FAULT LINES - Thomas Locke - One Free Book

Welcome, Thomas. Why did you become an author?

I came to faith at age twenty-eight and began writing two weeks later. Up to that point, my whole focus had been upon business – I ran the European office of a US consulting group. There were a huge number of transitions that followed this, but from that first moment, literally the first hour I wrote my first story, I knew this was what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

If you weren’t a novelist, what would be your dream job?

Seven years ago, I began writing screenplays. It was enormously challenging, like learning a new musical instrument or a different field of medicine. But it has remained a great joy. I am now working on my fifth screenplay under contract and loving it. Just loving it.

If you could have lived at another time in history, what would it be and why?

This has never really interested me as a concept. What I find fascinating, however, is the idea of alternate universes. Different scenarios playing out in a time and setting that is the here and now, only skewed ninety degrees. That is what I am doing with this series of novels.

What place in the United States have you not visited that you would like to?

Alaska. Hike the wilderness. In the summer, though. Definitely just in the summer.

How about a foreign country you hope to visit?

I have been invited to lecture on creative writing in Singapore. Just across a bridge is Malaysia, a land of clouds and mystery. Can’t wait.

What lesson has the Lord taught you recently?

Letting go.

Working in the film world means accepting that mine is just one voice among many, and certainly not the most important or the loudest. When the story moves from page to the combined action of many, I become just one of the chorus.

Tough.

Tell us about the featured book.

That night, Professor Gabriella Speciale does something she has never done before. An Italian psychologist, she has spent five years studying the brainwave patterns of practitioners of deep meditation. She now intends to apply the latest electromagnetic techniques to stimulate similar brainwaves in ordinary subjects; those who have never practiced mental control. But her initial candidate reports something utterly unexpected. Then another. After the third research experiment, Gabriella decides to break with the demands of scientific objectivity. She must slip into the lab after-hours, and take her own trial run.

Gabriella seems to float on the edge of human consciousness. She senses a gradual separation from her physical form, frightening but also captivating. At one level she identifies the phenomenon as an out-of-body experience. These have been chronicled, and controversial, for centuries. Only now there is a difference. With a little tweaking, Gabriella finds a means to both control and direct the out-of-body experience. She seems to be omniscient – going anywhere, seeing everything. Has she, in effect, defied the laws of gravity, locality and time? As the lab comes back into focus, Gabriella is flush with exhilaration – and anxiety. She does not fully understand the ramifications – but something this big needs to be protected.

Please give us the first page of the book.

The Satellite Beach community center was not the sort of place to require an armed agent guarding the coffee machine. It was located in a former auto supply warehouse. The four bay doors had been replaced by walls of glass. The view was over a parking lot, a lawn shared with the neighboring church, and the inland waterway. That Monday evening the setting sun turned the bay into a burnished copper shield.

Charlie Hazard stood in what had become his normal station, midway between the coffeemaker and the jukebox. His job was to make sure the local surfers didn’t totally freak out the old-timers. There were nights when he would have rather faced incoming fire.

The center was situated three blocks from the home he had inherited from his father. Charlie had been dropping by a couple of nights each week for nineteen months and he still didn’t know why. He went off on a job, got it done, came home, and a night or so later he was back. The place suited him. It was safe. Charlie liked safe. And sane. A lot of his life away from this place wasn’t either. Lately he found himself looking forward to coming back. He was comfortable with little triumphs these days—another day staying clean, another night without sweats and fever dreams.

Julio, a Hispanic kid in his late teens, hit the button on the music machine. Immediately the place was invaded by rap. Julio was a local surfer, tall and handsome despite his baggy jeans and prison tats. Charlie had every reason to dislike him and his attitude. But something about Julio hit him at gut level. What was more, Charlie’s best friend here was the youth counselor, a retired Orlando detective named Irma Steeg. Irma had a definite soft spot for the kid. So Charlie kept his voice mild as he waved Julio over and said, “Think maybe you could hold off for another hour?”

Julio gave him attitude. “What’s your problem, man?”

“See the old people over there by the windows? Forty-five minutes, they’ll leave for their nightly meds. Then you can play the track that sounds like a bad day in Baghdad.”

Irma settled a hand on Julio’s arm, halting his comeback. She asked, “How about something from Ol’ Blue Eyes?”

Charlie walked over to the machine and ditched the rap. To the groans of everybody under twenty, Frank Sinatra and his horn section asked Charlie to fly him to the moon.

As Charlie returned to the coffee bar, Irma gave Julio her number one smile. “Everybody likes Sinatra, right?”

Charlie knew Julio wanted to tell Irma exactly where she could put Sinatra and his entire big band. But Julio had enough street sense to notice the steel behind Irma’s smile.

He told the departing kid, “One hour, tops. Then the place is yours.”

“Whatever, man. Make yourself some oatmeal, why don’t you. Easier to chew, you don’t got no teeth.”

Charlie said to Irma, “Remind me why you put up with that lip.”

“Julio has nothing and nobody. I always had a thing for strays.” Irma offered him the same soft-hard smile. “As you should know.”

He skipped his retort because an unfamiliar woman chose that moment to walk through the door. When her smile lit up the room, even the kids gave this new arrival thirty seconds of silence.

The strange thing was, the beautiful woman was not actually smiling at anyone or anything in particular. She seemed genuinely ecstatic to simply be here. In a former auto supply warehouse.

Maybe she had a thing for Sinatra.

How can readers find you on the Internet?

www.DavisBunnBooks.com

www.TLocke.com

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