I was so relieved to get the prior post done that I didn't explain it well.

It's going to be used for a "biography" page on my website. When I start speaking at conventions, they are going to need a bio. Instead of sending a presskit, i can tell them to go to the "bio" page on my website and get whatever sized bio they need. So i need all three lengths.

So I guess I need to know:
Is there a joke that doesn't work for you?
Most of you have known me 7+ years. Is there something i've written or done that merits a mention, that I've forgotten?
Are there just plain better ways to phrase the stuff?


I'm trying to reconcile my more dark serious stuff with the farcical. A recurring plot situation in my stories made me come up with this line, and the only line I can come up with sounds pretentious: "You know what's funny? The monsters got you and you don't even know it."  or  just plain "Geek tragedy."

What lines do you like?

And thank you all for helping. It's really very nice of you.

Everything Tim W. Burke Writes Is Comedy, Especially The Creepy Parts

50 words

Raised by a clan of social workers, Tim spent his childhood near major U.S. prisons.  A Temple University graduate,  he produced and performed in “The Kibbles and Bits of ‘Hellorama’”, which FilmThreat.com called “’Mr. Rogers Neighborhood’ meets ‘Pee Wee’s Playhouse’ on crack.” Today, he produces video for a city government.



One Paragraph

Raised by a nomadic clan of social workers, Tim grew up near some of the most notorious prisons in the U.S. He learned to be a raconteur while roaming with his clan, and had adventures, and earned a black belt in Aikido. After graduating Temple University,  he performed and published humor throughout Philadelphia. His sketch comedy featured the still-living brains of John and Robert Kennedy still running the nation between games of touch football. Tim helped create “The Kibbles and Bits of ‘Hellorama’” which FilmThreat.com called “’Mr. Rogers Neighborhood’ meets ‘Pee Wee’s Playhouse’ on crack.” He read slush for Weird Tales, where he studied editing and writing under Hugo Award-winning editor George Scithers. Today, Tim is a co-owner of Atomic City Comics in Philadelphia. His day job is producing video for a city government in Delaware.


Three Paragraphs

He grew up in the nation’s heartland, near some of the most notorious prisons in the U.S. He attended General George Patton Junior High School. He co-owns a comic book store. His grandfather invented the thing that keeps elevator doors from crushing your arm.

Born in East St. Louis and raised by a nomadic clan of social workers, Tim W. Burke grew up within a mile of Leavenworth Penitentiary and the prison that housed Martha Stewart. He learned to be a raconteur while roaming with his clan, avoided cattle stampedes and the Boy Scouts, and earned a black belt in Aikido. After graduating Temple University,  he performed and published humor throughout Philadelphia. His sketch comedy featured the still-living brains of John and Robert Kennedy still running the nation between games of touch football. Tim helped create “The Kibbles and Bits of ‘Hellorama’” which FilmThreat.com called “’Mr. Rogers Neighborhood’ meets ‘Pee Wee’s Playhouse’ on crack.” He read slush for Weird Tales, where he studied editing and writing under Hugo Award-winning editor George Scithers. Today, Tim is a co-owner of Atomic City Comics in Philadelphia. His day job is producing video for a city government in Delaware.

His stories range from gaslight horrors to broad spec-fic farces. His protagonists range from a cybernetic tyrant Benjamin Franklin to a nerdy troubleshooting fiend with the head of a lamprey. Doomed high school students, crime survivors turned monsters, corpses kept alive by illusion square off with epic heroes battling post-quest neurosis. Tim has published several stories in publications with names like Weird Tales, Bewildering Stories, The Town Drunk, and A Fly In Amber, and in the more soothingly named The Willows.




The structure is a bit cliche. A radio commercial is running in my head, the one for Dos Equis (sp?) in my head, the one with "The Most Interesting Man In The World."  Bullet point, bullet pint, bullet point, from that to this and this to that. Does this thing make you laugh?

Could you all do an aspiring novelist a favor?

Not me, my friend/biz and creative partner fmyates

He is posting his novel as he is writing it. The novel is called "Pan".

It is a contemporary telling of the Peter Pan story, from the perspective of the father of a girl who runs off with Peter.

The story incorporates Greek mythology into the familiar tale, and Captain Hook is a hero.

It's re-e-e-eal dark, and he made some surprising discoveries.

Please please please stop by fmyates and have a read and cheer him on. Make it a regular visit if you can.


