Bluewater adventure

Flying Boston to Bermuda tomorrow morning. The goal on assignment for SAILING Magazine is to bring home some good pix of the races and a sense of what the America's Cup hype is all about.  But we won't be flying home. We'll be sailing Philip Kersten's 44-foot sloop Tioga back to Boston. Looking forward to the bluewater adventure.

Packing my photo gear for the America's Cup

Packing my photo gear for Bermuda and the America's Cup on assignment for SAILING Magazine. Woohoo!

New Zealand vs. USA. High-tech foiling catamarans with carbon fiber hulls that literally fly across the water. And when the race is over, there's the six-day sail back to Boston aboard a friend's sloop. Looking forward to the adventure. 

Deadly Fare paints a picture of military veterans coming home

Here's an excerpt:

August 1985    

 Homecomings are for queens, not soldiers

 Emmett Decker had seen all he wanted of the Middle East’s high-tension cities, North Africa’s unforgiving deserts and the unpredictable banana republics of Central America. He was psyched to return to the simple life he had once known in the rugged hills of Pennsylvania, even if it meant spending hours each week mending his war wounds at the Veterans’ Administration Hospital in Pittsburgh.

Shot twice during firefights with Syrian soldiers and later hit with shrapnel during a clash with Iraq’s Revolutionary Guards, Decker had earned his pay as an Army Special Forces Ranger. He had parachuted into places where other soldiers dared not tread, called in artillery coordinates for high-value targets, lugged his long-barrel Barrett M107 sniper rifle on dozens of missions, came very close to dying on several occasions, and decided after many months in Sandland that the U.S. Central Command hadn’t a clue about what to do with Lebanon.

Ex-Special Forces soldier Emmett Deckers 

Ex-Special Forces soldier Emmett Deckers 

Japanese mobsters are a different breed

It always helps to have some real life experience when writing crime fiction. Thought I'd share some newspaper stories I wrote about the Japanese underworld -- aka Yakuza.

As a writer, I've always been fascinated by organized crime. So I jumped at the chance to go on a newspaper assignment in 1988 to the island of Saipan, where the Japanese mob was suspected of funneling heroin from Tokyo to San Francisco.

My series of articles was submitted by the editors for a Pulitzer Prize, and though we didn't win, my interest in the criminal underworld remained strong.

As of today, my serial-killer thriller Deadly Fare is on three Amazon bestseller lists, including Organized Crime. The book is a work of crime fiction and the Irish mobsters in Boston, Massachusetts play a key role in the story.

Here's a link: Amazon US……http://amzn.to/2iI5YHh

 

 

Students thank professor for imposing no-cell-phone rule

Woo hoo! Today is the last day of finals week at Endicott College and the official start of summer vacation.

Must say many of my millenial students shined brightly and I'll miss their humor and intellect. As we wrapped up the public relations course, three students personally thanked me for imposing the semester-long no-cell phones-or-laptops in the classroom rule.

As one student put it, "I learned so much more because I was wasn't distracted. If I'd had my phone or laptop, I wouldn't have learned half as much. So thank you, professor."

Bermuda bound to cover the America's Cup

Just received word that my press credentials have been approved to cover the 35th America's Cup races in Bermuda in June. I'll be there as an editor/photographer for SAILING Magazine. Woohoo! 

America's Cup boats getting ready for the races in Bermuda. 

America's Cup boats getting ready for the races in Bermuda. 

Edward Abbey was one smart guy

I keep hearing all this mumbo-jumbo from short-sighted businessmen about profit, about making everything bigger and brighter and faster and more expensive. And after a while it's like white noise. There's no focus on goodness, no awareness of what might make a society better. It's just powerful people with no vision of tomorrow.

Here's a thought to chew on from environmentalist Edward Abbey:

"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."

Earth Day doesn't make sense

We humans are truly whacked. One day each year we set aside a few moments to think about the plight of the earth. Wow. For an entire 24 hours we try not to pollute. Don't pour the motor oil down the storm drain. Don't toss that tractor battery into the trout stream. Don't let that McDonald's trash fly out the car window.

Let's look at this differently.

Why not annually celebrate Pollution Day?

Once a year, people who feel compelled to damage the planet can have free rein. They can pollute to their heart's content. Needlessly chop down healthy trees. Throw their recyclables into the garbage can. Set some rubber tires on fire. Soak the backyard gardens with Monsanto's poisons.

Sure, that sounds awful. But it would only be allowed on that one day, giving the earth 364 days to recover, because respecting our planet only on Earth Day just doesn't make sense.

Bermuda or Bust

The spring issue of 01907 Magazine contains my story and photographs about six guys from Massachusetts' North Shore, including me, who sailed from Boston to Bermuda. It's a timely piece since the America's Cup races will soon begin on that little island. 

Residents shudder when murder happens in a rich Massachusetts town

Authors of Wellesley murder book draw crowd in Falmouth

Former Boston Herald newspaper reporter Tom Farmer and ex-Massachusetts State Police homicide detective Marty Foley drew a crowd today (March 25) at the Falmouth Historical Society in Falmouth, MA, where they discussed their well-received book “A Murder in Wellesley.”

Here’s the scoop on the book: On Halloween morning in 1999, Mabel Greineder was savagely murdered along a wooded trail in the well-heeled community of Wellesley, Massachusetts. As the shock following the brutal killing slowly subsided, the community was further shaken when the focus of the investigation turned to her husband, Dirk Greineder, a prominent Ivy League physician and family man who was soon revealed to be leading a secret double life involving prostitutes, pornography, and trysts solicited through the Internet.

Farmer and Foley have enthralled audiences throughout the state since the book was published in 2012.

Click and you’ll be taken to the book’s listing on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Murder-Wellesley-Tom-Farmer-ebook/dp/B008YW9V2E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1490524959&sr=8-1&keywords=a+murder+in+wellesley

Authors Marty Foley and Tom Farmer

Authors Marty Foley and Tom Farmer

An unsolved American serial killer case: Who murdered Tina Louise Leone?

Before launching a career as a crime fiction writer, I spent years as a newspaper reporter covering all sorts of human misdeeds in the courts and on the street. Some of those cases stick with you, perhaps because they remain unsolved. The case of Tina Louise Leone is one of them. 

You can read my 2005 news story by clicking on the link below.

www.doenetwork.org/media/news144.html

Tina Louise Leone

Tina Louise Leone