Thomas Pluck's Blog, page 71

throwing the disqus

I have switched to Disqus for comments. I hope it works better. It will give you a broader range of login options.





© 2011 Thomas Pluck

Grift Magazine

John Kenyon has a spiffy new crime site on the web called Grift Magazine. He has begun a weekly flash fiction feature. Last week it opened with Matthew Funk's powerful "The Town They Earned," and this week I'm honored to follow in Matt's impressive footsteps. Check out the site; I hope you enjoy the tale, but bookmark the page or subscribe to the RSS feed, because great things will be happening here. And writers, John is looking for you to flash him some good fiction.






"Candle" by Thomas Pluck at GRIFT Magazine


To my U.K. friends- this is my first story set on your side of the ocean; I hope you like it.





© 2011 Thomas Pluck

Psycho Therapy

I'd like to thank Heath Lowrance, author of The Bastard Hand and Dig Ten Graves, for giving me an opportunity to speak at his excellent crime fiction blog, Psycho Noir. He's been inviting many authors to drop in and have free rein. I give a little insight as to why I write, and I pitch the Lost Children: A Charity Anthology, which I edited with Fiona Johnson and Ron Earl Phillips.



NO RULES by Thomas Pluck







© 2011 Thomas Pluck

Denny the Dent gets some love!

Thanks to Chris Rhatigan at Death by Killing for his review of Pulp Modern #1. He liked my story "Legacy of Brutality" and has these words to say:

Thomas Pluck's "Legacy of Brutality" is as devastating as the title would make it out to be. Denny is a character you can't help but admire -- through experience he's learned that you have to defend those you love. Others may dismiss him as just a mound of muscle, but it doesn't long for the reader to figure out he's much more than that.

Pulp Modern has many great stories and it's an honor to be chosen from them, along with Chris LaTray and Lawrence Block, for singling out. Thanks, Chris!



Reminder: if you buy a copy of Pulp Modern, contact me with the Kontactr form to the right and I'll send you the first Denny story, "Rain Dog," for free in a fancy PDF format.








© 2011 Thomas Pluck

A Critique of Pure Reasoner

"Black-Eyed Susan" by Thomas Pluck is short and mean and well-written. I don't think I've read anything by this author before, but I'll be on the lookout for his name now.

-James Reasoner

James Reasoner had kind words for the entire Beat to a Pulp: Hardboiled anthology, but those words just lit a spark under this new writer's hind end... I told Mr. Reasoner I'd make sure he and everyone else would have no trouble finding my work in the future. Being singled out with Glenn Gray and Wayne Dundee is rather stunning, more so than I was already for being selected for this collection with so many great writers in the first place.








You can find all my fiction online by bookmarking THIS LINK.



and my upcoming publications are here:


"Gumbo Weather," starring Jay Corso, in Needle: A Magazine of Noir Winter 2011

"Lefty," in  Crimefactory Magazine  #9, December 2011

"Not With a Bang, But a Squeaker," in Schlock Magazine Apocalypse Issue

"White People Problems," in  All Due Respect  early 2012

"Play Dead," in  Yellow Mama , April 2012

"We're All Guys Here," in  Dollar Dreadfuls: Dirty Noir Quarterly

"Just Ice," at Gerald So's The 5-2: Crime Poetry Weekly 11/28/2011

"Freedom Bird," in Luca Veste's Off the Record Anthology, December 2011

"Tiger Mother," in Noir Nation #2

"Donkey Dick," in Big Pulp March 2013







© 2011 Thomas Pluck

When seeking revenge, you should dig two graves.

© 2011 Thomas Pluck

a baker's dozen of deviled yeggs...

Beat to a Pulp: Hardboiled is a 99c e-book collection edited by David Cranmer of the excellent Beat to a Pulp fiction site. My story "Black-Eyed Susan" appears, along with some of my favorite fellow authors. Garnet Elliott, who just got accepted at Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine; John Hornor Jacobs, who wrote the Cthulhu noir novel Southern Gods; Brad Green, editor at [PANK] Magazine; Glenn Gray, the shock doc who'll make you squirm as you turn each page; Ron Earl Phillips who appears and co-edited the Lost Children: Charity Anthology, Kent Gowran of Shotgun Honey, Patricia Abbott, who's been knocking me out with stories in Needle and Pulp Ink, Ben Lelievre of Dead End Follies, also in the Lost Children book, Kieran Shea, king of dialogue driven tales, David Cranmer, who doubles as Western wordslinger Ed Grainger, and the one and only Wayne Dundee, author of the Joe Hannibal P.I. books and the western Dismal River.





