Timothy's Thoughts

A reader who is reading Searching For Mom for a class she is in asked me several questions. I am posting them here so you can also see the answers I gave: Where are you from? I am from southeast Missouri, which is also the area in which Searching For Mom takes place. I took some artistic license with the town in which the story takes place, but the heart of it is very much like what you might find in the area of Cape Girardeau and Jackson. How old are you?, Are you married?, Where do you live? I am 34 years old and I live in Fort Worth, Texas. As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up? As a young child, I wanted to be a fireman. To some extent I lived out that dream in that I helped setup a volunteer fire department in a rural community and I spent one summer during college working for the fire department at a large diaper plant. What books have most influenced your life most? At the top of the list of books that have influenced my life, the Bible sits very comfortably. ...

S aying something against prayer seems like a bad thing to do, but recently I have had a few reminders that prayer isn’t always a good thing. I saw a blog post recently about “praying the Psalms.” I’ve often wondered if God bothers to listen to prayers that people read out of a book or have memorized. The Psalms are great for meditation and if that leads someone to pray about something personal that’s great, but I sometimes get the impression that people think they can use prayers written by other people as some form of incantation. It doesn’t work that way. Somehow I get drawn into some of the strangest discussions. The other day Michael Hyatt had a post on his blog about the tension we authors experience concerning self-promotion. I disagreed with the guest blogger and she took far greater offense at what I said than what I could have anticipated. She had included the words of one of her fans and had disagreed with that fan. I basically said that I thought the fan was right, so some...

A writer’s voice is that part of his writing that makes him unique. Read Mark Twain and you know it’s him. Read Dickens and you know its him. Read Poe and you know its him. Voice is a lot like a person’s accent. We may think we don’t have an accent, but we all do. We have all learned to say words a certain way and to move our mouths a certain way. It is unique for each of us. A writer may spend time trying to “find his voice.” You don’t have to “find your voice.” If you are writing from who you are, then your voice is already there on the page. If you are cynical, that will show. If you are light hearted, that will show. If you are meticulous in word choice, that will show. So what happens when you get a rejection letter and the agent says, “you need to work on your voice?” The agent isn’t saying that you don’t have a voice. We all have a voice. What the agent is saying is that he doesn’t like your voice. That’s a little like the American Idol competition. A few years ago, there was ...

A s writers, we want to write compelling stories. The Bible has many compelling stories that we can use as our example, but today I would like to do a case study of the most compelling story of all, that of Hosea. It’s a short story that you should go read for yourself, but allow me to paraphrase. The Lord spoke to Hosea and told him of a message he had for his people. As a way of illustrating that message, the Lord told Hosea to go marry a woman from a family involved in prostitution. Hosea goes and marries Gomar. They have a couple of children together, but then there is a third child that may not have been Hosea’s. Gomar seems to have tired of Hosea at this point and leaves him for other men. She believes they can give her what she wants better than Hosea can. Hosea remains aware of what is going on and takes care of Gomar by giving the men she is with the resources to provide for her. She is unaware that it is him taking care of her and not the men she is with. He withdraws his he...

S ome time ago, I did a comparison of BookSurge, CreateSpace and Lulu in terms of value per dollar related to self-publishing a book. Both BookSurge and CreateSpace are owned by Amazon.com and recently they merged. I don’t think this surprised anyone, considering that having the two companies using two different pricing schemes only made things confusing, which is part of why I did that comparison. I recently received an e-mail from a reader, asking me to do a similar breakdown of the new CreateSpace. I am happy to do so. For our purposes, we will assume the author has a print-ready PDF for both the interior and the cover of the book. The author may have done this work himself, or he may have had someone else do it for him, but as he enters this process he believes he is ready to upload his files. In the new CreateSpace, he has several options. One is the Author’s Express Package. This is essentially the same cheapest possible package that was available under BookSurge and costs $299. ...

E ditor’s Note: Today’s post is the second entry in Lieutenant Gamble’s Personal Log. (Reading Time: 2 Minutes) Lt. Gamble’s Personal Log (29 D.T.D): The outlook didn’t look any better when we woke this morning. Doc thinks he has the time of our death pinned down as close as he can get it, but he wants to run a few more tests to make sure. He’s using the equipment at the national hospital, which is just down the street from the palace. We’ve made the palace our base of operation. It and the hospital are about the only two places that haven’t lost power. It also has some of the most comfortable beds I’ve ever seen and there’s still food in the kitchen. It’s frozen, but I suppose the royal family must have had too much to take with them. Doc seems to think the people of this planet left after they found out they were exposed. If we can get off the planet within a week or so, we might be alright too, but that doesn’t look likely. The princess keeps asking our prisoner a bunch of question...

I ’ve got one more book in the series I’ve been writing over the past few years. The cover will be blue. I know most of the characters. I know something of the events that will be taking place in town at the time of the story. I know some of the things that will happen. I used the previous book to setup part of the story. I just have one problem; I don’t know what the story is about. With me knowing so much already, you would think I would be set. If I were like some authors, I might just start typing and see what happens, but I haven’t found that to be an effective way to work. If someone were to ask me about the story, I could say that Sara is the protagonist and that a movie is being filmed on the street in front of Ellen’s café. Kelly has a role in the movie. David and the other movie people from And Thy House are all there. Ellen has a contract to feed the cast and crew, so Sara has a good excuse to hang around the movie set. Kelly’s dad will be making an appearance. I may bring ...