Author: Tim Hein
| Meet Author Tim Hein |
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| Hein, Tim |
| Monday, 06 October 2008 21:20 |
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Writing has always served as a creative outlet from the staid accounting world, but it was my six years working as a loan officer in two small town banks that sparked my interest in a novel. Ideas that I couldn’t have dreamed up in a million years, such as an elderly man ripping his filthy dentures from his mouth and slamming them on my desk, or a woman claiming she couldn’t pay because her son had been kidnapped and sold off – experiences like these are priceless. After six years of hearing a stream of ridiculous excuses, I thought to myself, “No matter what I write, it will be believable compared to things that have actually happened to me.” My muse appears in short bursts – an hour over lunch, thirty minutes before bedtime, an hour in the car on the way to Grandma’s. Handcuffs and a straitjacket couldn’t keep me to pen and paper for more than a couple hours. Maybe that’s why it took my twelve years to write and publish Net Loss. Presidents came and went, centuries rolled over, and I kept pecking away a page at a time until it finally worked. Well, you know what they say about a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters – I just happen to be that lucky monkey. I’m lucky in other ways. I’ve been married to my lovely and supporting wife Caryn for twelve fabulous years. When people ask if it’s felt like twelve years, I always respond, “Absolutely.” As you probably just did, they wrinkle their noses and frown – but it’s been a storybook twelve years that I want to duplicate for the next fifty more (sans the four years of changing diapers). My children Marin and Evan are now seven and five, and provide more inspiration than I could ever need. Because I have a face made for radio, I’m no spokesman, but I’d like to take the time now to encourage you to donate blood. It’s simple, it takes less than an hour, and it saves lives. My daughter Marin survived her bout with childhood leukemia in part because of the millions of people who donate blood regularly. Please join me in supporting this cause, and contact your local Red Cross, Blood Center, or hospital and make this a habit. Trust me – nothing feels better than seeing the smile on the face of a child who has survived a trauma thanks in part to donated blood. |