Some authors say their stories begin with a character. Other authors say their stories begin with a plot. But for local author Tim Sojka, the story begins with something that bothers him.
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Some authors say their stories begin with a character. Other authors say their stories begin with a plot. But for local author Tim Sojka, the story begins with something that bothers him.
Earlier this year, Sojka released his second thriller, Politikill, through Black Rose Writing, a Castroville-based publishing house. His first thriller, Payback Jack, appeared in 2021.
For Politikill, Sojka said what bothered him was Abscam, a late 1970s FBI sting operation that sent seven members of Congress, among others, to jail for corruption. Abscam started him thinking: What if bribe-taking officials were found and caught today? Who might be behind such a scandal, and why? How might the crimes be solved?
“It bugs me so much I’m going to start looking into it, not because I have to, but because I want to,” Sojka said. “And then you have your waterfall moment when you see it all, and then you have who would be the strangest person possible to solve it.”
When Sojka puts in his hour or so of writing each morning, he addresses what bothers him. But in his day job, he and his Keller Williams team sell houses. They have sold more than 2,000. He also writes a monthly real estate column for the Katy Times.
“It’s helped my wife and I own a commercial building,” Sojka said. “I have a great wife (Lori) who has helped me in the business, and I married the right woman. We did all the things right. I didn’t start writing until I was financially fit, but it also means that I need to keep my business going. So, I can’t write a novel in a month because I still pay my bills by selling 200 homes a year. Our team still sells 200 homes a year. That still has to come first.”
When he writes, Sojka likes to know where the story goes before sitting down to write.
“Planners, that’s me, have to have everything laid out before I start,” Tim said. “Pantsers just write by the seat of their pants. Pantsers run into writer’s block a lot. I don’t get writer’s block because I always know what I’m writing to.”
Yet every plan has last-minute changes. Just because a plot is meant to go in one direction doesn’t mean it can’t—or won’t—go in a different direction.
“The thing about the plan is, though, you know certain points, but getting to those points can be interesting,” Sojka said. “It doesn’t mean it doesn’t change. It just means that you have a rough idea of what you’re writing to. But the other step the people don’t think about, and to me is really important, is once you have the plot laid out, to me the next most important thing is to lay out a timeline.”
Sojka said it was important that novels be able to reflect their time period. If one is writing a story set in the 1970s, for example, it should include the events of that time, whether it be the Watergate or Abscam scandals, or not having personal computers or mobile phones. At the least, it should reflect character awareness and reaction to those events.
Sojka said his third book is with his publisher and is due in March.
“My third book, 39, is about a guy who whose father and grandfather killed themselves on their 39th birthday, and he’s 38,” Sojka said. “My first two books are political thrillers,” he said. “My third book is not. It’s just more of a literary thriller.”
Sojka described his fourth book, to be called Claws, as a tweener-thriller.
“I think any book you have to start with, if not somebody dying, you have to start with that event that propels people into the future,” Sojka said. “I think narrative drive is one of the things that authors consider the least, but it’s the most important thing. What’s going to pull people through your book.”