Sunday, November 30, 2008

Will's Character, Part 8--Doesn't give up things easily

On p. 5, Will says: "I couldn't imagine Henry without that Strad. I'd be devastated in his place. It would feel like giving away a part of myself. Henry said it needed to be heard. He wasn't performing any more, and I could see the logic. But still it didn't feel right."

Will doesn't give up things easily. Or away easily. Giving himself away is what he's struggling eitwith throughout the story. Also, he lets his feelings govern his action as well as his intellect.

Notice also, that he notices disturbances in the patterns of things. He sees that the Strad is gone. Henry has given it away or separated thimself from him. That bothers Will. He doesn't like to see absences. He likes the world orderly.

What do you think about this? Does it interest you? I'd like to know. Post a comment.

Writing is an entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of that actitivity. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Will's Character, Part 7: Not Being Seen

Will, divulges more about himself on p. 5:

The view of Philadelphia from his [Henry's] apartment scared me all over again. You could see almost the whole damn city. I always felt I was going to fall when I looked out. I didn't understand how anyone could live in such plain view.
Will doesn't like to be seen. But, like from the old Monty Python sketch in which people attempt to "not be seen" to avoid being blown up, "We may not be able to see you, but we can hear you."

Interested in this? I'd like to know what you think. Post a comment.

Writing is to me an entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of my writing. For my thoughts on entrepreneurship, check www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate practice go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com

Friday, November 28, 2008

Will's Character, Part 6: PTSD?

Also on page 4, Will comments on a door opening: "I jumped at the door opening. It sounded too much like a jail cell door opening." Now we have come to know of it as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a condition which affects us when we have experienced a traumatic event in the past. Abuse, war, violent attacts, or just about anything. Something very troubling to an individual seen over television could bring this on.

If a door opening reminds Will of a jail door opening, what has Will gone through in the past?

What do you think? Do you have a little PTSD? Post a comment. I'd like to know.

Writing is to me an entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurship supplies the life's blood for my writing. For my entrepreneurial ideas go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for my ideas practicing entrepreneurial real estate, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

What Will Values, Part 5: Simplicity

On p. 4, Will says: "The last thing I wanted to do was stay with Henry. It complicated things." He doesn't like things making his life too complex-values simplicity.

What do you think about this? I'd like to know. Post a comment.

Writing is to me an entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurship is the lifeblood of my writing. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

What Will Values, Part 4: Being Strong

On page 4, Will remembers his conversation with Henry. Henry came on very strong and Will, while trying to stand up to him, wilts under the pressure of Henry's personality. So here we have arrived at a key point: the narrator's complicity in characterization.

Will comes over as a kind of wimp. But, the narrator of the story, Will at a later point in time, has something to say about this. He doesn't want Will to look too strong because the narrator (later Will) wants to show how much he's improved since the time the story takes place. Complicated, huh.

Are you interested in all of this? I'd like to know. Post a comment.

Writing is to me an entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurship is the lifeblood of that activity. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman.blogspot.com and for my ideas on entrepreneurial real estate, to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

What Will Values, Part 3: Maintaining Freedom of Action

For will, on p. 4, the last thing he'd wanted to do was stay with Henry: "The last thing I'd wanted was to stay with Henry. It complicated things."

Here Will shows the importance to him of maintaining his freedom of action. Staying with Henry made that more difficult. Henry was both around him all the time and very perceptive, hard to put things over on. My strategy was to build in this room to roam vs restrictions on freedom to the story as an underlying thread.

Are you interested in this? I'd like to know what you think. Come post a comment.

Writing is to me an entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurship is the lifeblood of all my professional activities. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, see www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Foreshadowing

I foreshadow Will a bit in the first few pages. Foreshadowing can be an effective tool early in the story, but can be overdone. You want to pull your reader through the story, but not hit him or her over the head with it or give too much away too soon. Do that and you'll turn off some readers.

Laurel Yourke, in Take Your Characters to Dinner (Lanham, MD: American University Press, 2000), on p. 200, defines foreshadowing as "a hint or series of clues suggesting or foretelling what will occur later." So do it, but slightly, like putting salt on meat. A little makes the meat taste good; too much of it does not and may be harmful to you if you're sensitive to sodium.

Does this interest you? I'd like to know. So post a comment.

I see writing as an entrepreneurial activity. For my ideas on entrepreneurship go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

What Will Values, Part 2: Effectiveness

On page 3, when Will is about to knock on Henry's door, he takes his keys out. I do this too, it's just habit. But Will says, "Looking back on it, I don't know why I had my keys out anyway. None of them worked anything in Philadelphia." A little foreshadowing here? Are we saying that Will sees himself as ineffective? Does he wish he were more effective as a person? Or is he telling us that he used to be habit-bound.

