No! Not that Tim Allen
Welcome to my website, Tim Allen Stories, where I post science-fiction, fantasy, and other stories that I’ve written or am working on. Once again, welcome.
For those of you who read the title of this introduction and are still wondering if I’m the guy who starred in the Home Improvement TV series and Toy Stories animated movie franchise, let me dispel your confusion: No! I am not that Tim Allen. The birth name of the actor/comedian you’re thinking of is Timothy Alan Dick. I am not he.
To my eternal regret and annoyance, Tim Alan Dick chose “Tim Allen” as his stage name. Many years ago, a co-worker asked me if I had heard of this new comedian whose fake stage name was the same as my real, parent-given birth name. In fact, I had heard of him and immediately realized all my hopes of someday starting a stage career with my own name were dashed.
My co-coworker knew exactly how I felt. He was especially qualified to understand my plight and be sympathetic because his name was—Michael Jackson—the same as the Motown superstar, visionary musician, and controversial King of Pop.
Sigh. Such is life.
Some say when one door closes, another opens. In spite of my disappointment about losing my stage name, I can still use my own name to brand my writing. That’s what this website is all about.
I’ve been writing as a vocation and avocation for a long time. But the more I write science-fiction, fantasy, and other stories, the more I’ve come to appreciate the advice of my elders and mentors: (a) The best way to learn about writing, is to write. And (b), the more I learn about writing, the more I realize how much more I need to learn about writing.
This website is a place to publish stories I want to share with others for the fun of it, and also by so doing, improve them. At some point in the future I’ll open this site to reader feedback and constructive criticism. That is, I’ll filter feedback for clearheaded, informed suggestions about how to make the stories better. Do I have weak characters? Does the plot zig when it should zag? Is the story boring? And most importantly, explain why you think so!
A few stories will be short and fragmentary, but most will be complete, although admittedly long; even novella-length. (Sorry, I tend to write “long.” It’s a curse.) I think the stories are good as is, but as one of my dearest editors, Sue Dernbach, once told me, “Even the best writers can still use a good edit.”
To help you understand some of my more debatable story choices, I plan to occasionally add forewords in the style of Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions to provide insight into my thinking.
Here, on Tim Allen Stories, I can also present tales without worrying about the length limitations of ink-and-paper or electronic mainstream publishing. (I originally intended to call this site Tim Allen’s Bedtime Stories; stories you could read in installments and enjoy on a cold winter night during the pandemic. Unfortunately, the URL to the website was too long, too prone to typos, and too much like URLs already owned by cybersquatters.) In any case, feel free to read the long stories in installments: read a little, stop for a while, read the rest later.
Anyway, enough introduction. By way of thanks for you patiently reading this far, please proceed to the stories in Tim Allen Stories by clicking the Home or Posts button in one of the menus in the header above, footer below, or sidebar to the, well, side. A good post to start with is “What Little Girls Are Made Of” Excerpt.