Timothy D. Wise's Blog

I have had several projects running simultaneously for longer than I care to admit, and I’m about to start releasing them. I have purchased the new ISBNs, and am working out the particulars. The first of the new books will be a nonfiction volume on personality types called Types and Traits: An Exploration of Personality Types and Typologies. Some have asked me which typing system I will be using. Will it be the Myers-Briggs, the Enneagram, or one of the others?

The answer is that it will be both and more. As the subtitle says, it will be an exploration of types and typologies. I’ll be giving a guided tour of the most popular and interesting personality typing systems. If you love reading about personality books, this is the book for you. If you’re a bit skeptical about the whole endeavor, that’s okay too. As mathematician Edward Box famously said, “All models are wrong, but some of them are useful.” This is the cover design in its current stage of development:

As some of my readers know, I’ve been working on a third Intrepid Force novel for a while now. As they might also remember, I was trying to combine a prequel and sequel into a single novel, but writing a story set in 2085 with flashbacks to both 1984 and 2007 turned out to be too much. I ended up splitting my one novel into two. I finished a draft of the sequel last summer, and have been struggling with the prequel. At the beginning of last summer, I had 340 pages written, but the pieces weren’t quite fitting together. I got a fresh shot of inspiration when I watched a Masterclass by the Duffer Brothers, the identical twins who wrote and directed Stranger Things. They talked about getting “lost in the woods” on their project and about the outlining process that got them out of it. Their advice turned out to be just what I needed to get unstuck. So stay tuned!

I was reading last week about the great discoveries Sir Isaac Newton made when the bubonic plague struck England, and the students at his college were all sent home. He made some great discoveries during his “plague vacation.” I’ve tried to make good use of my own time in relative isolation. I can’t say I got as much done as Sir Isaac did, but I have been working on three main projects:

The Intrepid Force Graphic Novel: I’ve been working on a computer-generated comic book version of Intrepid Force for quite some time now, and I’ve gotten farther faster with this new one than any of the previous attempts. I have 17 completed pages now and have built or purchased models for more of them. The Personality Book. I started it in April of 2019 and have mostly finished the third draft now. I want to touch up the first and last chapters, but that massive project is mostly done. Intrepid Force III: I’ve been going round-and-round with the third Intrepid Force novel for quite a while now, and I still am. When I started writing, my life was one way, but life changes made it hard for me to reconnect with the old self that wrote the previous versions for a while. I think it’s coming on together now.

My goal is to finish all three of these projects by the end of 2020. I do have some other ideas on the back burner. I heard a presentation about audiobooks a few weeks ago that reawakened my interest in doing audiobook versions of all of my published books. I bought the equipment too years ago, but lost confidence. My confidence has returned, and audiobooks are now on my to-do list.

For now, though, I’ll give you some snippets from the projects I’m already working on. At the top of this post is a collage of panels from the new Intrepid Force graphic novel. You’ll notice the more lifelike figures. I bought some of the elements ready-made but made others (including the DeFalco sign, the Venus base, and the characters’ helmets) from scratch in Lightwave. If you look closely enough, you can also see reflections on Mr. DeFalco’s desk in the bottom left panel. The version of my 3D posing/rendering software I’m using now can do reflections. That’s really a plus with some of the scenes.

It’s good to be around people again, even if our interaction is still a bit limited. I’m ready for potlucks and people actually being able to touch each other, and I’m definitely ready to be able to teach my classes without wearing a mask.

Thanks for checking in! I’ll try not to go so long between posts.

Welcome back, everyone! It’s past time for an update. I have three projects I’m working on now.

I have 450 pages written on Intrepid Force III, but I had problems with it and took a break from it. I’m starting back now. It doesn’t really need to be any longer, but I want to take a few things out and put some other things in. Those stories always have to have a few twists and turns. Here’s a piece of poetry I wrote for the beginning of a chapter where the Intrepid Force team is investigating the wreck of a spaceship. One of the passengers was kind of a deranged genius.

His brain was like a haunted house

With monsters dwelling in the dark.

I ventured there to find the truth

But feared lest trespass leave its mark.

For when you stare long into night

The night stares into you,

And cold’s dark hand imprints your soul

And bat’s-wing chills soak through and through.

