Ted Thomas
Project

My novel about survival, loss,
and the enduring pull of love
in the face of disaster.

Title and Cover Release
Coming Soon!

More Novels by Ted Thomas:

Unbreakable

76,000 words

They thought their friendships were unbreakable.
Then came the night that proved them wrong.

To the kids on the beaches of 1980s New Jersey,
Jonny Malloy is like no other.Dripping with cool, charisma, and seduction,
he’s the leader of a tight-knit crew of teenagers whose friendships are as steady as the tide.But when a surf trip down the coast takes a tragic turn and sends shockwaves through their carefree world, they find their bonds collapsing under the weight of a choice that will haunt them forever.UNBREAKABLE is a salt-soaked, coming-of-age story about teenagers growing up with MTV
on every screen, mixtapes in every car, and the endless freedom of summer in their hearts.This bittersweet mashup of Malibu Rising, The Paper Palace, and Barbarian Days follows
Jonny, Lance, Jenny and the gang
as they navigate the tangled waters of loss, love, guilt, redemption, and their undying love affair
with the waves.

Behind the Line

84,000 Words

Jamie Scott, a former Michelin-starred chef in Los Angeles, has a dangerous side hustle:
Once a month he sells cocaine to the staff of Omertá,
his middle-of-the-road restaurant that’s just gone viral.But when the daughter he never knew he had applies for a job, Jamie’s world is turned upside down.After his best friend dies of an overdose and the police close in, Jamie is forced to confront the chaotic life he’s built, and the future he still has a chance to save.A gritty, real, and life-affirming story, Behind the Line follows a father’s last chance at redemption, a daughter’s search for identity, and the fine line
between passion and addiction.

Spoken Word Poetry

(A Sampling)

Light and Dark Without

Why do only the fucked up things show us the beauty of life?
That friend we all looked up to, taken by his own hand.
The ashes of his memory.My heart pounding at her truth.
Wandering the empty, foreign streets.
Screaming into the night.Is the sunset not enough?Why did it take so long to learn to play the guitar?
That would've been cool when I was younger.
Maybe it would’ve been one more girl, or one less rejection.Why does no one else think George Bailey was a sap?
Stuck in Bedford Falls, taking care of everyone else’s shit.
Fuck Mary, go out and get yours George!Why did it take so long for me to fight back?
Crying in the dark, the cold tile of the bathroom floor.
Her lies and the unquestioned answers.Was my love not enough?But deep in the dark of why,
The laughable attempts at intelligence,
rationalizing, and revenge.
The pretending and the way I wanted it to be.Death and rebirth, over and over and all the excuses.
The embrace that never happened.
That’s when we found the laughter.Am I not enough?Becomes a whisper,
Becomes another person.
A person that lives and breathes and cries.But over there.We’re still friends, he and I.
He’s funny, and also pretty deep if you get to know him.
It’s amusing to go out to lunch with him every now and then.He talks as though everything he believes about himself
is true.
Scarred by the same wounds we all share.
Why does it take so long to move on?Is life not enough?What about your friend, alone and dangling from a noose?
The guitar or lassoing the moon.
Your heart and sweat and the bathroom floor.What about the sunsets?
The bay and brine of low tides?
A perfect wave, peeling into memory.Where the pain fades into the silence and the smile,
as she awakens the poetry of the morning.
The secrets only she knows about me.Memories burned, memories shared.
Cascading upon the heart.
Unwilling. Unrelenting wisdom.Her smile and her smile and her smile and her smile,
The light and the dark without.
The life without the dark.And maybe it’s not the one thing that makes it enough,
Maybe it’s not even all of them, but for those days
crying in the darknessThat led you here.

