Emporium Press is the Emporium's publishing imprint. Later imprints may be added for graphics and movie work. Intrepid Force, our first novel, was released in May 2003 and three new novels are being published this year.
We chose the metaphor of a Victorian era village to capture the spirit of the company. Each feature of the village symbolizes some aspect of the studio.
The bookstore, naturally, represents Emporium Press. The art gallery represents the graphic design aspects of the operation. The cafe represents the soul of the enterprise, the community of
Emporia USA is the kind of place where you'd find Holmes and Watson working with the local police department, Professor Challenger (from Doyle's The Lost World) lecturing on dinosaurs at the local university, and Dr. Jekyll practicing medicine. George McDonald or one of his characters could be found lecturing at the chapel. If you had a powerful enough telescope, you might see canals on Mars or prehistoric jungles on Venus. We'd like to think C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkein, and Ray Bradbury would enjoy spending time in the cafe--and we hope you will too.
Tim's Times:
July 2008: I just got back from two weeks on New Orleans where I was enrolled in a 3-hour Systematic Theology course at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. It was a demanding two weeks. I had to write two 30-page papers covering a variety of subjects like creation and the age of the earth, miracles, and predestination. Taking the class was a good experience overall. I met some interesting people and got some good writing ideas, but I'm ready to get back to writing fiction for a while.
Finding myself as a student at the NOBTS has seemed like destiny. The New Orleans scenes in the first Intrepid Force book were inspired by a senior trip my church youth director took some of us on when I graduated from high school and from some scenes in a book called AWalk Across America. The seminary was a stop on both my senior trip and Peter Jenkins' walk across the country. Ending up there myself seems like part of a cycle. Art imitates life... Life imitates art...
I just ordered a new piece of software that I think will make a big difference in my work on the Intrepid Force graphic novel. I've only been tinkering with the project for about fifteen years.
March 2008: I just got back from a trip to Houston. I never spent much time there, and didn't realize how close it was. Yesterday I visited the Houston Museum of Natural Science. It's a museum in the best classical sense of the word. It has dinosaur bones, a mummy, cave man skulls, and so on. There was a travelling exhibit featuring "Lucy," the little hominid skeleton that was found in Africa back in the 1960s. Viewing exhibits that describe human origins without reference to God leave me with ambivalent feelings. I know some see fossils like Lucy as either confirmation of an atheistic worldview or, alternately, as attacks on Christianity by people who are trying to take glorified monkeys and claim them as ancestors. My own experience didn't really fall into either category. I've been doing a lot of research lately for a book about Genesis and all of those fossils left me with a sense of awe. During the early days of the space program, one cosmonaut was asked about his experiences in space. He is alleged to have said "I did not see God." A crew of Apollo astronauts, on a mission to orbit the moon, found themselves farther from home on Christmas eve than any humans had ever been, and one of the men pulled out a Bible and began reading it as he gazed out as the wonders around him. One man looked out into space and didn't see God. Another looked out and saw God everywhere. When I looked at those ancient artifacts, I could almost hear the voice of God saying, "Let there be..."
January 2008: Another year beginneth here at the old creative village. I spent much of my winter break remodeling the movie studio room. Of the two rooms I rent here on the third floor of the Magnolia Printing building, the front room has long served as my writing garrett, my art studio, and my general home away from home. The back room, even though I painted it blue and green for chroma keying (i.e. blue screen and green screen) experiments, has mainly served as a junk room. My trip to Universal Studios last summer inspired me to do a bit of remodeling on it. My goal was to capture some of the spirit of some of those big studios with their adobe arches, palm trees, soundstages, and backlots in a small area. At this point, I've built an imitation adobe arch with the studio name across the top, some fake walls, and a building front. I've also got a pile of styrofoam bolders. There's still a lot of work to go, but the new look of the room lifts my spirits every time I see it. On a different note, I've had more orders for Intrepid Force: Invasion coming through lately after something of a dry spell. I'd better hurry up and finish the third book, eh? Click on the "Emporium Cafe" tab to check out this month's CSFF Blog Tour feature. Thanks for stopping in and have a GREAT 2008!
