We’ve interviewed disc jockeys, presidents of organizations and fraternities, alumni and students that contribute countless hours to the University. And who do we have in our midst this week? A real live author! What started out as Tim Eckert’s graduation project at Warwick High School, turned into a published novel.
We sat down with Tim, author of Requiem of an Empire, to talk about his life at college and what it was like to write a book!
“I love meeting someone new every day,” Tim said of his favorite thing about Millersville. “You can never have too many friends.”
Tim lists dodge ball, javelin and of course, writing, as some of his hobbies. Sounds like a normal college student, right? Then there’s the book thing.
Requiem of an Empire is a political fiction story set in the year 3012 and is centered on two newly crowned monarchs of a new continent in the Pacific.
“They’ll undergo the stress of dealing with diplomatic relations of more malevolent foreign entities in an attempt to ensure their independence from the other European powers of tomorrow as well as the remnants of the old United States,” Tim said of the book, which hit shelves December 29, 2011.
“The story is purely fiction and for entertainment purposes,” the Millersville sophomore said. “For my project, I figured what better way to show off what I’ve learned in my history classes than to show some of my knowledge in a political fiction genre book.”
“When I came to Millersville, I asked different professors what I could do to get my story published,” Tim explained.
He was referred to writersmarket.com where he was paired up with a company called Trafford Publishing.
“Trafford was really pleasant to work with and their associates they paired me up with were extremely helpful.”
Tim explains how he paid for a publishing package and the logistics of publishing were worked out.
According to the history for secondary education major, who also plans on pledging TKE this semester, “editing was a nightmare.”
“I could only do so much with spell check,” Tim said.
So summer 2011, he enlisted the help of Ben Weber to assist with editing because he was a member of the editing team at Warwick.
“There were times where whole chapters would be scrapped because they didn’t flow right with the rest of the book and character development was not going in the direction I wanted it to.”
“After I was satisfied with the final revisions, Trafford and I worked together to create the cover, synopsis, and interior design of the novel.”
Requiem is available at Barnes and Noble and the website of Trafford.
So what’s up next for our Campus Celebrity? He’s currently working on writing a new book called Africanus but plans on continuing sequels to Requiem. And what’s after that? Well, he’ll just keep on writing.