Thanks so much for stopping by. I write speculative thrillers, most with monsters. My first published story will be in the Monsters! anthology from www.aflameinthedark.net.
I was recently given Honorable Mention in the Writers of the Future contest. The first novel I plans to release, Kaimerus, is described as “Firefly crashes on Avatar and wakes up 28 Days Later.” In between editing that, I am writing a Deals with the Dead series: zombies, burial mounds and the stewards that influence the scourge of small town Iowa. I am a book reviewer at SF Signal, a podcaster here as AudioTim, and a blogger Tuesdays at the New Authors Fellowship. I can be found on Twitter as @timothycward, on Facebook, and Google + (where I live stream author interviews).
Five Years of Writing Improvement
If you listen to the first episode of AudioTim, I say how I graduated college (Baldwin-Wallace College near Cleveland, OH) as an English and Philosophy Major, but without enough confidence and training to keep writing on my own. A few months later, I moved to South Korea to teach English. While there, God empowered me beyond some demons in my closet, and with my faith renewed, I accepted an invitation to preach a couple times a month. I returned to the States six months later and eventually decided to go to seminary, which led me back home to Iowa.
While in seminary I rediscovered my passion for writing and was a 2008 NaNoWriMo winner, finishing that Fantasy book at 110,000 words in October, 2009. I used Holly Lisle’s How to Revise Your Novel course to edit that novel, entitled, “The Tsadakeen,” only to realize it needed trunked or rewritten. I had a SF novel first draft that was better, so I worked on editing that, and in August, 2011, started a rewrite. As of 12/12/12, I am 45% through the fifth draft of Kaimerus, and am performing a tight rewrite en route to one more polish before sending it out to beta readers.
I met my editor, C.L. Dyck, through my mentorship program sponsored by Port Yonder Press, which was a 9 month program starting last July. We worked on one short story every three months, and I found the redrafting and editing of short fiction a monumental push towards me discovering my voice and improving my writing. C.L.’s help was outstanding.
Another fabulous editor I met, Lane Diamond, helped me out a ton. I met him by winning a free edit of the first 5k of my novel. We’ve hit it off since then, and I’m a big fan of his publishing house, Evolved Publishing, and his Psychological Thriller, Forgive Me, Alex. You can listen to our podcast interview here.
About My Faith
Because of my degree, I’d better say a little about my faith. I have a Master of Divinity and am glad because of how much I learned about many religions, the Bible and my faith. Most importantly my three years in seminary taught me a level of maturity and joy that have been crucial to battling depression that prevented me from writing beforehand. While I strive to represent the God I love, my fiction writing is not meant to be a soapbox – and neither is this website. I want to meet all kinds of writers and readers of SF, Horror, and Fantasy, regardless of their faith. I may have some posts about how my faith affects my style of writing, but this site is not meant to make converts. My weekly (Tuesday) posts on the New Authors Fellowship are where I feel more freedom to include my faith. I’m trying to write for the General market, so I don’t want this site or my faith to push people away because they are afraid I’ll start preaching.
That being said, spiritual warfare and Judeo-Christian history and challenges should be expected as common themes since that is what I know most about. My Kaimerus universe is outside our creation, but will eventually reveal parallels of religious persecution and the battles between flesh and spirit. I don’t enjoy preachy fiction, so don’t expect mine to be either, but to have a universe without religion is unrealistic. In that universe, I have the advantage of subtlety because their history and names are different.
In my Deals with the Dead universe (currently I have a flash fiction, novelette and novella written in that mythos), I take references in the Book of Isaiah about Israel making “deals with Sheol” and expand a fictional take about it being an origin story for zombies. My novelette, “Small Town Scourge,” shows how relics and an ancient book are the tools by which these deals with the dead can either be administered over safely, or… not. The hero of that story is a former youth pastor, but other stories explore different types of people. What I’m trying to say there, is one is clean, and the novella isn’t. While I try not to go overboard with gore, or write gore for gore sake, I don’t yet know how to write characters who would swear without having them swear. My goal is to present stories that are a picture of reality, and while I can avoid the intricacies of sex scenes, dialogue is much more difficult to skip over when things get heated.
Lastly, I have regular book giveaways, either through my book reviews, Saturday Spotlight posts, or podcasts. In an effort to help fund these giveaways, I’ve joined the Amazon affiliate program. Click on the Amazon links on my site and if you purchase within 24 hours, I’ll get a cut. Thank you in advance. They require me to post: “Tim Ward is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.”
Thanks for stopping by my site. Drop a line and let me know who you are so I can return the favor.