What do you think? Post a comment. I'd like to know.

Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. My ideas on writing are informed by entrepreneurship. For my entrepreneurship blog, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate, to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

What Will Values, Part 1: Keeping a Low Profile

Readers find out about the characters through leakage. Little by little as the story unfolds. It's best to let the characters reveal themselves through their dialogue, response to challenges, and in their dealings with others.

Right at the beginning, on p. 3, Will comments on how bright the Christmas lights are:

I'd never before noticed how gaudy outside Christmas lights were. I had nothing against outdoor Christmas lights--but so many. And it hurt your eyes. It amazed me how much some people liked to attract attention to themselves.
So will doesn't like to attract attention to himself. He prefers to keep a low profile, as they say. Stay tuned for more.

Does this interest you? Post a comment. I'd like to know.

Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. My ideas on writing are informed by my ideas on entrepreneurship. For my entrepreneurship blog, go to hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate to www.yourstopforrealestate.com

Friday, November 21, 2008

Power and Education

It's clear that teachers have immense power over their students. Maybe not so much now, but it's still so. And when students are in such a rarified atmosphere as a Kearny School, the teacher's power is magnified. After all, the teacher is the portal to a whole career in music.

On p. 197, Henry spews forth a litany of problems at the school. He wants them corrected as a part of the solution to the murder or there will be consequences for the school. This is clearly not the idea Fenton had when he "employed" Henry in the first place. But it's what Henry wants. And Fenton had better do it.

What do you think about Henry's solution? I'd like to know. Post a comment.

Writing is to me an entrepreneurial activity. That activity is informed by my ideas on entrepreneurship. For that, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Home

What is home? Will definitely feels he's home with Julie, but it's problematic for him at the time of the action.

Toby Israel, in Some Place Like Home (John Wiley and Son, 2003, p. vi) says:

Each of us has a treasure chest of memories and impresions of places we have lived that includes both past homes and large scale environments (villages, towns, cities, etc.). I believe in the importance of uncovering these riches to reveal how our past environmental experiences laid the foundation for our present and future choices.

Israel believes that our present feelings about our living spaces (and by extension our partners) are determined largely by feelings about "home" that were hard-wired into us as children.

Home is more than a building. It's a cluster of emotions and feelings and memories of people and places and things. So what Will is feeling has been determined to an extent by what he experienced as a youth. What was that do you think?

Any ideas? I'd like to know, so post a comment.

Writing is to me an entrepreneurial activity, informed by my ideas on entrepreneurship. For these, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for my ideas on entrepreneurial real estate to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Going home

On p. 195, Will says: "The sun held long and fast all the way back. We retraced the route we'd taken the day before." The question, is did they really? They'd learned a lot and experienced new things during the time since they'd driven out to Lancaster.

This brings up the larger question of whether we can ever any of us retrace our route? We change day to day and our route changes as well. That's something that will keep people writing fiction forever.

What do you think about this? Post a comment.

Writing is to me an entrepreneurial activity. I talk about entrepreneurship in my entrepreneurship blog, www.hatman2.blogspot.com and about entrepreneurial real estate in www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Memory

This story is being told using a 1st person retrospective point of view (POV). Will is narrating his story from the vantage point of the future. That brings the intimacy of 1st person point of view with the opportunity of allowing that person to have learned things he or she didn't know at the time the action took place. It brings the reader into the story in a more intimate fashion while freeing the narrator from some of the most Draconian limitations of 1st person. It also provides for the use of dramatic irony.

My second most favorite POV is 3rd person limited. Knowledge of the world is limited to what the character has perceived or learned, but it's told from the 3rd person. This separation of the character's voice from the narrator's voice lends tension which makes the story telling much more interesting.

Anyway, Will's telling the story at a time much advanced from the time of the action. Is his memory correct? We all have memories. Yet, each time we bring up a given memory we massage it a bit, which alters it. We don't know if what we remember happened as we remember it yet we can't get outside of it to "what really happened." In the words of Joni Mitchell: "We're trapped on a carosel of time." Maybe nothing really happens, and our memories come from some other source. But if so, what would that be?

Will's vantage point differs from ours. Maybe he has access to perfect memory.

What do you think? I'd like to know. Post a comment.

