PLUCK IN PRINT
Fiction:
"Free Bird," in Luca Veste's Off the Record: A Charity Anthology ( Kindle | Paperback )
"Black-Eyed Susan," in Beat to a Pulp: Hardboiled (Kindle)
"Legacy of Brutality," starring Denny the Dent, in Pulp Modern #1 ( Createspace | Amazon )
"Rain Dog," starring Denny the Dent, in Crimespree Magazine issue no.43 ( Kindle | Nook )
"Punk Dad Manifesto," in The Utne Reader, July/August 2011.
"Little Sister," in Lost Children: A Charity Anthology (Kindle | Nook | Smashwords | Apple iPad | Createspace | Paperback )
Fiction Available Online:
"Items Found Clogging the Colonic Irrigation Machine," at The Laughter Shack
"Gunplay," at Pulp Metal Magazine
"Faggot," at Shotgun Honey
"Citizen Tool," at The Laughter Shack
"Not With a Bang, But a Squeaker," in Schlock Magazine's Apocalypse Issue
"Just Ice," in The 5-2: Crime Poetry Weekly
"Candle," in Grift Magazine
"Junkyard Dog," starring Denny the Dent, in Plots With Guns October/November 2011
"Not With a Bang, but a Squeaker," at 69 Flavors of Paranoia (abridged)
chosen by FictionDaily for best genre fiction
"Little Sister," at Tony Black's Pulp Pusher
"The Uncleared" (a novel excerpt) in A Twist of Noir
"Black-Eyed Susan," in Powder Burn Flash
winner, First Place, The Bullet Awards September 2011
"How Slavery Ruined my Vacation," in Pure Slush
reviewed by R. Thomas Brown
"Shogun Honey," In Shotgun Honey
reviewed by R. Thomas Brown
"The Forest for the Trees," a Guest Writer spot in The Flash Fiction Offensive
reviewed by R. Thomas Brown
"A Glutton for Punishment," in Beat to a Pulp
the legendary Lawrence Block liked this one, and left a comment. I'm still beaming.
"Bless Her Heart," in Thrillers, Killers 'n Chillers
reviewed by. R. Thomas Brown
"There's a Bad Moon Rising," at Flashes in the Dark
chosen by Fiction Weekly for the week's best online fiction
"Fucked," at Pulp Metal Magazine
"Tripadvisor.com reviews of the Overlook Hotel," at McSweeney's Internet Tendency
"Van Candy," in The Flash Fiction Offensive
chosen by Fiction Daily for best genre fiction
"The Last Sacrament," in Shotgun Honey
"Punk Dad Manifesto," in The Morning News
Upcoming Publications:
"Two to Tango," in Spinetingler #1 Winter 2012 (Kindle)
"The Old-Fashioned Way," in Stupefying Stories
"Raker: A Review," in Blood and Tacos #1
"Firecracker," in Hardboiled Magazine (available from Gryphon Books)
"Gumbo Weather," starring Jay Corso, in Needle: A Magazine of Noir Spring 2012
"Lefty," in Crimefactory Magazine #10
"White People Problems," in All Due Respect April 2012
"Play Dead," in Yellow Mama, April 2012
"We're All Guys Here," in Dollar Dreadfuls: Dirty Noir Quarterly
"Tiger Mother," in Noir Nation #2
"Donkey Dick," in Big Pulp March 2013
"Six Feet Under God," in Grift Magazine Quarterly #1
Free, Unpublished Fiction:
"Phil's Last Stand," a Groundhog day Noir.
"Reality," a not so distant future where everyone is distant.
"Hijinx Ensue," comedy and romance in the police line-up at Midtown North.
Online Nonfiction:
Interviewed at Chin Wag at the Slaughterhouse by Richard Godwin
Interviewed at the Inspiration Forum
Interviewed by David Cranmer at The Education of a Pulp Writer
"Warning: Contains Language! Profanity in Crime Fiction" at The Crimefactory
"Sore Loser," at Heart on Sleeve Review
"Dancing With Myself," at Nigel Bird's Sea Minor
"My Dark Pages," at Benoit Lelievre's Dead End Follies
"Dead Man's Shoes," at Jimmy Callaway's Let's Fight Everybody!
"How I Came to Write This Story: A Glutton for Punishment" at Patti Nase Abbott's blog
"No Rules," at Heath Lowrance's Psycho-Noir
I ask President Obama a question on Steve Inskeep's NPR show.
