Tim's golden legacy

 Cover: Jim Cochran

Our friend Tim, who died New Year's Eve, left behind a legacy for everyone who enjoys reading, and Team Tim has now made it available as an e-book, at SmashWords. In the past year he had finished writing a thriller he called Maya Gold, and brought it to me during the late summer when, unfortunately, I was up to my eyebrows in deadline with our own annual publication. But I delved into it enough to see it had some promise, and the Capt created cover art for it.


I remember a hilarious session one afternoon when the Capt Googled the title Maya Gold to make sure there were no conflicts.


"Tim," he said, "I don't think you want this title. I've found five other Maya Golds, including two books, a TV show... and a Hungarian stripper!" Tim roared with laughter. 


"How about if we change it to Mayan Gold?" the Capt suggested.


"But that's improper usage," Tim protested. "Everybody in Yucatan knows you don't say 'Mayan' but Maya." Still, he agreed to settle on the name change.


I was about 75% through the manuscript on the first pass, to identify areas that needed work and clean up the grammar, spelling and punctuation. The Capt had finished the cover design, which Tim approved enthusiastically. Then Tim got sick, and the rest of his story has been covered in this blog. He's gone now, but while in the hospital he decided he wanted Mayan Gold to be published as an e-book, and one of the Team got busy figuring out the logistics. I finished the first edit, and we settled on the SmashWords online service, which allows us to publish the novel with no upfront costs, make it available for reading on a number of different digital formats including Kindle and iPhone as well as a computer screen, and make it exceedingly cheap. Not just affordable, but cheap.

I've already set up a Wordpress blog to introduce it, at http://tnichol.wordpress.com.  The blog will be a tad rough until I figure out the convoluted bells and whistles of Wordpress, but already contains an excerpt, part of Chapter One that I know Tim particularly enjoyed writing — about sailing a catamaran using ancient Maya navigation. Check it out! Or take the plunge, go buy the book at SmashWords!