~From Haunted Forest, a book of poems by Enoch Henry.

(Enoch Henry is one of the characters from the story.)

The Season Out of Time revision is pretty much finished, but I’ve rewritten the ending a couple of times, and I want to make sure I’m happy with it before I put it out there. I think I want to let a couple of beta readers take a look at it.

Weird and Wonderful: An Exploration of Life, Faith, and Personality Types was a little bit of a surprise. I started working on it around the last week of April, and I’ve got 180 pages written on it. It’s pretty much done except for minor revisions. I’ve done some presentations on personality types at college conferences, and last year some of the students asked me if I had written a book they could buy, so I thought I’d better write one. You’re probably wondering if I’m using the Myers-Briggs, the Big Five, the Enneagram, the DISC, or the one Tim LaHaye used with the Cholerics, Melancholies, Sanguines, and Phlegmatics. Actually, they’re all in there. We’re trying them on for size to find the underlying similarities and differences, and I’m using stories to illustrate them. I’ll have to post a few things from it.

I still want to wrap up the Intrepid Force graphic novel too, but I need to finish these other projects first. The graphics application class I took in the fall inspired me to try some new things.

Keep checking in, folks. I’ll post a few snippets of research or teasers from my projects over the next few weeks.

Greetings, Friends,

I haven’t posted much in these past few weeks because I’ve been focusing my writing energies on Intrepid Force III. I got up to around 80,000 words and 300 pages earlier in the summer. Since then, I’ve had to take things out and put more things in, and I’m still around 80,000 words and 300 pages, but what I have is more solid. I’ve created some new characters within the past week, in fact. Earlier in the summer, I wrote a scene in which my 1980s-era characters visited the World’s Fair in New Orleans. Some of you might be old enough to remember that. I didn’t actually go, but dug up some pretty good YouTube videos of it that made me wish I had been able to. The 1984 World Exposition was the last to be located in the United States and the only one that has ever had to file for bankruptcy protection, but it had its charms. The 1884 World Exposition was also in New Orleans, and I’ve considered using it in a future project.

Meanwhile, I’ve read some other interesting articles in the past few weeks that I thought would interest Intrepid Force readers. One was about an idea some NASA guys had come up with for building a human outpost on Venus. It was completely different from the approach my characters took, and I kind of wish I’d thought of it. My approach involved using explosions to blast a lot of the planet’s atmosphere into space and make the planet rotate faster to give it more earth-like days and nights. NASA’s HAVOC project involved setting up balloon colonies. The pictures of the space-blimps had a nice steampunk look. There was also an article about  bulletproof vests made of orange goo.

Once I knock out my current projects, I have a number of future projects on the list including an Intrepid Force comic, a sequel to Haunted Summer, a science fiction novel inspired by some of my studies about the biblical book of Genesis, a nonfiction book on personality, and a steampunk alternate version of Intrepid Force set in 1884. I refer to that project as Intrepid Force: Steam. Meanwhile, I need to do the final touch-ups on the revised edition of Season Out of Time and finish Intrepid Force III.

Thanks for checking in. I’ll have some finished projects for you soon, but I want to make sure they’re ready before I ship them out. Enjoy the rest of your summer.

 

Hi, Everybody,

I haven’t posted in a while and wanted to publish a few updates. I’ve got over 80,000 words written on the third Intrepid Force novel, but am considering splitting it into two overlapping books.  I’m going to separate the pieces and see if they grow back together or grow bigger and better on their own. The plot threads take place in 1984, the early 21st century, and 2085 about four months after the end of the last novel. I’m going to try putting the 2085 piece in its own novel.

I’ve also been working on a revision of Season Out of Time, a nostalgic time travel novel I wrote when I was in graduate school. Around 2014, I touched up all of my old novels except that one, and wanted to take my time and do it right. A lot of people really liked the original, and I didn’t want to mess it up. The revisions are pretty much complete, but I want to let some other eyes read through it for mistakes before I re-release it. Independent authors are bad about getting in a hurry and releasing their work too quickly, and I’ve been guilty of that more than once.