Nonfiction in print:
"South Mountain Reservation Pumping Station, and Garret Mountain Shrine" in Weird NJ #25
Novels in Development:
BURY THE HATCHET:
The sun on Jay Corso's face felt like air on a fresh wound. He squinted his sunken, steely eyes at the hazy sky, ran a hand through his shock of black hair. Inhaled a deep breath that smelled different, charged somehow. He looked up and down the long empty stretch of road outside the gates of Rahway prison.
Louisiana boy Jay Corso maxed out of Rahway prison 25 years after taking the fall for the murder of the school bully in a quiet New Jersey suburb. The town's hero cop said his foster parents would rot in jail if he didn't, and now Jay wants answers. When he shakes things up with his misfit friends and their families, his two fists unravel a twisted tale of small town secrets and good old Jersey corruption. Jay wants payback, and it's time to bury the hatchet!
in progress. Seeking representation.
THE UNCLEARED:
Forensics crews dug up every inch. They found eleven in all.Nathan is a teacher in his town, a volunteer firefighter, who wants to forget the tragic loss of his past and start a new family with his wife, Maggie. His mother was brutally murdered when showing their old house as a real estate agent, and the building has sat fallow for years, while his father remarried and became a hunting guide in Alaska. When kids set fire to the old house, the Chief won't let Nate in. And when they dig through the ashes to see if any drunken kids died, they find more and more bones, and it becomes clear that Nate's mother's murder was no single tragedy. A fireman's axe against a hunter's rifle in the unforgiving wilderness of the north, a showdown between father and son as Nate seeks to avenge the murdered, the forgotten, THE UNCLEARED.
Women. Children. Statistics.
The uncleared.
The cops asked me for Dad’s last known address. I gave them the letters.
I didn’t tell Maggie about the bones. I told her Dad was missing, and I booked a flight to Alaska.
“They’ll find him,” she told me.
Not if I find him first.
in development.
PRETTY WHITE GIRLS:
I don't cry. Daddy would whip me for it. In juvie they'd hunt you for it. But when I find who done this little girl, maybe I'll cry when I'm done killing.
Denny "the Dent" Forrest doesn't want much. He wants to be a mover, not a junk collector. Orphaned at a young age by violence, having clawed his way up through the hell of juvenile prison and foster homes, his ice cold sense of personal justice is enraged when young black girls start disappearing from his Newark neighborhood. The police look, but not too hard. The community wants justice. And then a white girl from Forest Hill is the next one taken, and a media storm converges on Denny and the few people he calls friends. Three hundred and fifty pounds of underestimated calculation, Denny leaves a trail of broken bodies as he seeks the ugly truth, with the help of community organizer Kelsey and a homicide detective who doesn't know whether to shoot him, arrest him, or stay the hell out of his way.
in development.
NOBODY'S DAUGHTER:
I knew he was trouble as soon as we were introduced, and his soft manicured hand overstayed its welcome in my own. If I'd known just how much, I would have thrust my letter opener in his ear and dealt with the consequences.
When Veronica Maleferi , an executive assistant, spurs the advances of her boss, she humiliates him in the elevator and ruins a deal that culminates in her termination. Waiting tables at a New Jersey diner to get by, she makes friends with Jeannette, a wise-cracking waitress and Nicky Fish, an old connected cumpari who wants the girls to serve as hostesses at a private party. The men want more than drinks and canapes, and when the women fight back they find themselves in the pits of New York's sex slave trade. But Nicky and his friends don't know how hard Vera will fight to kill those who've done her wrong...
in development.
SMALL POTATOES:
Sal is an old man retiring from running bars for the mob in New York City, who hopes to make good with his estranged son. His grandson Kevin is going to college, and comes out to him. A secret they share from Kevin's homophobic father, they are both gay men who've hidden their lives from the people they love. When a billionaire's son makes Kevin's life a living hell, Sal is not satisfied by the justice the system hands down. He pulls together his old crew: bouncer Skull Murphy, crazy hit man Sascha, cross-dressing "Betty Grable" Kowalski, and hunts down his own justice, fueled by decades of rage from hiding who he is. Getting the vengeance he craves will be difficult, as his target is the brutal son of a powerful family, and Sal and his boys, they're just small potatoes.
FIGHT TEST:
Justin is about to be married. He doesn't feel like a man. He wears a mangagement ring, and his fiance Stephanie wears the pants. When he's challenged to a fight outside a bar, he's humiliated in front of his fiance and friends. He decides to train in mixed martial arts, and finds the competition and physical challenge so compelling he becomes obsessed with training for an amateur fight, much to his mate's chagrin. A story that explores what it means to be a man, and if those words still hold any meaning, Justin prepares himself for the ultimate test.
Thomas Pluck
Writer of unflinching fiction with heart.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology (Amazon Kindle & Paperback)
Posts
