Author, Architecture & Adventurer

LIFE IS AN ADVENTURE, Live It

Author

TREASURE

Maj. Michael Crooke, USMC-R, takes leave from combat and heads to the white sand beaches of a remote Caribbean island. While exploring, Michael uncovers an ancient map and joins Jacob Hatch, a veteran salvage captain hiding from his past on a treacherous treasure hunt.

After recovering a vast fortune from the deep laden with arcane artifacts, Hatch’s enemies seize the treasure, kidnap Michael’s wife and flee to a mountaintop temple in Brazil, believing they have killed both Hatch and Michael.

Michael must now find away to turn Hatch’s lust for revenge into a rescue mission. But head-hunters, poison darts, deadly snakes and demonic monsters all stand in their way.

From the depths of the ocean to the savage jungles of the Amazon Treasure is a non-stop terrifying thrill ride.

BIRTHDAY BOX

All Kira Mather wanted was to buy the perfect birthday gift for her husband. When her sister-in-law takes her to the old North Boston Calvinist Church, currently being demolished to make room for a condominium project, she had no idea her husband was a descendent of Cotton Mather, the fabled witch trial crusader from the mid 1600s. When the demolition contractor presents an ancient, chain-locked trunk discovered during demolition, the ladies decide this would be the perfect gift for Kira’s husband, Professor Aldo Mather, a lover of antiquity and a huge fan of mystery. Prof. Mather, an avowed Athiest, disbelieves Kira’s assertion that something dangerous lives within the centuries old box. He presents the box to his university class in an effort to once again disprove the existence of a spiritual realm. What happens next will forever altar his perceptions. But, is it now too late for Aldo?

MEADOWLARKS

In a valley high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains revered by the Paiute Indians as the Valley of Wonder, the natural splendor is protected by powerful supernatural forces, a power that is sometimes deadly.  Valley residents enjoy unusually long and healthy lives and have developed a sacrificial ritual to slake the beast; the staking out of a bull calf at the rising of the full moon.  When this ritual is interrupted, the leading citizen, Kidro Potter, is brutally slaughtered by the beast.

DELIBERATE JUSTICE: The American Way

On Jan.6, 1855, on his 30th birthday, Count Mikhail Diebitsch-Zabalkansky is critically wounded by Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaievich and, in self defense, cuts off the grand duke’s right hand.

Now forced to flee Vladivostok, assisted by his uncle, Mikhail boards a Chinese slave ship bound for San Francisco where a Chinese doctor, Chiang Po, and his teenage daughter, Chiang SuLin, treat his wounds and nurse him back to health.

PURSUIT: The American Way

Moisture slicked the irregular brick walls and brick paving of the narrow alley that followed the downhill slope into dense fog.  Moon glow above the fog cast an eerie, blue light, easy enough to see their way.

Duncan grabbed Donald’s arm and thrust him to the front, shoving from behind, almost at a run.

Thirty yards below, a pale yellow light winked through blue fog.  A crossing street.

At the bottom of the alley, surrounded by a yellow corona, a small, dark form turned toward them.

Thomas has completed Four novels, Treasure, Meadowlarks, Pursuit and Deliberate Justice, and more than a dozen feature length screenplays.

Many of his original ideas and movie moments have appeared in major motion pictures such as The Village, Red Riding Hood, End of the Earth, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and on television’s L.A. Firefighter.

Architecture

A career that began at an early age and a practice I still love

For my eleventh birthday, my father (an engineer for the U.S. Department of Defense) gave me my first drafting board.  Within a month I had designed a home for our family.  When I found the time, I continued to draw until I joined the Marine Corps.

During my last months in the Corps, my father wrote me a letter speculating on my future.  He was a man who read a great deal to educate and improve his life experience so I always took his advice to heart.  Knowing my artistic abilities and my understanding of mathematics, particularly geometry, along with his belief in my people skills, he recommended architecture or film directing.

Adventurer

Life is an adventure.  Live it and love it.

My parents raised me to always be the best I can be at whatever I do, no matter how miniscule, no matter how grand.  Being the best I can be requires learning all I can about whatever I do and always being willing to learn a better way.  This upbringing has made me extremely competitive, blending with another parental philosophy, to always be fair and honest in dealing with others.