A 43 hour drive and the 4 years it took to move to California

Overheard:“The traffic on 580 yesterday was so bad,
I had to pull over twice to masturbate.”
“Nah, you’ll never get fog here.
We’re in the banana belt!”
“Come for the diversity, stay because
you can’t afford to move.”
“Having second thoughts?
Good.
Go home.”
“Keep it unlocked, roll down your windows
and don’t leave anything inside.
The first time they broke my rearview and stole all my Grateful Dead bootlegs,
but the second time they just threw them out on the street.
You tell me which is worse.”Motivation:Back home they call it “the land of
fruits and nuts,” but come March, while they’re still up to their hoagies in cold rain and snow, and I’m barrel tasting on the
Russian River Wine Road, that’s when they’ll see.Sure, I’ll still complain about the cardboard pizza and doughy bagels, and the are-you-kidding-me turkey shaped tofu for Thanksgiving, and the traffic
and crime and tech bros and…
but the love is implied.The sulfuric, comforting smell of low tide by the houseboats.
The clanging halyards echoing
through the streets in the marina.
The dripping wind whipping,
the song of the bridge.
Preachin’ on the burning shore
and knockin’ on the golden door.
The surf, burritos and the romance
of Kerouac––the first reading of On the Road happened right there!
And Sittin’ On the Dock of the Bay and Sly was first a DJ and I forget, are we allowed to call it ‘Frisco’ again?Van Morrison asked “is it true what you sang about in your song?”
And I want to say no, but then there’s
the slate-blue magic of twilight on a deep autumn night where the eternity of the bay is still and quiet, or jazz at
The Boom Boom or readings at Specs
and that’s why I’m here.
That’s why I’m here, and I had this
fantasy that everyone else was too.Reality:I hate the word ‘tolerance.’
It suggests a superiority, that somehow I am tolerating you, and by the good graces of my open mind, allowing you to exist,
or merely express an opinion.But perhaps that’s my cynicism,
borne from somewhere back there, brought here to subtly hint at my superiority. My travels. My life.
But my life here is greater than there,
and certainly when measured by time.
This is where I was meant to be, dreamed of as a little kid, and cry in my heart
every time I have to leave.So why do I refer to there, as “home?”When I’m here, sure, I think about there.
Brag about there.
But when I’m there? Fuuuuuuuuck.
The here headlines of crime and homelessness and bankrupt businesses and shit on the sidewalks are a distraction from my love affair, one that goes
beyond the physical or metaphysical.
Beyond the heart.
It’s a calling, a knowledge that
nowhere but here could I have done what I’ve done. A different reality from one that, who knows, possibly never existed.I knew no one then, and nothing now
but I owe everything to this.
Who I am, and perceive you to be.
And now I’m the one telling some
wandering soul to forget it.
Just go home.But the love is implied.

THE TRUTH

So we were hanging at that bar.
You know, the one in North Beach
that Kerouac used to hang at,
And for some reason, it still feels
cool to be there, just to say
Kerouac was here.This guy walks in, tall guy with a look
that knows more than you and he said
He was looking for the truth.
The truth.He ordered a bourbon on the rocks.So on and on and only through moments of connection, deep connection,
can we find salvation.
Can we find ourselves,
and within ourselves lies all the answers.But with every question there was
one more crack in the mirror.
And as those cracks stretched longer
and grew wider, the visions
grew further and further apart,
until even the word truth
became just as obscure
as the night sky.He was by himself, just talking to the air.Everyone wants to be somebody, he said.
To be some body.
The struggle to stand on your own
Even though on your own is who you are.I just wanted to lie in the grass
and look at the clouds.
Where her touch, her eyes and her soul,
The warmth of her breath.
Left me so alone.And I’ll have an Anchor Steam.We talked more about Kerouac, of course, and Kesey. Ginsburg.
You know, radical authenticity.
Spiritual exploration. Free sex.I asked why On the Road
reads like a conversation.
Is it because he was drunk?
It doesn’t, he told me.
He only drank after he wrote.But just like me, he only knows the names,
Not the words. The ideas.
The meaning.
Do you ever truly know anyone?
I asked, but I was talking about herAnd even I knew that was a cop out.
Afraid to get to the heart of it,
The truth of it,
Whatever it is.I may have found my truth with her,
but it came around too late.
And then his hand on my shoulder,
and that look.
That same fucking look.
It’s never too late, he said, if you let it.I know, but letting it is the easy part.Kerouac wrote about the long skies
of New Jersey.
And maybe it was the sunsets back then,
stretching across like giant fingers.
But the ocean was my 1949 Hudson Commodore, and my friends
Dean and Sal and Carlo.
And she was always there, by my side.Oooh Yeah, that’s when it all mattered.Tonight the fiery neon of
Columbus shivers through the fog.
The wet, silent air,
as though the weight of it.
The sweat of it and truth of it and
love and meaning and knowledge.
Love and meaning and...I could have left her, you know.
I could have drawn the line.
But his words gave me the answer
I’ve always avoided.
You walk with pain, but you enjoy the walk.
Courage, he said, has two sides,
and you’re only seeing one.But why did she…why now?Van Morrison said it ain't why, why, why,
it just is.
Dylan said Time is an ocean,
but it ends at the shore.
F Scott said So we beat on,
boats against the current,
Borne back ceaselessly into the past.Seek the divine within the ordinary.Nah, I don’t want to talk about that, I told him as I chugged the remainder of my beer.
Wiping the side of my mouth on my way out the door, I shrugged and said,
I thought you were looking for the truth.There was nothing to talk about anymore.The only thing to do was go.

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