For the Magnolia Blossom Festival Art Show, I decided to do a series of sketches about storytelling. I did three of them in less than two days, so they’re a little rough in spots, but I was still pretty happy with them. I might go back and redo them as paintings later, but I’ve posted one of them below. This one is an author at a book signing with the worlds and characters from his stories in a mural above him. Some of you might recognize the stories as being from the work of Ray Bradbury, the author of The Martian Chronicles, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Halloween Tree, and The Sound of Thunder short story. I wrote to him twice, and he wrote back both times, so I’ll always have a special appreciation for him. I met him briefly when he spoke at Centenary in Shreveport. I hope you enjoy it. It has made me want to do more non-computer generated art.

For the past week and a half, I’ve taken you through five decades of science fiction TV romances in honor of the Valentine’s Day season. Now that the day is here, I’m going to give you a musical recap.

1960s: Star Trek Love

Our tour began with the love stories of Captain Kirk (There were many!) and Mr. Spock (He trumped quantity with quality, but still dumped sweet Leila.) in the original Star Trek series. Our musical Valentine’s Day tour will begin there as well. Some of you might not be aware of this, but the theme of the original Star Trek series actually had lyrics. We never heard them on the show, but you can find them on the internet. They were written by Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and are sung from the point of view of a girl Captain Kirk left back on earth. I tried to find a video with both great visuals and great lyrics, but ended with one that was okay in both areas. It’s still fascinating (as Spock would say) from a Trek trivia standpoint: a space woman’s ode to James Kirk. (Lyrics start about 1:10 into it.)

 

(The link is acting twitchy. Here it is if it doesn’t load properly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT0w-... )

1970s: Steve and Jaime

We moved into the seventies and celebrated the heart-rending relationship of Six Million Dollar Man, Steve Austin, and Bionic Woman, Jaime Sommers. This video compilation uses Dan Hill’s “Sometimes When We Touch” (another fine product of the mid-1970s) as a soundtrack.

 

For fans of the bionic couple, there is also a video with Lee Majors’ own lyrics. I remember liking it as a kid, but found it a little bit painful to listen to as an adult. (Sorry, Lee.) Maybe I’m being too critical though. I’ll post the link here in case you want to check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYiC_41nJH4

1980s: Katherine and Vincent

The story of the Beauty and the Beast has gone through many incarnations including Disney’s animated and live action versions. One of my favorites was George R.R. Martin’s 1980s TV series which we revisited last week. Christian recording artist Michael W. Smith wrote some really nice love songs in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, and this compilation of Beauty and the Beast moments uses one of them as a soundtrack.

1990s: Mulder and Scully

The 1990s gave us many options including Lois & Clark and the love stories from Scott Bakula’s Quantum Leap through time, but I finally settled on Fox Mulder and Dana Scully from the X-Files as my science fiction couple for the 1990s. Here they are again.

 

 

 

2000s: Lana and Clark

The millennium has been a century of teenage angst so far as science fiction universes have gone and nobody did it better than Smallville.  Once again, Michael W. Smith provides the soundtrack.

And that’s it for now.

There are so many more we could have mentioned. Lost had Jack and Kate…and Sawyer. Not sure I want to try to untangle that one.

Both incarnations of Battlestar Galactica had some love relationships. If Lost’s Jack/Kate/Sawyer triangle was complicated, I wouldn’t begin to try to untangle the relationships on newer Galactica series. Keeping track of who was and wasn’t a Cylon was hard enough. The devotion between Captain Adama and his dying wife, Laura Roslin, is worth a nod though.

Firefly was a truly wonderful science fiction series with iconic characters and a cult following even if it only lasted for part of one season.  There was also a fantastic spinoff movie, Serenity, that (apparently) only a few people saw. When it came to love relationships, it had some good ones: Mal and Inara had a classic “The Lady and the Tramp” relationship, Zoe and Wash ended too soon, and Simon and Kayleigh had finally managed to get together. Those three relationships would be a post unto themselves, but here’s a Valentine’s Day special for country music fans:

Have a great Valentine’s Day!

The early 2000s were an age of star-crossed teens and some pretty unearthly adult couples as well (The Firefly crew, for example).