Once again I'm proud to be among them. Before I wrote my own stories, I was reading theirs. And for a buck, this is the best Kindle bargain I've seen in a long time. If you don't have an e-reader, Amazon lets you read Kindle books online through their free Cloud Reader.

BEAT to a PULP: Hardboiled is a compilation of uncompromising, gritty tales following in the footsteps of the tough and violent fiction popularized by the legendary Black Mask magazine in its early days. This collection includes thirteen lean and mean stories from the fingertips of Garnett Elliott, Glenn Gray, John Hornor Jacobs, Patricia Abbott, Thomas Pluck, Brad Green, Ron Earl Phillips, Kent Gowran, Amy Grech, Benoit Lelievre, Kieran Shea, David Cranmer, and Wayne D. Dundee and a boiled down look at hardboiled fiction in an introduction by Ron Scheer. Edited by David Cranmer and Scott D. Parker.

© 2011 Thomas Pluck

The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology now available

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30 powerful stories from around the world to benefit two children's charities: PROTECT: The National Association to Protect Children (www.protect.org) and Children 1st Scotland (www.children1st.uk.org). 








Stories by David Ackley, Kevin Aldrich, David Barber, Lynn Beighley, Seamus Bellamy, Paul D. Brazill, Sif Dal, James Lloyd Davis, Roberto C. Garcia, Susan Gibb, Nancy A. Hansen, K.V. Hardy, Gill Hoffs, Fiona "McDroll" Johnson, J.F. Juzwik, MaryAnne Kolton, Benoit Lelievre, Veronica Marie Lewis-Shaw, Vinod Narayan, Paula Pahnke, Ron Earl Phillips, Thomas Pluck, Sam Rasnake, JP Reese, Chad Rohrbacher, Susan Tepper, Luca Veste, Michael Webb, Nicolette Wong and Erin Zulkoski.





It began as a flash fiction challenge when Fiona Johnson and Thomas Pluck donated $5 to PROTECT and £5 to Children 1st for every story at Ron Earl Phillips' Flash Fiction Friday and Fictionaut. Now we have collected the 30 best stories to benefit these two charities.









Join us and make a difference while you read 30 great stories genres by writers from the U.S.A., Poland, Hong Kong, Portugal, India, Scotland, England, Canada, and one told by a Lost Boy of the Sudan to his teacher.






Only $2.99 




Available now for Amazon Kindle (You may also read it on your computer with Amazon Kindle Cloud Reader, or on your phone with the Amazon Kindle App)

Available for Nook, Kobo, Sony e-reader and in PDF, epub, mobi and Viewable Online at Smashwords




If you don't have an e-reader: you can download the Kindle for PC or Kindle for Mac app, the Nook for PC App, Nook for Mac App or view it online at Smashwords, or download it as an Adobe PDF file. You can also read epubs on the Adobe Digital Editions reader for PC and Mac.










© 2011 Thomas Pluck

Denny's triple whammy offer!

The latest Denny story, "Junkyard Dog," is in the new issue of Plots With Guns. If you like him, he also appears in Pulp Modern issue one, along with great stories by Lawrence Block, John Kenyon, a Cash Laramie western by Ed Grainger Jr., a disturbing tale by Glenn Gray, seventeen stories in all.



If you purchase Pulp Modern, or have already, send me the email receipt via the Kontact link on the right, and I will send you a PDF file of Denny's first story, "Rain Dog," in PDF format for free. That way you can read all three.









© 2011 Thomas Pluck[image error]

Denny returns in Plots with Guns

If you've read my stories about Denny the Dent such as "Rain Dog" in Crimespree Mag issue 43, and "Legacy of Brutality" in Pulp Modern #1 (links at the right) you know he doesn't need a gun to get the job done. He's 350 pounds of muscle and rage against those who hurt the weak.



In his latest rampage, he's a junkman working with a new partner who finds a little pit bull ... that dogfighters have other plans for. Denny's pit fighting past crosses with the ugly world of modern dogfighting, and you know it won't end well... for the bad guys.



PLOTS WITH GUNS is in my opinion the best designed crime fiction site on the web, and this issue has stories by Matt C. Funk my Louisiana transplant homeboy, Patti Abbott the mama tiger of noir, and seven other hard-hitting tales that readers of PWG know to expect...











© 2011 Thomas Pluck