Join Thomas Block, author of the suspense/thriller novel, Captain, as he tours the blogosphere October 1 – January 11 2013 on his first virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book! The Captain Virtual Book Publicity Tour is part of an Amazon gift card giveaway. See details further down on how you can win one for your own!
ABOUT THOMAS BLOCK
Thomas Block has written a number of aviation-oriented novels, many which have gone on to acquire best-seller status in numerous countries. His novel writing began with the publication of “Mayday” in 1979. That novel was rewritten with novelist Nelson DeMille in 1998 and remains on DeMille’s extensive backlist. “Mayday” became a CBS Movie of the Week in October, 2005.
Several of the other novels by Block include “Orbit” (a top bestseller in Germany, among other nations), “Airship Nine”, “Forced Landing” (also done as a radio serialization drama in Japan), “Skyfall”, “Open Skies” and his latest novel, “Captain”. Thomas Block is still writing both fiction and non-fiction, and has edited and updated his earlier novels into ebooks in all the major formats and also into handsome full-sized (6″ by 9″ Trade Paperback) printed versions.
Block’s magazine writing began in 1968 and over the next five decades his work has appeared in numerous publications. He worked 20 years at FLYING Magazine as Contributing Editor, and as Contributing Editor to Plane & Pilot Magazine for 11 years. Block became Editor-at-Large for Piper Flyer Magazine and Cessna Flyer Magazine in 2001. During his long career as an aviation writer he has written on a wide array of subjects that range from involvement with government officials to evaluation reports on most everything that flies.
An airline pilot for US Airways for over 36 years before his retirement in April, 2000, Captain Thomas Block has been a pilot since 1959. Since 2002, he has lived on a ranch in Florida with his wife Sharon where they board, compete and train horses.
His latest book is the suspense/thriller novel, Captain.
Visit his website at www.thomasblocknovels.com.
To purchase from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Captain-Thomas-Block/dp/1470158973/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347159324&sr=8-1&keywords=captain+by+thomas+block
To puchase a Kindle copy: http://www.amazon.com/Captain-ebook/dp/B007KQHK2I/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332328330&sr=8-1
To purchase from Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/captain-thomas-block/1109625740?ean=2940014237529&itm=1&usri=thomas+block+captain
To purchase from Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/160858
Guest post from the author:
Guest post from the author:
I was a professional pilot for a long time (I finally retired a dozen years ago), and a professional writer for almost as long as I flew airplanes. But the writing portion of my professional life hasn’t retired in the least; matter of fact, it’s been cranked up a peg or two in the past few years.
I flew for an airline for over 36 years, ending my career crossing the North Atlantic several times a month as I plied my way between the US and various European cities -- just like my characters do in Captain. My professional writing began a few years after my airline flying, first strictly with magazine work but then on to novels as I began helping my childhood friendNelson DeMille as he began his own bestselling novelist career. Over the years, I have assisted Nelson DeMille with a good many of his novels in one way or another, and you’ll find that fact in most of his novels on the acknowledgement page.
In 1978, with Nelson’s help and introductions, I signed a contract to produce my first airplane action/adventure novel Mayday - which went on to be an International bestseller. In 1997, Nelson and I took the out-of-print Mayday, revised and updated it together, then republished the novel with both our names as co-authors. That version became a CBS Movie of the Week in October, 2005, and is still readily available from Nelson DeMille’s extensive backlist.
During the 80’s I wrote five additional novels that had a good run of success throughout the world. For various reasons I didn’t find myself writing any novels through the 90’s, although I did do even more work with Nelson DeMille through that period and well into the new century. With all of my old novels long out of print (excepting Mayday), I realized that with the dawning of this new era of publishing for both print editions and ebooks, that I could go back to those old novels (the rights to those works had since reverted back to me), extensively revise and update them, and then send them back out to see the light of day once again -- now dressed up in their modern-day clothing. All of these novels were basically airplane-theme action/adventure, although they ran a gamut from hypersonic airlines on through Airships and even a detective story. You can see all of the details of these novels -- which continue to sell nicely and receive good reviews -- at our website at www.ThomasBlockNovels.com.
But in the back of my mind I had a new story; a story that needed to be told an old way, with emphasis on character and plot, motivation and timing. As always, it would be an aviation-theme action/adventure -- but unlike most modern stories, I simply refused to pump in gratuitous violence, sex and mayhem. To me, so many modern novels (and especially movies!) are hardly more than comic books with storylines that don’t hang together and with endless and brutish snapping from scene to scene as if they expected that the audience had an attention span (and a companion attention to detail) that could only be measured in the smallest portions possible.
So I wrote Captain, an admittedly old-fashioned story with a beginning, middle and (what I wanted to become a very satisfying) ending. It is a story about what happens to the crew and passengers on a particular flight from Rome, Italy to New York when unthinkable things begin to happen to their airliner. It is full of characters that readers have told me that they loved -- and also loved to hate. It is an action/adventure tale with a backdrop of real emotions. It is a novel that slowly moves from scene to scene -- but at a fast pace. Is that sort of mix possible? Look at the movies Casablanca and Dances With Wolves, or the novel Lonesome Dove. That’s what I was trying to do with Captain, and a number of reviewers and general readers have told me that, to them, Captain is a powerhouse of emotions while it is simultaneously packed with a very high level of action, intrigue and adventure.
When I finished Captain we showed it to a few of the big New York publishing houses on the chance that one of them might want it, and their editors told me flatly that ‘airplane stories are out’ and ‘this type of storytelling isn’t what readers go for these days’. Through lots of personal effort we eventually published Captain because it is the story that I wanted to tell, in the manner that I wanted to tell it. While stories like Captain might not be the particular ‘in’ thing these days, this novel is an exciting adventure story that you can curl up with to spend some enticing and enjoyable time; I probably don’t have to tell you that I’m proud of it.
ABOUT CAPTAIN
Thomas Block has created ‘Captain’ – his most ambitious, intricate and action-packed aviation tale yet . It is a chilling and all-too-real story about a routine Trans-Atlantic airline flight that suddenly turns absolutely insane. In the doomed airliner’s cockpit, inside the passenger cabin and on the ground, a complex array of characters have been propelled at jet speed into a sudden and frantic race for survival.
‘Captain’ is about the individual and collective struggles of each of these men and women as they attempt to deal with and ultimately fight against the odds and circumstances that are stacked against them. ‘Captain’ is a novel that pits man against man while also pitting man against machine. It is a story about the need for human judgments, hard-learned experiences, gut feelings and unbridled perseverance in an effort to rise up against a world where the strict adherence to written rules, regulations and procedures have been accepted as the norm.
‘Captain’ is about the way real airline pilots think, feel and react, especially after those giant airliners that they’ve strapped themselves to have suddenly turned vicious and unpredictable.
Now, of course, a big giveaway always makes things better, right? For the duration of the tour (through January 11 of next year!), you can enter to win Amazon gift cards! Follow the entire tour here, and you can find out how to enter the giveaway!
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