Rick Mofina

ITW contributing editor Jeff Ayers interviewed Rick Mofina about his new novel, Six Seconds.

One exchange from their dialogue:

What sparked the idea for your new novel?

Six Seconds is a standalone that took shape by refining a number of unrelated scenes, dramas and events I had observed during my time as a reporter; such as the heart-wrenching anguish of interviewing a mother whose child had vanished.

Then there was the time I was on assignment in Nigeria, not long after the September 11 attacks. I was in the Abuja where I saw a boy in a slum wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with Osama bin Laden's picture and message calling him #1 Hero.

On that African trip I also visited Ethiopia where I watched old women, who lived in some of the harshest conditions on earth, weaving fabric on a loom in the slums of Addis Ababa.

Prior to that, I was in the Gulf where I talked to British aid workers, and at Kuwait's boarder with Iraq. I also talked to peacekeepers from Canada concerned about the toll land mines were taking on children who plucked them from the dunes.

And I'll never forget the big city homicide detective back home who confided that he was haunted by the case he couldn't clear. Then I remembered years back, when Pope John Paul II visited my city where I was attending university. I went out to see him and met an international student who joked about assassination as the papal entourage passed by our group near the campus.

It got me thinking.

What if I took these elements and twisted them into fictional threads that were all connected? What if ordinary people from different parts of the world became ensnared by extraordinary events that could alter history as a clock ticked down on them? Suppose it all came down to six seconds?

Read the complete interview.

Read an excerpt from Six Seconds and watch the video trailer.

Visit Rick Mofina's website.

--Marshal Zeringue