Ptim is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee with over forty published short stories to his name. As an English major at UCLA Ptim wonked out on modernist and postmodernist creative literature and turned in a novel-length non-novel for his senior thesis, for which he earned Highest Honors. While at UCLA Ptim was fortunate enough to study fiction writing under Robert Coover, Carolyn See, and John Barth.

Today Ptim is a prolific writer of short stories, an occasional writer of short poems, and the author of two completed novel-length works that are not novels. The first of these, Pricks and Pinheads: The Self-Referential Postmodernistic Roleplaying Game, is simultaneously a survey of the state of the art in text-based fiction, a meditation on the interactive roleplaying game as a literary form, and a picaresque novel. The second, The Once-ler: An Epic Seussian Poem in Eight or So Parts, is exactly that. Along with the aforementioned stories and poems, Ptim is presently working on his third novel-length work, The Fabulest Fabulist, which is about a storytelling duel to the death.

A few of Ptim’s short stories which are available for reading on the Web are included at the bottom of this page. Ptim particularly recommends “Puppet Show” to get a sense for what he’s all about. He also has a clear philosophy of fiction, about which he’ll happily pontificate given the slightest provocation.

His first name is pronounced “Tim.”

Published Work