Writing is to me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Monday, November 17, 2008

Memorizing Music

When soloists perform with an orchestra, they customarily memorize their music. A friend of mine once asked me once, "Why do they do that anyway?" The answer is that it's easier to work on a piece when you've memorized it. And when you've memorized it, you own it. You can just play it anytime and anywhere you have your ax. It's great.

Young minds can memorize music easily. When you get old like me, you have to pull something out before you put in something new.

Comments anyone? What do you think? I'd like to know. Come post a comment.

Writing for me is an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate, to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Getting lost in the music

Sandy, on p. 191, found herself forgetting her music during a performance. She had her own reasons for this, but it's a problem for performers who, under the pressure of a performance, gets lost. I remember during one graduation recital, a violist was half-way through Hindemuth piece (which I didn't like) and stopped the performance. She got the music and finished. At least one other in the audience didn't like it either. He yelled out, "Oh, come on, just get through it." Pretty unnerving for the performer. I asked Landy what he tod his students to do when they forget, and he said, "just to do the best they can."

The truth is, ever performer forgets sometimes. Even the great ones. The experienced musicians have ways of faking through it.

What do you think? I'd like to know. Post a comment.

Writing is to me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Words like "then."

When we're telling a story, we tend to want to say, "He dropped the ball. Then he picked it up." This is kind of a lame example, but I think you get the idea. Better, to my way of thinking is to say, "He dropped the ball and picked it up." The point being here that if you use neutral connectors of ideas, you let the reader imagine the connections between the two events. Worse would have been, "He picked up the ball because he had dropped it." That doesn't give the reader anything to do, which is bad. When I start a book, I don't want the author to tell me everything. I want to have some fun figuring things out on my own.

You see, to me stories are a partnership between me and my reader. My job is to lay it out there and the reader's job is to imagine the story based on what I write. I have to make it readable, they have to have to re-imagine the story for them based on their own filters. That's the deal I propose when I ask a potential reader to buy my book.

What do you think? Is this the deal you sign on for when you start a book? Post a comment. I'd like to know what you think.

Writing is to me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Characters springing to life

Do characterist spring to life in your head? Two did this morning. I woke up with them meeting at a newspaper kiosk on Broad Street in Philadelphia. Each was buying a copy of the wall street journal. She's an office administrator at a real estate company. He's a copier salesman. I think they're going to do something together. When do I have the time to write this story.

What do you think? Post a comment. And download a copy of this book from this site.

Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate to www.yourstopforrealestate.com.blog.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Counterfactual thinking

In writing my entrepreneurship blog, I posted an entry on black swans. One of the links was to counterfactual thinking, something as a washed-up old historian has interested me in some time. What if the founding fathers had been able to text, email, work on the web? Silly stuff, but it gets us writing fiction.

Here's what Wikipedia says about counterfactual thinking:

It seeks to explore history and historical incidents by means of extrapolating a timeline in which certain key historical events did not happen or had an outcome which was different from that which did in fact occur.

The purpose of this exercise is to ascertain the relative importance of the event, incident or person the counterfactual hypothesis is negating. For instance, to the counterfactual claim "What would have happened had Hitler drunk coffee instead of tea on the afternoon he committed suicide?", the timeline would have remained unchanged — Hitler in all likelihood still would have committed suicide on April 30, 1945, regardless of what he had to drink that afternoon. However, to the counterfactual "What would have happened had Hitler died in the July, 1944, assassination attempt?", all sorts of possibilities become readily apparent, starting with the reasonable assumption that the Nazi generals would have in all likelihood sued for peace, bringing an early end to World War II. Thus, the counterfactual brings into sharp relief the importance of Hitler as an individual and how his personal fate shaped the course of the War and, ultimately, of world history
The article was actually about counterfactual history, but counterfactual history is produced by counterfactual thinking. For example, what would have have Ian done if he hadn't connected up with Richard the night Ian died? Read the whole Wikipedia article. It's interesting.

What do you think about this? Post a comment.

Writing for me is an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Similes and Metaphors

According to Dictionary.com, a metaphor is: "A figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, as in 'A mighty fortress is our God.'" It's a comparison between two things without using "like" or "as." If the quote had said, "Our God is like a mighty fortress," it would have been a simile, but not really as powerful is it?

We all have metaphors for our lives. They offer ways of understanding us. In the most recent campaign, John McCain was the fighter pilot, flying around dropping bombs on people. Obama was the organizer, defining his community (the country) then working to bring them all together for the common good.

Your characters have metaphors too. When developing a character, try to figure out what metaphor best characterizes that person and work with that. Is he a badger? Is he Mother Teresa? Is she an explorer? What? It also helps us think about our lives.