Off to see "Hellboy."

That took a few hours, and yeah, I'm a pretty funny writer-guy.

My story "The Infinite Bean" seems to have swallowed two entire editorial staffs.

Chaos Theory has had it since last November, and an inquiry got the reply "swamped."

Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine has not responded even to inquiries since April. Obviously my story prefers Auzzie cuisine.

The rain flattened the night to a featureless sizzle. Carnicia flitted barely seen black-winged on black sky, whispering, You need more bullets.
    In the floodlights in front of the bunkhouse, a white Escalade glowed. Eli find a new car?
    A look through the heatscope showed the white dots of infra-red motion detectors.
    No white or pink figures outside the house.  The dorm glowed hot in the rec room. The other girls would be quick when alerted, though, from boredom. You don’t have teens to be taught burglary and classical ninjitsu and expect they aren’t going to get all rammy. Sandra loped quiet to the power connections and communications pedestals, and left her little surprises.
    Carnicia swept by, a grasshopper punked up, Use them now! Don’t give them a chance! Knock all of it down, walk in and blast them.
    “I’m not killing anybody.” Anger and disappointment ground in Sandra like grit, but she wasn’t going to kill anybody today. She just had to keep Carnicia her fairy-god-hitwoman calm.
The doors and windows were wired, but that vent into the attic crawlspace? Saw it out with a kay-bar knife from the utility belt, and in you go. No motion detectors active in the attic,  or down in the halls.
    How many times had Sandra walked down this hall, down the stairs, to the door? Which was open just enough to see: Quentin, with his big shin and silk running jacket. Then another man, tall and beige, in entertainment for sure.
    Quentin jabbed the air, “Lydia! Kicked! Ass! Those gangbangers never had a chance! That friggin’ thing she did with the knife –“
    “What loose ends, Marston?” said the beige man, “Cops lo-o-ove your work you said. What’s the problem?”
    “The police are but one factor, Joss. There are more governmental agencies regulating children then there are for crime. Makes you wonder, frankly.”
    Joss Whedon! Oh my god Sandra loved his shows!
    “It is empowering them!” said Quentin, “These girls would have been dead in warzones! Or worse!”
    “Wait. Why do you have to worry about agencies?”  Whedon leaned, “And all your girls are accounted for.”
    There’s an awkward silence! “The ones worth counting.”
    Groans around the room, “No!” “Which one?”
    “The oldest, Sandra. My first work. She took the brunt of my mistakes, as first children do. You never saw her. She…didn’t inspire.”
    The disappointment grew to broken glass.
    Carnicia whispered, You’re not going to kill anyone. Uh uh. Not you.
    “Shut –“ Sandra choked her snarl.
    Marston announced, “Someone’s here.”
    Sandra held her breath.  Carnicia’s giggle echoed in her head, old and familiar.
    Marston’s wrinkled face was awash with video monitor glow. The buzzer to unlock the front door.
    More the merrier! Said Carnicia.
    Eli Roth stumbled past mere inches from where Sandra pressed herself.
    Said her old padre, “I told you, Eli. The girls are not mercenaries.”
    The young man shrieked, “My car almost went over the Palisades! The studio’s mechanic said the brake lines had been worked over with paraffin so they would catch on fire.”
    Carnicia sang, I told you to use more acc-el-erant.
    Quentin asked, “Has one of your girls gone –“ He whistled a cuckoo tone.
    “Then,” Eli paced, “Invent some story like you always tell them.”
“Like high-government Mafia types are after us?” said Whedon.
    “Devil-worshipping cult,” argued Eli, “has more emotional impact.”
    Quentin waved his hands, “Government crap’s been done to death. Yakuza!”
    The old man said, “No. The girls have no emotional investment in you. If they even knew you paid to watch  their mission footage, that would impact the sincerity of their actions.”
    The fairy was now the same size as Sandra, “Hah! ‘Trust funds’, he told you. These shmoes pay for mission footage.”
     The grit grew to gravel. Marsten didn’t run a secret anti-crime agency with glamorous Hollywood connections.
    “Here we go,” Sandra and Carnicia said, and Sandra walked in.
    She knew what they saw: five-foot-three, a body that liked punching, beer and lasagna. They’d have mistaken her for the cable installer, but the k-bar knife and the pistol holsters kept their attention.

