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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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:
Amazon.com : tim champlin
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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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