What do you think about this? Post a comment. And download a copy of my book.

Writing to me is an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

Saturday, November 8, 2008

We are the Beneficiaries of our Literary Inheritance

Sometimes I'm overwhelmed by the wonderful intellectual universe we inhabit. Just in American Literature we go back to DeFoe and Benjamin Franklin, and some of the 17th century American writers and poets.

When we look at world history, we go back even farther. And modern fiction is from all over the worlds. What an overwhelming rich world of ideas and images and stories we have to play with.

We can't even read all the stuff that comes out because while we are reading one book, countless others are being published. Each of them encapsulates a world free for us to dip into at our pleasure. People have told stories, sometimes at their peril, and we are the beneficiaries of that.

What do you think? I'd like to know. Post a comment. And download a copy of my book from this blog.

Writing to me is an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

Friday, November 7, 2008

What is to be Done? and the Reader

I guess what I want from my writing is to give readers a chance to confront a new set of characters and not the unique, but the unexpected, story that allows him or her to think about issues in their lives in a different way. To give the reader a ride that they wouldn't necessarily have taken otherwise. Or, with apologies to Rober Frost, a road less travelled by.

What do you think about that? I'd like to know, so post a comment. And Christmas is coming. Download this book for free or order a copy.

Writing is to me an entrepreneurial actifity. For my entrepreneuship blog, click on www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate on www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

More on What is to be Done

Henry has solved the murder and knows what happened. Now the question for him is what should he do? Without going into details, does he go to the police? Does he do nothing? Does he handle it privately? Hercule Poirot, in Murder on the Orient Express, does not go to the authorities. He concludes that it's impossible to prove any one person did it and besides, the victim got the justice denied him. I drew on Christie's inspiration for a lot of this book.

What do you think about this? I'd like to know. Post a comment! And Christmas is coming. Order a book from this blog for a friend or loved one or have them come to this blog to order one for a family member.

Writing for me is an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estage go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

What is to be done?

In one of the LeCarre novels, a character, or maybe the narrator, says, "What is to be done?" This is prime ethical quandry we meet every day. What do we do? Do we go out to discover the new world, or do we settle for some leftovers out of the refrigerator. Should we do nothing if we can only do a little?

A Sesame Street board game I played with my kids 30 years ago showed Cookie Monster with a dilemma; (1) Take an arduous trek in search of everlasting joy and peace or (2), Eat a cookie. He chose the cookie. Someone

said, "But Cookie monster, you will not have everlasting joy and peace."
He replied: "Yes, but I did get one fantastic cookie.
What do you think? I'd like to know. Post a comment. And Christmas is coming, so
order a book right off this blog.


Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate, to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Selling books on consignment

I put my book on consignment at the only local bookstore that will do it. They've started selling from there. Just a trickle for now, but hopefully whoever bought it will like it and will tell their friends to buy it and the trickle will be a flood.

Whenever we try to sell books we should try to maximize what we call network externalities, that is stimulating word of mouth. It's the way it's sold anyway. It's just that mainline publishers have more resources to put into it.

I'm hoping I can get to break-even by the end of next year, but I'm not holding my breath. After all, Ken Follett didn't get a best seller until his third one, and John LeCarre didn't get noticed until The Spy That Came In From The Cold which was, I think, his second or third. Did you know that Elmore Leonard got rejected 40 times before he got published.

So it takes a while sometimes. We have to be in it for the long haul.

What do you think? I'd like to know. And Christmas is coming. Order a copy of this book off this blog or go to www.amazon.com. It would make a good present for someone who loves classical music and murder mysteries.

Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Monday, November 3, 2008

Creating Characters

How do I find characters? They come out of my life. Sometimes a story comes to me. I write down in all the specificity I can muster at the time. Then, I write down what characters I need. For example, if it's going to be a murder mystery, I need victim, a perpetrator, someone to investigate maybe, and a crime scene. As they say in crime dramas, find out who the victim is, how the victim was killed, and you'll go far to finding out who the killer was.

Sooner or later, you'll need a supporting cast: friends, parents maybe, children, brothers and sisters, etc. Then I fill out a questionnaire on each character. In depth: name, age, gender, income, occupation, their brothers or sisters, children, parents, favorite movie, favorite food, favorite song, type of car they drive, etc. Then I start to write and things come to me as I do it.

What do you think about this? Post a comment. And buy a copy of the book for friends or relatives for Christmas. You can download the book from this blog, or you can order one from Amazon.com.

