The Future of 'Alternate Timeline'
A Connected World Of Stories
Hello members of The Timeline,
This is a quick update on this nebulous corner of the internet where I write sci-fi tales and occasionally supply fuel for your own sci-fi stories.
2023 was a year that I dedicated to slowly sculpting my many scattered ideas into something solid and presentable. If you tagged along for the ride, I imagine its been confusing.
During my brief hiatus in the last few weeks of December, an epiphany emerged regarding Alternate Timeline and how it should function.
Looking back at the seven short stories I’ve published so far, I see a few recurring themes—including death, moments of transition, mysteries that rely on symbolism, and time.
And around the time that I posted Data Collector, it struck me that I was at a crossroads and needed to decide whether these stories should be connected.
Behind the paywall of the Behind The Story segment for that partucular tale, I wrote:
I suppose my concern about this story, and many of the stories I’ve written so far, is that I’m writing first chapters and not short stories. It could be from my training in the world of writing television, where there are always open paths for future stories no matter how the road of an episode ends. If you’ve read them all this year, you may have noticed similar breadcrumb trails connecting them:
The alien gold in Object of Desire could be the same gold on the powerful tablet from Black Man With a Whip — the mush of colors in that tablet could be the same mush of colors from The Void in Data Collector — the symbol of The Void could be one of the many symbols from Foreign Document — all of which could be utilized by the all powerful tech juggernaut Neutech-Co from Watching Ghosts.
I’m not sure if I’m a fan of such connections. It’s exciting, but also amateurish… right? Perhaps I’m overthinking it. But I’ll follow the impulse to keep doing so whenever it feels right.
And in the process of formulating my latest tale, Method, which features the Morgan Stern tech-journalist character from Watching Ghosts — that decision was finally made.
The stories here ARE connected into one scattered narrative from one particular strand of time that strays from our own yet feeds off of its events.
Feels nice to type that out.
And you’ll always be able to refer to this (currently empty) TABLE OF CONTENTS (a.k.a. THE TIMELINE) to learn where each story lands in that slplintered dimmesnion.
See you soon with more fuel and stories!
Best,
Tim