Timothy's Thoughts

A fter putting it off for far too long, I went looking for a new dentist the other day. I started with the website of my insurance provider, which gave me the name of a dentist office near me. From there, I went to the website of the dentist office, which actually has several branches in the Metroplex and a couple in Austin. I hate calling to make an appointment because I’m always at work during the typical office hours and it is inconvenient. But this website was different. This website had a form for people to fill out if they wanted an appointment or more information. Since it was Sunday evening, I filled out the form, believing that they would contact me the next day. They did not. I waited another day and on Tuesday I filled out the form again. This time, I asked the question in the more information field, “Is anyone responding to this form?” Still no response. I ended up taking time out of my workday, just to call and schedule an appointment that could have been done using the fr...

S cience Fiction writers, especially television writers, love the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. This is the interpretation that allows for characters to slip into a parallel universe and interact with duplicates of themselves, the only difference being that one made one decision at some point in history and the other made another choice. Even though this interpretation is held by many prominent scientists, it is beyond ridiculous when we consider the implications. If the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) is true, then tomorrow morning at 8:46 AM, everyone is the world is going to simultaneously go outside, raise their voice to the heavens and sign Kum Ba Ya. When we are done, hundreds of reporters will call me to ask how I knew it was going to happen. If MWI is provable, there exist many universes in which scientists have proven beyond any doubt that MWI is false. If communication between alternate realities is possible, then there exist an infinite number of altern...

D enise Hunter posted a sneak peak at Seaside Letters , a story about a woman who falls for a customer and gets into a online dating relationship with him, but doesn’t want to let him know (go figure). Actually, she didn’t steal that idea from me, though it has a few of the same elements in it as Searching for Mom . But there are some very obvious differences. The main similarities are that the love interest between a worker in a restaurant and a customer, as well as the online dating aspect of it involving deception. In my story, the poor guy didn’t even know he was in an online dating relationship.   I thought the cover was interesting. It has all the stuff wrong with it that I don’t care for with recent Christian fiction covers, such as appearing to be a stock photo, chopping off the head and too much pink. What makes it interesting is that the woman dress appears to have gotten hung on the name banner as she walked past it. So ladies, that’s why you shouldn’t wear short skir...

O n another author’s blog I mentioned that when I wrote For the Love of a Devil I outlined it backwards. When I mentioned it, I didn’t think it a particularly foreign approach, but at least one person hadn’t considered that possibility, so maybe it’s worth covering in more detail. Why Outline Backwards There are some good reasons to outline backwards anytime, but in my case, I was working with a story with a known ending. For the Love of a Devil is based on the first three chapters of Hosea . I was also dealing with an unlikely scenario in modern society. Slavery is illegal in America, though it still exists in some form. Read the first three chapters of Hosea, then ask yourself, how do you take a modern woman, married to a good Christian man, sell her into slavery and then have her husband buy her back? The book of Hosea gives us a hint, when we see that Hosea was to choose a wife of the children of whoredoms. Gomer came from a family that didn’t teach her right. But she escaped tha...

T oday I continue to answer the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt . At this point, this activity is growing a little tiresome. Many of these questions seem to be very similar with very similar answers. But this week we move on to the question, Which is most important to your organization—mission, core values or vision? When you are talking about a church, isn’t the mission to teach the core values ? I don’t exactly see how you can possibly separate the two. And if we take the biblical understanding of vision , which Proverbs 29:18 seems to imply is right up there with the Law, we can’t say that one is more important than the other. But I doubt Michael Smith meant it quite that way. In a business sense, the vision comes from the big boss, whomever that might be. Since Christ is the head of the church, vision would still be right up there with the law, even in the business sense, but let’s leave him out...

E ditor’s Note: Today, we’re doing an interview with a private investigator. I originally asked him to write something for the blog, which he did, but it looked more like ad copy for his business then it did a blog post that any of you might be interested in. Incidentally, if you need a private investigator in St. Louis, Memphis or Chicago, you might want to call him, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Timothy Fish: Xander, thanks for agreeing to do this interview. I’m sure the readers will enjoy it. Xander X: I’m happy to do it. You did bring the money didn’t you? Timothy Fish: Yes, I brought the money. I’ll give it to you as soon as we’re done. Xander X: Good. You remembered I only take cash, didn’t you? Timothy Fish: I’ve got you covered. You can relax. Xander X: In that case, I’m happy to do the interview. It gives me great pleasure to give the readers what they want. After paying more than $100 for a book, they deserve something. Timothy Fish: They aren’t paying that much. Xander X: Th...

I f you want a popular website or blog, you have to have two things. You have to have links and you have to be relevant. Of the two, it is most important that your content be relevant. If you have that and at least one link from another website, your links will eventually grow. But the topic of relevance is a topic for another day. Today, I want to talk about links . This will be a fairly lengthy post, but if you’ll stick with me, I’ll show you what links are, how to get them and why it works. What Links Are Links are like hooks that draw surfers from one webpage to the next. They can be internal or external. There really is no difference between the two types of links, other than control. In their most basic form they look like the following: <a href="http://www.timothyfish.net">my website</a> The a comes from the word anchor . Anywhere you need a link, you place one of these anchors. Most comment forms allow you to use the anchor tag. By doing do, you can...