Writing is to me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate to www.yourstopforrealestate.blog/com.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Getting story ideas

I went to a concert at the Curtis Institute, the model for the Kearney music school. Some kids did absolutely the best possible performance of Mendelssohn's String Quartet #2.

During intermission, I went down to the men's room. There was hard bass case down there in the hallway. It's about 8 feet tall and could easily hide a body. Aha. So for some as yet undetermined reason, somebody kills one of the students and stuffs him in the base case and it sits there. My wife says, wouldn't they smell it? I said, not if he put the body in a bag and sealed it up and then got the case out of there. Hmmm. I'll have to let that one percolate. Who was the victim. Why did he or she get killed? Who was the killer? How did it happen? When did it occur? How did the killer get the case out of there before the body smelled? I smell another musical mystery coming out of me.

What do you think? Post a comment.

Writing to me is an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Poetry and Fiction Writing

I've been going back over a mess of poems I wrote 15 years ago. The paper they're printed on probably stacks up to my knee, so there are a lot. I've been tossing most of them. They're either doggerel or self-involved. There are some good ones in there, and I'm keeping them.

I think poetry is good exercise for fiction writing. They're all about compression. A whole world can be subsumed in a little phrase, i.e. "Fog comes in on little cat's feet," or something like that from Sandburg's poem. In that 7-word line you can see a whole scene. I can spend an hour on a poem and not get it right.

Not all fiction writers are good poets, nor poets great novel writers. I don't think Hemingway was all that great. My favorites are Langston Hughes, Frost, Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Sandburg, and many more. These were not novel writers. My favorite novel writers: Richard Russo, Hemingway, Tony Morrison, Elmore Leonard. I don't know if Elmore Leonard ever wrote any poetry.

What do you think? Who are your favorite poets? And what about the intersection of poetry and fiction writing? Post a comment. And Christmas is coming. You can order a copy of my book from this blog and have Amazon.com send it for you. Or you can download this book for free.

Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog to to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

Synopsis:

Ian Kearney, the director of the Kearney Music School, an elite musical training school in Philadelphia, dies after a fall from a balcony during a recital. World-famous cellist, Henry Harrier, recently forced from the faculty, returns to investigate Ian's death when his prized former student is arrested. Henry shows through his brilliant and single-minded pursuit of the truth that, as usual, they have it all wrong. This Sherlock Holmes-type mystery leads the reader through the world of classical music and lays bare the conflicts which dominate the lives of talented adolescents when placed under the pressure of studying for a demanding, stressful, and often elusive career as a classical music performer. Henry Harrier is part John Le Carre's George Smiley, part Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes, and part Orlando Cole the beloved teacher, renowned chamber musician, and until his own retirement, the premier cellist of the Curtis Institute.

Author Profile:

Tim was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on January 30, 1946. In 1951 he moved with his family to Schenectady, New York, where he lived through high school. He attended Baldwin-Wallace College, Berea, Ohio, from 1964 to 1968. He graduated in 1968 with a B.A. in history and philosophy. He received his Ph. D. in history in U.S. history in 1980 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison after spending 2.5 years in the U. S. Army. Most of his army service was completed in Wuerzburg, Germany, from 1969-1971. In 1972 he returned to Madison to complete his doctoral study. His dissertation, Those Who Moved; Internal Migrants in American 1607-1840, combined the statistical analysis of genealogical and biographical data with the study of traditional literary diaries, letters, and journals.

Tim was a market and survey research consultant from 1983 to 2000 and a smoking cessation researcher from 2000 to 2003. His consulting practice focused primarily on conducting community health needs assessment. He authored hundreds of market research reports and published a number of his assessments in Community Health Needs Assessment published by McGraw Hill in 1996 and in a revised volume published in 1999. In 2000 he joined the staff of the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention of the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he conducted smoking cessation research. He published several articles in peer-reviewed journals and spoke at national smoking cessation conferences.

In 2003 he moved to Philadelphia and earned his real estate license. He now practices real estate, works on publishing his novels, and studies and teaches entrepreneurship.Tim has written a dozen novel-length stories, a volume of short stories, and about a 3-foot stack of pages poetry. He is currently working on earning his 4th million in real estate sales, publishing his novels, and working on an entrepreneurish handbook as a support for his students.

Tim is a trained violist and an experienced string quartet player. He is an avid listener to classical music and regularly attends classical music concerts. He has two grown children by his first wife and a stepdaughter with his second wife. He likes to cook, read, write, entertain, develop relationships, and help other people. Formerly Tim used to travel frequently. He doesn't so much anymore. Now he regards the combination of real estate practice, writing and publishing, and the teaching and studying of entrepreneurship as enough of a trip.