R.L. Crossland (Author of The Abalone Ukulele)

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R.L. Crossland

欧宝娱乐 Author

Born

Norwalk, CT, The United States

Website

Genre

Historical Fiction, Crime, Travel

Member Since

November 2018

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With the benefit of thirty-five years' service, active and reserve, as a U.S. Navy SEAL officer (two hot wars, one cold), Crossland has found projecting his grasp of naval intrigue one hundred years into the past a worthy challenge. Captain Crossland has written internationally on the subject of maritime unconventional warfare and includes U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings and the New York Times among his credits. His historical crime novel, Jade Rooster, received the Admiral David Glasgow Farragut Award for naval literature in 2008. ...more

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Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

R.L. Crossland From the outset, my value-added as a storyteller was my experiences as a Naval Special Warfare officer. It was also my Achilles heel. Publishers wante鈥辞谤别From the outset, my value-added as a storyteller was my experiences as a Naval Special Warfare officer. It was also my Achilles heel. Publishers wanted me to write a Tom Clancy-esque techno-thriller. I couldn't do that. I couldn't disclose information that might place real operations in jeopardy.

Special operations and unconventional warfare invariably use small units that rely heavily on the element of surprise. The more the enemy knows about our technology, the more likely events will go badly for us.

In Red Ice I side-stepped that issue. The protagonist was a cashiered officer acting independently and using no high-tech.

Then it occurred to me to step back in time. My undergraduate degree was in sociology-history, i.e., how different cultures organize themselves to live day-to-day and how they protect that culture's values historically.

The three cultures I knew best were the Navy, Japan, and Korea.

I liked how Jade Rooster turned out. The "Sand Pebbles" was one of my favorite books and movies. The era and region was little known to Americans and I could find diaries written by enlisted men as well as officers, and there were photographs! I don't think I could write a novel set in a pre-camera period. Photos are windows through time.

Sitting in a bunker in Korea during a command post exercise someone pointed out the Unsan mines and that gave me a germ of an idea. I already knew that China had found a Korea a very tough kingdom to conquer and eventually addressed it as a tribute country instead. I knew Sun Tzu theories were well-observed the Japan which made it a worthy and quite dastardly antagonist.

And, I'd always liked Korea and its people.(less)

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R.L. Crossland鈥檚 books

Average rating: 4.07 · 42 ratings · 6 reviews · 3 distinct works 鈥� Similar authors

	The Abalone Ukulele: A Tale of Far Eastern Intrigue 4.16 avg rating — 19 ratings — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Jade Rooster 4.60 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 1990 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Red Ice 3.54 avg rating — 13 ratings — published 1990 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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R.L. Crossland is now friends with William Waldron
Jul 06, 2023 08:18PM · like

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Quotes by R.L. Crossland (?)

“Why doesn't have a centralized place for readers and authors to point out the many mistakes it makes in listing books For instance, there are three different listings for my book "The Abalone Ukulele" (one doesn't even provide a cover and the other doesn't used my pen name, and the third provides an incomplete ISBN) and all this does is confuse people.”
― R.L. Crossland

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message 2: by R.L.

Dec 10, 2021 03:00PM

Mark your calendars for Feb. 26, 2022, if you're a member of the NMHS.
The NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY PRESENTS:
The Abalone Ukulele: A Tale of Far Eastern Intrigue
Zoom Seminar with Author CAPT R.L. Crossland, USN (Ret.)
Saturday, 26 February 2022: Welcome & Lecture at 11:00 AM ET
Join us for a presentation with author CAPT R.L. Crossland, USN (Ret.), as he discusses his book The Abalone Ukulele: A Tale of Far Eastern Intrigue, a fictional account of the Asiatic Fleet鈥檚 involvement in the theft of a shipment of Japanese gold ingots destined for a Japanese Bank in Shanghai. Set in May 1913, the book tells the story of four cultures that are about to collide: China, Korea, Japan, and the US鈥攁nd the point of collision centers on the theft of three tons of Japanese gold ingots meant to undermine an already collapsing China.
It is a tale that brings to life a sprawling epic of greed, gold, and redemption, and wends through the outskirts of Peking to the Yukon River; from the San Francisco waterfront to a naval landing party isolated on a Woosung battlefield; from ships of the US Asiatic Fleet moored on Battleship Row to a junk on the Yangtze; and from the Korean gold mines of Unsan to a coaling quay in Shanghai. Soon a foreign intelligence service, a revolutionary army, and two Chinese triads converge on a nation鈥檚 ransom in gold.
The tale revisits the chaos that was Shanghai in 1913, with the competing military factions vying for power, the various criminal syndicates, the attempts to maintain law and order, and life in the bustling city itself. A haven for many bluejackets stationed on the USS Pluto, Madam Guan鈥檚鈥淟esser Shanghai Indian Club and Garter Society鈥� on the Lane of Lingering Joy is an important component in a quite complicated plot.
Don鈥檛 miss this fascinating seminar with CAPT R.L. Crossland, who served for thirty-five years, active and reserve, as a US Navy SEAL officer and with the Naval History Center (now Naval History and Heritage Command), and whose historical crime novel Jade Rooster was awarded the Admiral David Glasgow Farragut Award for naval literature in 2008.

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message 1: by R.L.

Nov 29, 2021 04:42AM

Well, many of us write conscious of that ultimate deadline. Yet we have beards and know things. Those things we feel compelled to relate through fiction. Fiction entwined with the high stakes backdrop of history. Did I say that without indenting once? Whoa, I better get a cup of coffee.