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Interview with Lance Charnes, author of South

South Lance Charnes

Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk

In a day-after-tomorrow America where the government has been downsized and outsourced into irrelevance, and none but the very wealthy few can afford hopes or dreams, Luis and Nora must learn to trust each other to ensure the survival of the truth – and of the people they love.

Luis Ojeda owes his life to the Pacifico Norte cartel. Literally. Now it’s time to pay.

Luis led escaping American Muslims out of the U.S. during the ten years following a 2019 terrorist attack on Chicago. He retired after nearly being killed by a border guard. But now in 2032, the Nortes give Luis a choice: pay back the fortune they spent saving his life, or take on a special job.

Tell us more. What’s the job?
The job: Nora Khaled – FBI agent, wife, mother of two, and Muslim. She claims her husband will be exiled to one of the nation’s remote prison camps to rot with over 400,000 other Muslim Americans. Faced with her family’s destruction, she’s forced to turn to Luis – the kind of man she’s spent her career bringing to justice.

But when the FBI publicly accuses Nora of terrorism, Luis learns Nora’s real motive for heading south: she has proof that the nation’s recent history is based on a lie – a lie that reaches to the government’s highest levels.

Torn between self-preservation and the last shreds of his idealism, Luis guides Nora and her family toward refuge in civil war-wracked Mexico. The FBI, a dogged ICE agent, killer drones, bandits, and the fearsome Zeta cartel all plan to stop him. Success might just free Luis from the Nortes…but failure means disappearing into a black-site prison, or a gruesome death for them all.

What genre is this?
Near-future crime thriller. It verges into speculative fiction because it’s set twenty years from now, and into dystopian fiction because South’s world isn’t an especially nice place. However, it’s a highly recognizable world, so it shouldn’t scare off people who like modern-day action and intrigue.

Tell us about Luis.
Luis Ojeda, the hero, is a second-generation Mexican-American. He served in Afghanistan in his youth, and has ever since been trying to keep up as the nation’s economy has turned feral. He also has a strong sense of duty: his wife Bel says, “He always has to fix everything. He always needs to help.” His father was a coyote who brought several hundred Latinos into the U.S. during the late 1980s and early 1990s. When American Moslems started being herded into detention camps in 2020, Luis began leading the fugitives into Mexico using his father’s old routes. The Pacifico Norte cartel bought out his business and turned him into a contractor.

And Nora?
Nora Khaled, the heroine, is a former military police officer and is now a special agent in the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. However, she’s been sidelined because of her gender and religion and subjected to constant polygraphs and background probes. Her parents came from Lebanon. Her father had been a successful businessman in Virginia and was active in Republican politics until the 10/19/19 terrorist attack in Chicago turned Moslems into pariahs; her parents have since fled to Marseilles. Nora’s married to a lawyer and has two small children.

We absolutely loved your last book, Doha 12 (interview here). Tell us what it was about, for anyone who hasn’t read it yet.
Jake Eldar is a bookstore manager; Miriam Schaffer is a legal secretary. Both grew up in Israel and have built new lives in America. The Mossad just used their identities during the assassination of a Hezbollah commander in Doha, Qatar. Now they’re on the run.

Tell us about yourself.
I’ve been an Air Force intelligence officer, information technology manager, computer-game artist, set designer, Jeopardy! contestant, and now I’m an emergency management specialist. I’ve had training in architectural rendering, terrorist incident response and maritime archaeology, but not all at the same time. I tweet (@lcharnes) on shipwrecks, scuba diving, archaeology and art crime.

Do you use Facebook too?
https://www.facebook.com/Lance.Charnes.Author

Do you have a website?
Yes:
http://www.wombatgroup.com

How easily do new storylines come to you? If we give you four random words – Man, Woman, Airport, Darkness – can you give us a brief storyline?
Associate Press stringer Walter Farley and Agence France-Presse reporter Sandrine Douain have been bitter rivals while covering the violent implosion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Now they’re stuck in a broken truck five miles from the Kisangani airport, and they’re facing the ultimate deadline.

On one side is the disintegrating Congolese army, whose repeated war crimes Walter and Sandrine have very publicly reported. On the other side are the rebels, who have seized over half the country with a brutality that shocks even seasoned Africa hands, and who have a special hatred for “foreign bandits.”

The last flight out of Kisangani leaves at sunset.

Walter and Sandrine won’t survive the night…unless they stop reporting the story, and become the story.

Write that as your next novel and we’ll definitely buy it! Assuming you don’t take our advice, what are you planning to do next?
There are a couple of possibilities. The one I’m leaning toward right now is about art theft and organized crime in Tuscany. We’ll see if that’s the one I go with after I get South well and truly launched.

 

 

 

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