Roswell (1999-2003) introduced us to three super-powered extraterrestrial teens and the friends who got involved in their story. Max, Isabel, and Michael were trying to keep a low profile until Max used his healing abilities to save the life of a beautiful classmate who worked in her father’s alien-themed diner. From that time on, the three of them struggled to stay hidden. The teenager in me loved the characters. I don’t think the parent in me would have approved of the level of sexuality taking place between these supposedly high school-age characters though. Max cheats on Liz with Tess and gets her pregnant. Then Tess turns out to be an alien assassin. That’s the kind of mess unbridled hormones will get you into, so let that be a lesson to you, boys.

Emilie de Raven has always been a cutie though, so I can understand why Max might be tempted by her wiles. But really, Max.

The Superman legend spans the decades. The 1990s had Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and the largely-forgotten Superboy series with John Newton and Stacy Haiduk. (It was pre-CGI so the bad guys looked pretty cheesy, but the series had a good heart to it.)  The millennium had Smallville which ran for ten seasons (from 2001-2011).

Smallville was a creative reimagining of Superman’s boyhood in small town America. Clark Kent, in this version, doesn’t know where he came from and isn’t able to fly until the series finale. (Not much, at least. There was the tornado episode.) The series is full of angst-ridden teenage romance.  (Parental warning label: It’s pretty innocent for the first couple of seasons but gets steamier toward the end as the characters get older. You should probably preview it anyway.) I liked those first seasons better overall, but did enjoy the guest stars of the later seasons.

In those early seasons, Clark absolutely adores Lana Lang, but the relationship is doomed from the outset. It’s always two steps forward, three steps back. In one episode, Clark shares his secret with Lana, and she dies as a result. He gets the chance to go back in time and relive the day and breaks up with her to save her life. This scene, complete with a nice James Blunt soundtrack, comes at the end of the episode. It’s pretty typical of the “Clana” anguish Smallville put us through:

 

Chloe Sullivan is one of Clark’s closest friends. She wants, more than anything, to push their relationship beyond terminal buddyhood, but Clark only has eyes for Lana. Clark started to date Chloe a time or two, but the inexorable gravity of the Lana-crush kept pulling him back. This clip shows some of Chloe’s heartache. If the last scene didn’t give you enough anguish….

 

 

One thing writers sometimes struggle with is characters that develop minds of their own. The plot calls for the character to behave in a certain way but, when the time comes, the behavior just doesn’t fit the character. That, to me, is how it struck me when the writers of Smallville tried to end Clark’s relationship with Lana. Clark and Lana broke up repeatedly, but the chemistry between the characters kept pulling them back together. The problem was that over sixty years of DC Comics tradition had established that Lois Lane was the adult Superman’s love interest. The writers finally had Lana infused with kryptonite so Clark couldn’t be near her, and that finally ended their relationship. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXW1Q...

Well, dang it.

After that, Lois Lane was Clark’s main love interest in the series. Erica Durance’s version of Lois was feisty, competitive, and fun to watch. She added a comic element to the romance.

 

If you’d been able to vote, which of Clark’s three gal-pals would you have chosen for him?

You’ve got…

Lana Lang, the dream girl of Clark’s youth with her prom queen looks. In comics tradition, Lana was a redhead, but Kristen Kreuk’s Lana is half Asian (Kristen is half Dutch and half Chinese.) and kind of exotic.
Then there’s Chloe Sullivan, as portrayed by Allison Mack. Chloe is the faithful friend who would have made a great girlfriend for anyone who hadn’t already fallen for someone else. Chloe remains loyal to Clark even when she realizes they will never be anything but friends.
Finally there’s the youthful Erica Durance version of Lois Lane, the feisty and competitive army brat. She has a tender heart, but it’s well guarded.

It’s a tough choice. What do you think?

The 1990s was a great decade for science fiction and similarly fantastic genres. When it came to Star Trek shows, it was an embarrassment of riches. Parts of three different Star Trek series, Babylon 5, SeaQuest, and Poltergeist: The Legacy were all 1990s shows. Quantum Leap, which started in 1989, ran until 1993.

