Thomas Pluck has
slung hash, worked on the docks, trained in martial arts in Japan, and even
swept the Guggenheim museum (but not as part of a clever heist). He hails from
Nutley, New Jersey, home to criminal masterminds Martha Stewart and Richard
Blake, but has so far evaded capture. He is the author of Bad Boy Boogie, his first Jay Desmarteaux crime thriller, and the
story collection Life During Wartime,
both from Down & Out Books. Joyce Carol Oates calls him “a lovely kitty
man.”
He is also the
person to follow—maybe not literally, Facebook will do—when in an unfamiliar
city and you’re looking for good eating establishments. Notice I didn’t say “restaurants”;
I said “good eating establishments.” I’m a writer. Word choice is everything to
me. Anyone who followed his recommendation for The Priest’s Burger in Toronto
knows what I mean.
The kitty man was
lovely enough to sit down with us to talk about his new collection, Life
During Wartime (and Other Stories).
One Bite at a Time: What are the origins of Life During Wartime (and Other Stories)?
Was
Thomas Pluck:
This is a collection of my best and fan-favorite stories from 2011 to the
present. I had a few Kindle-only collections and readers kept asking for a
print collection. When I joined the Down & Out Books team, we thought that
would be a great follow-up to my first Jay Desmarteaux novel, Bad Boy Boogie,
and the new collection includes "The Last Detail," which bridges
Jay's first book with the next one, which I am writing now.
OBAAT: I’m a huge fan of Denny
the Dent and I’m glad to see he’s in here. Where did you get the idea for
him? Do you have continuing plans for him?
TP: Denny was inspired by a boxer I met in a cigar shop, a very intense
guy. He had a little friend with him, kind of like Chester & Spike, the
cartoon dogs, and the big guy said "I ain't smart but I listen good."
and Denny was born. The dent comes from a shooting victim's surgery I saw
online. The boy was literally walking around with half a head, until doctors
built a replacement skull plate. Denny's injury isn't that extreme. We tend to
think that big guys are dumb, and I wanted to give him a little something extra
to make people underestimate his intelligence. Readers have asked if Denny is a
special needs child. If you read his stories, he has been treated as if he's
special needs his whole life. When I write Denny I go back to how I felt as a
weird kid on the playground, when my best friend was a special needs child
named Mindy, until the teachers dragged me away and said I should talk to
"the other kids." That left a deep impression. I've volunteered with
Special Young Adults, I have friends who are special needs (Hello, Dylan!) and
I don't like separating us that way. We're people.
OBAAT: Jay Desmarteaux from Bad Boy
Boogie also makes an appearance.
I’m a big fan of cross-pollination in my writing. Not only is it a good way to
bring in new readers, it’s a great way to work out story ideas for novel
characters. Did you approach writing Jay differently knowing this would be a
short story?
TP: I don't draw on Jay's background as much when I write short. I prefer
to jump in the action and you can figure Jay's ways as we go along. A short
story is like fighting in a phone booth, you have to work within the space
you're given, so he gets introduced with a few lines that encapsulate what he
is. He's an outlaw, the rules don't exist for him, and he looks out for number
one. In "The Last Detail" he has no choice but to partner up with
someone, which was interesting to me, because Jay is an outsider and a loner. I
wanted to force him to work with someone as stubborn as he is, and give him
zero time to adjust to it.
OBAAT: I know picking a favorite story is like picking a favorite child, but
I’m going to ask you to it anyway because that’s the kind of person I am. Which
of the stories in this collection means the most to you and why?
TP: I put my heart into stories, which makes them harder for me than
novels. Not that I don't put my heart into a book, but a story is like a
one-inch punch from Bruce Lee, and a novel is a ten or fifteen round fight,
where you get breaks and some love from the cut man between rounds. They all
mean something, but I'll focus on "Freedom Bird" because I just read
it to an audience, and it still hits me. It's about a teenage son of a Vietnam
vet dad who means well but expects a lot from his kid. There are so many
"bad dad" stories--and I've got plenty of my own--that I wanted to go
in a different direction. Harve Chundak is based on a vet named John Chundak
who was a coin dealer I met at the VFW as a kid, at a coin show, when I was
collecting wheatback pennies and silver dimes. I started working for him on
Sundays, just watching the table. He was a quiet guy and serious most of the
time, but had a smile as big as Christmas when you made him laugh. I wanted to
pay tribute to him for giving me that job, and teaching me integrity, and that
you could be a Green Beret who did six tours with hands that could crush a
man's forearm like a wolf's maw, and have a good heart and nothing to prove,
none of the tough-guy fronting my father had. So Harve is a tribute to him.
OBAAT: You’re as socially responsible as any writer I know, especially as
regards children. It was you who turned me on to PROTECT. Tell us a little
about PROTECT and why social issues are so important to you.
TP: I'm a bit like Jay, that way. The five words I hate most are "it
is what it is." Because it is... because we let it. "You can't fight
city hall" is another five stupid words. You can fight them if you don't
play by their rules. I won't say anything further as in this climate it may be
illegal soon. PROTECT's mission is to fight child abuse, and they concentrate
on the most egregious, online predators who lure children. The two Protectors
anthologies have raised nearly $5000 for that cause. I hate any abuse of power,
but adults who abuse children especially. I wrote a bit about it in Jay's book.
I give him the mythical "five minutes alone" with a truly awful
human, an actual psychopath, and he realizes he is just feeding into the man's
beliefs: that whoever holds the hatchet makes the rules. So he takes a
different tack with him, because torture for this guy is like foreplay. I don't
believe in the death penalty, because I don't believe people should give the
state that power. Containment protects us and punishes the offender. And I
don't mean the middle-class fantasy of "jail yard justice." If a
chi-mo bodybuilder walks into gen pop, no one's gonna shank him for rep and
risk getting their throat crushed. If you see Jeffrey Dahmer or some weakling
rapist get murdered, it's because he was weak. Most go into protective custody,
anyway.
OBAAT: And now for the classic wrap-up question: what’s next?
TP: I'm working on the second Jay Desmarteaux novel, Riff Raff, set in Louisiana. We meet Jay's "family" and some
new folks who could only come from that unique state, and it takes us
everywhere from the bayou to Baton Rouge and New Orleans to the rigid north of
the state where Bonnie and Clyde were killed. I have a book I call "the
beer bar Nazi hipster rock'n roll cozy" that's getting another round of
edits, about Scotty Wierzbowski, a pogue rear-echelon shirker and his
Falstaffian buddy who inherit a decrepit old man bar and try to make it trendy,
only to have it infested by hipsters, who they can't get rid of, until one
winds up dead. Scotty's mom tells him his father is Bon Scott, of AC/DC. It's a
lot of fun, but it's weird, and weird is a hard sell. But it will find a home
soon. (Editor’s Note: I have never read an author’s description of a book that
made me want to read it more than this.)
