T.S. Welti, Author

Translation: The evolution of man is slow, but women can wait.

First off, I acknowledge the controversial nature of this post. If you prefer to gaze at pictures of cats or talk to your neighbors about the weather, you may want to click the back button on your browser to go back to whatever misguided website or search engine linked you here. On the other hand, if you enjoy your breakfast served with a side of condescension please read on.

I wrote a blog post a couple of years ago on the scientific method entitled “Does This Theory Make My Butt Look Big?” I won’t link to the article here due to the somewhat inflammatory nature of the language and Read the rest of this entry »

Flat Michael chillin' with me while I write. (Yes, I blurred the text on the page. It's not edited yet.)

Yeah, the title of this post is a bit strange, but bear with me. I promise it will make sense.

Before I moved to Portugal four weeks ago, my nephew Michael mailed my aunt in Portugal a Flat Michael. A Flat Michael is a drawing he made of himself, cut out and laminated. Michael made Flat Michael for a school project. His third-grade class read the book Flat Stanley and the teacher mailed out all the students’ Flat Mes to their friends/relatives in various cities, states, and countries.

The idea is that the friend/relative who receives the Flat Me takes it everywhere they go for a week or two then they mail it back to school with plenty of pictures or a journal detailing the adventures they’ve shared. Well, I was not too happy to receive my Flat Michael  Read the rest of this entry »

The view from my bedroom in Portugal.

That’s pretty much been my life for the past two and a half weeks since I made the trip from the good ol’ U.S.A. to Portugal. I can’t believe it’s only been two and a half weeks! Needless to say, I haven’t had much time for blogging.

We left California on March 27th. Our trip to the Azores promised two layovers, one in New York and one in Lisbon. However, I don’t remember there being any mention of no sleep. Unfortunately, we didn’t sleep a wink. Considering the shuttle was picking us up at 2:00 a.m. on the 27th we made the brilliant decision not to go to sleep. After three flights and 46 hours of no sleep, we arrived in Portugal at 10:00 a.m. on the 28th and slept for almost an entire day. Read the rest of this entry »

Soul Seeker by Jacquelyn Smith is a variation on the hero’s quest where the protagonist, Iarion, sets out on a quest for something that may save the world, but holds much more importance to him personally.

Iarion is a great protagonist. He experiences a constant feeling of despair at not knowing his purpose, and it is easy to identify with his discontent. He is a flawed elf and he has been seeking his purpose in this world for thousands of years. The adventure begins when he sets out on a quest to bring back a piece of an enchanted tree, which is being held by the creepy villain, Saviadro. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, I’ve had quite a bit going on since my last post a couple of weeks ago. For starters, book two of the Parker Chance Series, The Founders’ Code, was released on Leap Day! I also have a giveaway going on at Goodreads for an autographed copy, so head on over and enter while you still can.

In other news, Amazon is currently running a free promotion on The Fifth Specter until Monday, so you should definitely snatch that up while you can so you can read it before you dive into book two.

I have one other very exciting thing to announce. Read the rest of this entry »

I love when a recipe turns out as perfect as I imagined it in my mind. It’s not a rare occurrence when this happens, but it’s still magical.

I’ve eaten a lot of homemade mac & cheese in my day. I once tried it myself. The problem with most homemade mac & cheese is that it inevitably turns into a dry, gelatinous pasta brick. This is not one of those recipes. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, other than the standard book blurb, I can’t give away much before publication. What I can do is give a sneak peak inside the book with a word cloud.

For those who don’t know, a word cloud is just an artistically arranged cloud of text depicting the most-used words in a volume of text. Sort of like the “popular topics” word cloud at the bottom of this webpage. Read the rest of this entry »

About three and a half months into the writing of book two, I’m about 95% done with The Founders’ Code. I can’t help but look back on how long it took to write book one. I began writing The Fifth Specter on August 2, 2005. The Fifth Specter was published on June 26, 2011–about five weeks short of six years. Why did it take so long to write book one? Two words: plot diagram.

I created a chapter-by-chapter timeline for The Fifth Specter within a couple months after I began writing it. The problem with the timeline was that it wasn’t readable. In fact, it was an utter mess. Read the rest of this entry »

Image via Wikipedia

I decided to break radio silence with a classic Thanksgiving recipe. As is the case with many of my recipes, it has taken years to get this one right (four years, to be exact). The best part about this pumpkin pie recipe is that it’s pretty simple. It costs less to make than the $4.00 pie you can get at your local grocery store (assuming you have some ingredients on hand) and tastes 1,666% better! Yes, it’s devilishly good. Read the rest of this entry »

This “Three Things” post is a little different. I decided to change things up and write about three things I love. In the category of things I love, there are probably more than a million things. Narrowing that down to three is no small feat. For instance, I love puppies and puppy breath and soft puppy ears. That’s three things right there all related to puppies. I love the smell of fresh baked bread. I love baking bread. I love eating bread. You see what I mean? Read the rest of this entry »