If you read last week’s posts, you know I’ve been celebrating the Valentine’s Day season by remembering some of science fiction TV’s best love stories. I wrote about Star Trek in the 1960s, The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman in the 1970s, and The Beauty and the Beast in the 1980s. The stories I concentrated on, in keeping with my own dark temperament, were beautifully tragic.

Of the series I just listed, I thought Quantum Leap had the most tragic love stories. The most tragic of all was the story of traveler Sam Beckett himself. As Dr. Beckett (played by Scott Bakula of Enterprise and NCIS: New Orleans) leaped through time, switching places with others and putting right the wrongs that wrecked their lives, he was sacrificing his own life. As we learned in one two-part episode, Sam had a wife in his own time. Every time he time-jumped, however, a fog descended over his brain, and he forgot almost everything about his own life.  Wording on the screen at the end of the last episode said Sam never returned home.

If there was an award for most delightful science fiction romantic comedy series, I’d have to give it to Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993-1997) starring Teri Hatcher and Dean Cane in the title roles. It had it all: science fiction action, humor, endearing characters, and romantic tension. And Teri Hatcher was just adorable. Here’s a scene:

Is this the most delightfully romantic science fiction TV couple of the 90s? They’re definitely up there, but they have a strong—albeit darker and moodier—contender.

The most enduring workplace romance of the 1990s would have to be that of FBI agents William “Fox” Mulder and Dana Scully of The X-Files. For the first few seasons of the series, the romantic element was understated and the relationship undefined. There were hints of attraction here and there, but nothing definite. Mulder was one suave dude though, as these clips demonstrate. In one episode (the scenes with Mulder in the pink Izod shirt), they posed as a married couple. (Some of this is a little PG-13.)

Supposedly they had a child together at one point, but it’s not really clear how that happened (artificially?) or if the baby was really Mulder’s. At this writing, Fox and Dana are working together again (It’s 201,8 and the original series ended in 2002.) and looking for their now-teenage son.  What kind of award would you give the Mulder/Scully romance? Most undefined? Most unanswered questions? Most weird and wonderful? However you defined it, there was a definite chemistry between these characters, and you can see it in their wordless communication:

 

This week I’ve been working my way through five decades of tragic but unforgettable science fiction TV romances. I’m not sure if The Beauty and the Beast with Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton exactly qualifies as science fiction per se, but it was certainly tragic and unforgettable. Written by Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin, The Beauty and the Beast introduced us to Katherine and Vincent, an unlikely couple from two very different worlds. Katherine was the daughter of a wealthy attorney and Vincent was a beast with the soul of an angel—an apparent animal-human hybrid living in a secret enclave in the tunnels beneath New York.

The shows were beautifully written and very romantic. Though not exactly blessed with leading man features, Ron Perlman’s Vincent won Katherine’s heart just the same. The guy knew how to use his Shakespeare. (You’ll have to paste the link to see this scene, but it’s worth it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5xql...)

Now that’s just good stuff! After I saw that episode, I memorized that poem hoping it might come in handy. (I was a college student then.) Alas, the young lady I’d hoped it would come in handy with married someone else. Watching The Beauty and the Beast made me feel less foolish for clinging to hope in an unrequited love though. Hopeless love can be a beautiful and noble thing in stories even if it is pretty painful in real life.

The series ended tragically with Katherine’s death, and that always ticked me off. In the face of some of my own disappointments, I at least wanted a happy ending in my fairy tales. If I could have written the ending, I think I would have come up with something like this:

Enemies discover Vincent’s hidden refuge beneath New York and there is a terrible battle. Katherine and her allies do their best to help Vincent protect his people, but their secret community is scattered. Vincent disappears, and Katherine thinks he died in the battle and mourns him. A year or so later, a man appears at her door. He isn’t a “beautiful” man, physically speaking, but he isn’t strikingly unusual either. When he speaks, Katherine realizes that it’s Vincent. During in the battle for the underground refuge, his face was injured and had to be reconstructed. Rather than restoring his lion-man appearance, the surgeon gave him human features. Vincent asks Katherine to join him and his people in their new refuge, and they leave together.  The End. That’s how I would have done it, but nobody asked me.

Thank you, George R.R. Martin, Ron Perlman, Linda Hamilton, Roy Dotrice, Jay Acavone, and company, for bringing those characters to life.