So sad.  I find another interesting author just as he dies.  He sounds like
another author I would have loved to follow if I could have found him 20-30
years ago.I  hope you will report on the autobiography when it comes out.
Jim

On Tue, Oct 29, 2024 at 6:07 PM R Kent Rasmussen <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> It is with great sadness that I pass along the news that my dear friend
> Tim Champlin died quietly in his home last Thursday. Many of you knew Tim
> as a long-standing member of the forum and a regular attendee at Mark Twain
> conferences in Elmira and Hannibal. Though not himself a scholar of Mark
> Twain, Tim had a deep interest in the man and used both him and some of his
> characters in at least a half dozen of the nearly forty novels he published
> over the past four decades. Most of his novels are set in the 19th century
> West. He also published a highly regarded nonfiction book about the works
> of Louis L'Amour.
> Tim reached his 87th birthday earlier this month and enjoyed exceptionally
> good health through most of his life. He and I communicated frequently over
> the past twenty years or so, and I always marveled at his robustness,
> despite the fact he was six years (to the day!) older than me. He
> frequently sailed boats, played tennis, bicycled, walked with his dogs, and
> engaged in other vigorous activities until a rare and currently incurable
> liver disease called polycythemia vera took over his life earlier this
> year. Though he never really complained, Tim occasionally expressed dismay
> about how odd it felt so suddenly to go from playing tennis and boating  to
> being reduced to spending his days sitting in a chair from which he could
> barely stand up to walk across a room.
> Despite his severely declining strength, one of the last things Tim did
> was write an autobiography (which I shall probably help prepare for
> publication in some form--possibly a print-on-demand book). For a man who
> spent most of his working career pushing pencils and listening to veterans'
> complaints for the Veteran's Administration (a job he loathed), Tim led a
> surprisingly adventurous life that he describes well in his memoir.
> For those of you who enjoy adventurous fiction--particularly stories set
> in the Old West--I strongly recommend you dip into Tim's novels. Most of
> his older books are available on Amazon in Kindle editions, which can be
> accessed through this link:
> Amazon.com : tim champlin
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> Some of his books are available in audiobook editions--including _Mark
> Twain: Speaking from the Grave_, narrated by fellow forum member Richard
> Henzel-- and _The Secret of Lodestar_ narrated by the prolific audiobook
> reader George Guidall:
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> Amazon.com : tim champlin
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> I am providing this information about Tim's books in the hope they will
> make more people aware of the fine qualities of his writing. If Tim had
> written back in the era when what might be called the traditional Western
> genre was far more popular, his name might now rank alongside those of
> L'Amour, Max Brand, Walter van Tilburg Clark, and others. Tim had a
> wonderful feel for the Old West, which his books described with an
> exceptional eye for authentic detail. He also had an exceptional knack for
> writing dialogue. This is especially evident in the time-travel novels he
> wrote about Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn--_Tom and Huck's Howling Adventure_
> and its two sequels. (In a strictly personal aside, I can't forbear
> mentioning that the time traveler in those lively stories is my own
> grandson Zane Rasmussen.)
> As I mentioned, Tim was a dear friend. He was an important part of my
> life, and I shall miss him greatly.
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