Green Tentacles has responded, thanks to klingonguy, but they have not followed up since sending the "get acquainted" material last week and an e-mail to inquire. I now go to the SFWA directory to find designers.

I went a little off on Amazon. I wanted to buy "100 Tiny Tales of Terror" just to get my short horror gears oiled. Well, it only cost ten cents! So i looked around and found "100 Sneaky Little sleuth Stories" because I'd like to see what makes them work. Only thirty-three cents!

I am now the owner of: 100 Tiny Tales of Terror, 100 Sneaky Little Sleuth Stories, 100 Fiendish Little Frightmares, 100 Hilarious Little Howlers, 100 Creepy Little Creature stories, 100 Wild Little Weird Tales, 100 Twisted Little Tales of Torment, and 100 Ghastly Little Ghost Stories.

So I now own 800 Alliterative Little Aphorisms of Agony.

The Zicklo the Doll project got caught up due to hubris. I thought "Sure, i know how to do these video effects! Why research tutorials on YouTube when I'm such a bright guy!" My idea as to making Zicklo talk is not working. I've set it aside for th e moment.

I wrote a 900 word story based on my experience in High School, with names from the original cast of bullies, thugs and pariahs! I rather like this story. Could even be lit'ry. Noble Fusioner Buck Dorrence had ideas for it and it was praised mightily by caoilinnshouse
I think cruising the 800 Aphorisms helped it along. And as short as the story is, i had no idea how it was going to conclude. i have some characters I'm going to play with today to see if i can get a story the same way.

i'd rather write than hang with friends. this causes me a little wistfulness with 20% chance of bumming out.

Question; have you ever gone regularly to a Friends list and wanted to delete somebody annoying, then remembered, oh yeah, this is somebody *else's* friends list? Would that be presumptuous, to say "Could you get rid of so-and-so? That person's annoying!"

Why do cats sit in boxes?









What secret does the cat know within the box?










The connection is more than innate...it's supernatural. Preternatural. What does it mean for humanity?










Will you know the secret before it is TOO LATE?




Read the story I'm working on and find out the hideous secret.

I am working on a story that has Kurt Vonnegut as a character. He makes a favorable impression on the reader. I am using quotes from essays and speeches for his portion of the dialogue.
Is this a good idea to do this?
Should I instead invent a vonnegutesque character?

I'm designing a demon that thrives on turmoil caused by a lack of .... something.

There is an emotion in common with binge-drinking, with despair caused by nihilism, the fury of protesters practicing "the theatre of outrage", with artists who seek only to grab attention.

Would one call despair "self-indulgent?"

I need a word that's smooth, yet just slightly out-of-use.

"Ballyhoo?"

helpmehelpmehelpme

I have revised 17 out of 29 chapters of my novel, a fantasy fiction tentatively titled "The Mad Earl's Homecoming."
About 8K words have been removed, in addition to the earlier 8K, for a current 95K.
Are most novels 40K?
If so, I may try writing another.

Meanwhile, enjoy a link that I've liked for a while: Hot Chicks With Douchebags.

Why the new look to the site? The austerity of the old one wore out its joke. This one is more restful for the eyes.

This is what I looked like when I was 21. This reminds me that I am a good looking guy.

I'm jammed up on three stories:
1) "The Organism of Love" where the POV character has to choose whether to allow a well-meaning fellow under the thumb of the gods to die, or run off with Jude Law;
2) "Panthera" where I make lots of fun of pop culture's empowerment of women by making them murderous, unaffected sex dolls; and 3) "Lampreyhead II: Universe Gone to Hell" where it is explained why lovable little green men became the schwa with the cattle mutilations and the anal probing.

So now I am working on a prologue to the Fazgood novel, because two editors have said it needs a prologue.
Over the years, my main character has gone from a Pythonesque cockneyish greedmonkey to an Elmore Leonard-like cross between Errol Flynn and Danny Devito.
How does one know when the character voice is "right?"

"Singing In The Tombs" is now called "An Heroic Tale In A Gigantic Tomb."

Has three semi-innovative monsters sybolizing different perspectives on death. The Crasts are flat-out pragmatists and animal-like. The Suggestors pass knowlege through ingesting corpses of ancestors (like the ghouls in "Throne of Bones" and I am annoyed i couldn't reach further.). The Maldandee eat souls and are vampire-analogues. I even got some snotty shots in, in that only the impressionable and troubled kid likes the Maldandee. I hope my group likes the story.