the unquestionable and oft-abused power of the warrior caste.

It was a great read. My review, with excerpts, is at Criminal Element in Fresh Meat: The Shogun’s Daughter.

My own thriller with samurai, ninja, MMA fighters and World War II battles, stretching from the American west to Tokyo in the past and present, is free on Kindle today:

Blade of Dishonor Part 1: The War Comes Home is the first novella-sized part of the epic novel.

And you can get the complete novel of Blade of Dishonor for Kindle and in Trade Paperback.

If you would like a signed copy, send me an email via this Contact Form.

Tagged: Blade of Dishonor, Criminal Element, Japan, Laura Joh Rowland, Ninjas, Reviews, samurai

Truth and Fiction…

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, and sometimes life imitates art. In this case, the premise of my novel BLADE OF DISHONOR made the news today. The book revolves around Butch, a World War II vet who came home with a war trophy: a treasured Japanese sword. I based this on the fact that several priceless Masamune blades from the Tokugawa era disappeared at the end of the war, and have never resurfaced. And I wrote in the book that very few swords are returned.

Now this veteran has proved me wrong, or become the exception that proves the rule. A good man who fought bravely and wished to make war no more. Orval Amdahl, I salute you.

Reminder: Blade of Dishonor Part 1: The War Comes Home is FREE on Kindle for next two days.

Thanks to Dan Malmon for the tip.

WWII vet from Minnesota to return Japanese sword

The Associated Press

POSTED: 09/13/2013 04:08:47 AM CDT | UPDATED: ABOUT 2 HOURS AGO

LANESBORO, Minn.—A 94-year-old veteran from southeastern Minnesota plans to return a sword he took from Nagasaki, Japan, as a token of his time during World War II.

“At first, I kept it as a souvenir,” said Orval Amdahl, of rural Lanesboro. “Then, all of a sudden, I began thinking—someone had to own this.”

Amdahl said he got the sword because he was a Marine captain in the war. Over the years he kept the sword in good condition. He tried contacting people about the sword but had no luck.

Then Caren Stelson asked to interview him for a book she’s writing about the dropping of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended the war in 1945. Amdahl mentioned the sword.

“I showed it to her, and it blossomed from there,” he told the Post-Bulletin of Rochester ( http://bit.ly/1auU6LK). “She has people in Nagasaki she can work with.”

Stelson used those contacts to find Tadahiro Motomura, the grandson of the Japanese military officer who once owned the sword.

Amdahl will hand the sword to Motomura during a ceremony Sept. 21 at the Charlotte Partridge Ordway Japanese Garden at the Como Park Zoo and Conservatory in St. Paul, which is a sister city to Nagasaki.

Amdahl said he was on a ship during World War II, ready to take part in an invasion of Japan, when the two atomic bombs were dropped.

In Japan, he was stationed at Nagasaki after the radiation from the bomb had dissipated. Before he left, he was allowed to take home one souvenir. That’s when he saw the sword with a wood-covered scabbard and a block of wood attached by a string. It looked like it might have belonged to a cavalry officer, and Amdahl liked horses. He took that one.

“I want to get it back to the rightful owner. … I won’t miss it,” Amdahl said. “I believe in peace.”

 

Tagged: Blade of Dishonor, Japan, Swords, World War 2

Character-Driven Action, at Do Some Damage

I’m at Do Some Damage today, talking Rambo, defining characters by their actions, the Devil’s Brigade, and the true story of the most revered Japanese sword going missing in 1945, never to be seen again. All of which come together in Blade of Dishonor.

Part 1 is FREE for Kindle for the next few days. Get a taste.

Tagged: Blade of Dishonor, Do Some Damage, Japan, Rambo, The Devil's Brigade

A day in the old country

I worked in Manhattan then. My mother called and said don’t go in, a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I turned on the need in time to see the second impact. I grew up on a rise before the Passaic river, where the two steel fingers of the towers were always visible over the trees. My stomach sank when the first one fell and plummeted when the other followed.

A week later I was back on the bus to Manhattan, watching the island smolder like the end of a cigarette in a condemned man’s lip for the next sixty days.

Twelve years later, the cold fist no longer clenches in my stomach at the memory, but the impressions remain. Chill echoes in the empty sky where the towers stood and holes where the people had lived. Our first taste of war up close, on our own soil.

Warren Zevon and Hunter S Thompson wrote “You’re a whole different person when you’re scared.”

In many ways we’re a different country, since that day. One with PTSD.

Katana not included

Now available in Trade Paperback via Createspace.

Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and your local bookstore (via Indiebound) coming soon.

You can also try out part 1 free on Kindle this week: Part 1: The War Comes Home

(Also in the UK)