November 2007: I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. Some years you're full of thanks for everything that has worked out so perfectly. Other years you're thankful just to have made it through. Most years fall somewhere in between. I'm still working on the third Intrepid novel and the Intrepid graphic novel and remodeling the studio. I've also go a few other projects in the works. Stay turned for those. I still get excited and more than a little nostalgic when the Christmas season comes 'round. The weather turns cold and dark, the lights go up, and the music begins. When I was younger, I saw it all as a build-up to Christmas morning, to the toys under the tree. Then, somewhere in my late teens, when my brothers and I were all too old for the kinds of toys we used to get, Christmas morning started to seem anticlimactic. As a college student, I saw all of the parties and Christmas show as something of a build-up to disappointment. Then, somewhere along the way, I came to realize that the music, the lights, the church programs, the parties, and the time spent with friends weren't the build-up to Christmas. They are Christmas. There's probably no way to avoid a certain amount of stress as you're shopping and getting ready for the festivities. Ever so often, though, as you're tending to all of the details, take some time to stop, reflect, and reconnect with God and with the memories of the special people who have blessed your life.
September 2007: I'm back at work teaching my exciting college courses and taking an Old Testament course at the seminary extension. Studying the history around the early Genesis stories has really been interesting--and sometimes frustrating--to me. When it comes to relating science and history to the Bible, you come across three basic attitudes. One is, "It's literally and exactly the way the Bible says it is, you're an enemy of God if you think otherwise, end of discussion." That's a common attitude in my neck of the woods. The other extreme is, "The Bible is a fairy tale. Why are you trying to relate it to real life anyway?" Then you've got Christians who are also scientists, historians, and anthropologists. To me, they're the most interesting because they live in parallel worlds and try to make sense of seemingly contradictory views of reality. Nothing's neat and organized about ancient history. I'm starting to get an idea for a book based in early Old Testament times, something filled with epic imagery and Tolkeinesque wonder. Of course, I've got plenty of other projects going now so who knows when I'll finally get to it.
August 2007: Summer vacation is over and school is starting back. I can't complain. I made the most of July and August and don't entirely mind getting back into the old saddle again. This time last year, I made plans to try out for Act One's summer movie studio internship or for the one-month writing school. I also found myself looking at seminary catalogs again and wondered if there was a way I could get a seminary degree after all. I didn't get into Act One's training program, but I did finally make it to seminary. New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary has an extension campus in Shreveport, an abundance of workshop classes that meet during times I already have breaks, and a number of online classes. I calculated that I could take 15 hours a year and finish a 90-hour master's degree in six years. I traveled down to New Orleans in July to take the first workshop class. I'm starting a Monday night class at the extension center next week. While I was in the New Orleans area, I did a little bit of book research. Fort Jackson, an old Civil War fort, is located about seventy miles south of New Orleans. The fort is star-shaped, surrounded by a moat, and shrouded in oak trees. Ever since I heard about the old fort, I thought it might make a good setting for a scene in one of my books. I was not disappointed. The fort has been closed since Hurricane Katrina, but I was still able to walk around the grounds and peer through the gate.
I also managed to make it back to Hollywood, even if I didn't go for one of Act One's training programs. I just left town after church one Sunday and drove out there. It took two days to get there. I paralleled much of old Route 66 as I drove out there. I actually drove on parts of the highway itself for short distances. Tuesday, the first day I was in the L.A. area, I went to Disneyland with my cousin Lauren. On Wednesday I went through Universal Studios. I especially enjoyd the famous Backlot tour. I also enjoyed the Special Effects show and the Universal Monsters Haunted House. Thursday I toured Paramount Studios where they're working on Indiana Jones IV and a new Star Trek film. Their backlot isn't as spectacular as Universal's but the place is rich with Hollywood history. That night I visited my friend Aaron, who lives between Oceanside and San Diego. Then, Friday, I drove back through Arizona in time to see the sun set over the Grand Canyon, and made it to Student Week at the Glorieta Conference Center near Santa Fe by late Saturday morning. Altogether, it was quite an experience. I had intended to gather imagery for the third Intrepid Force novel and to seek inspiration for some of my other projects as well. The trip certainly gave me plenty of material. Now it's time to harness all of that and try to get some work done.
Visit the Inspirations Cafe (blog) for more discussion.