Tim Rees's Blog
November 8, 2025
Letter from a fan!
It is always a joy to receive a letter from an enthusiastic reader. This email dropped into my email box yesterday:
Dear Mr Rees (Author note *If you are a reader who wishes to write to me, please just call me Tim.*)
Your Original Earth series has captivated us with its rare blend of environmental consciousness, emotional depth, and imaginative storytelling. From Book One to Book Three, we followed Anu’s, Sonri’s, and Toama’s journey as the young human girl grew into an amazing young lady and in Book Three she and her friends travel to other worlds. We read in an interview how excited you are to see where Anu takes you as an author and now we find ourselves excited by the prospect of your fictional universe expanding as Anu encounters alien cultures who, we’re sure, will offer lessons to us all. The philosophical scope of what it means to build a better society, one grounded in empathy, exploration, and coexistence, is incredible and so totally relevant to humanity today. The way your unique imagination is able to encapsulate the potential reality of these alien worlds is truly breath-taking.
Book Three is an especially thought-provoking narrative of the community’s struggle to define its moral center. In Book three, you weave a story that mirrors our own world’s (Original Earth’s) dilemmas - climate, compassion, and connection to the natural world while offering the wonder and freedom that only science fiction can provide. My partner and I argued about whether the velan people were drawn from the modern-day Taliban or more historical religious extremist cultures?
And we have to mention your extensive literary range, spanning two war memoirs, thrillers, literary fiction, and visionary sci-fi. My partner has read both Raw Nerve and Delphian - indeed, that is how we discovered you as a writer! He insisted on reading passages to me in bed at night! - It was due to my partner’s exuberance that I decided I decided to read Original Earth Book One. It seems you are a writer unafraid to tackle difficult subject matter through any and every genre and don’t fail at arriving at a truth that makes me think deeper about the points you make. For me personally, Original Earth is more than a story, it’s a call to consciousness.
We understand you are currently writing Book Four of Original Earth and we both look forward to it immensely. In the meantime, I will read The Drama Merchant and A Seed Once Sown.
Thank you from us both.
What a wonderful letter to receive! If you do decide to read Original Earth, I would suggest you begin at Book One:
https://www.amazon.com/Tim-Rees-Origi...
Dear Mr Rees (Author note *If you are a reader who wishes to write to me, please just call me Tim.*)
Your Original Earth series has captivated us with its rare blend of environmental consciousness, emotional depth, and imaginative storytelling. From Book One to Book Three, we followed Anu’s, Sonri’s, and Toama’s journey as the young human girl grew into an amazing young lady and in Book Three she and her friends travel to other worlds. We read in an interview how excited you are to see where Anu takes you as an author and now we find ourselves excited by the prospect of your fictional universe expanding as Anu encounters alien cultures who, we’re sure, will offer lessons to us all. The philosophical scope of what it means to build a better society, one grounded in empathy, exploration, and coexistence, is incredible and so totally relevant to humanity today. The way your unique imagination is able to encapsulate the potential reality of these alien worlds is truly breath-taking.
Book Three is an especially thought-provoking narrative of the community’s struggle to define its moral center. In Book three, you weave a story that mirrors our own world’s (Original Earth’s) dilemmas - climate, compassion, and connection to the natural world while offering the wonder and freedom that only science fiction can provide. My partner and I argued about whether the velan people were drawn from the modern-day Taliban or more historical religious extremist cultures?
And we have to mention your extensive literary range, spanning two war memoirs, thrillers, literary fiction, and visionary sci-fi. My partner has read both Raw Nerve and Delphian - indeed, that is how we discovered you as a writer! He insisted on reading passages to me in bed at night! - It was due to my partner’s exuberance that I decided I decided to read Original Earth Book One. It seems you are a writer unafraid to tackle difficult subject matter through any and every genre and don’t fail at arriving at a truth that makes me think deeper about the points you make. For me personally, Original Earth is more than a story, it’s a call to consciousness.
We understand you are currently writing Book Four of Original Earth and we both look forward to it immensely. In the meantime, I will read The Drama Merchant and A Seed Once Sown.
Thank you from us both.
What a wonderful letter to receive! If you do decide to read Original Earth, I would suggest you begin at Book One:
https://www.amazon.com/Tim-Rees-Origi...
June 29, 2025
Original Earth
The most common question I’m asked by readers of Original Earth is: what inspired me to write the science fiction adventure series?
Well, there’s a long and short answer.
The short answer is: I love the character Tarzan and everything he stands for…
The longer answer is: when I was a young boy, my bedroom shelf was full of books. There were three wildlife encyclopedias, but mainly rows of novels. Up until aged ten, I suppose, every novel I read involved animals - Kipling’s Rikki Tikki Tavi for instance, a few stories about foxes and Mary O’Hara’s The Green Grass Of Wyoming, Thunderhead, My Friend Flicka et al. I did read Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five, but, for me, Kiki the parrot (actually a cockatoo if memory serves) was the star of the show…
I can’t now recall when exactly I discovered Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan, but do remember my imagination exploding when I read about this amazing character who was raised by Kala the she-ape. I devoured every Tarzan novel and re-read and re-read each one until the words faded… To me, at that young age, the Tarzan stories were pure adventure with my perception of the person Tarzan was, etching deep patterns, which shaped the person I was to become. In so many ways, the world Edgar Rice Burroughs had created became my reality. I didn’t only imagine I was Tarzan, he became my spiritual guide. The clear misanthropy woven through Tarzan’s character, became my misanthropy. I truly did begin to see humans as the enemy, especially white man. Tarzan is uncontaminated by human society and so, I began to see the huge flaws in aspects of humankind and the way we collectively live our lives. That insight has stayed with me and is the inspiration at the core of each of my novels.
Which brings me to Original Earth, my science fiction adventure series – three books so far published, but currently writing the fourth and an unlimited series planned.
It’ll be clear to everyone who’s read this that Tarzan is the core inspiration behind the series. Edgar Rice Burroughs published Tarzan in nineteen-twelve, but he would have written and developed the character years before. Africa was still being explored and Rice Burroughs never travelled to Africa, so the creation of Tarzan is an incredible feat of imagination. For me, writing fiction is about seducing the reader into a world of believability and, to the young boy/man I was then, the jungle where Tarzan grew up was completely believable. I was totally seduced.
But, whilst I humbly admit Original Earth is my interpretation of Tarzan, I wanted Original Earth to stand apart and alone, to be different. Anu is an eight-year-old female when stranded in the jungle of an alien planet and I wanted her to offer hope and to say something about the human relationship with planet Earth. The question I posed to myself was the same question I pose to the readers: imagine if we were offered a new, uncontaminated planet and a fresh start, how would I wish to see humanity move forward…? Now, armed with some knowledge of the complex relationships that exist between both fauna and flora - all life with whom we share this incredible planet - what lessons have we learned? This is a story about a new beginning… And then I wanted to give Anu a gift and that gift is her personal vibration being in perfect harmony with the natural world.
For marketing reasons, I had to slot Original Earth into a pigeon hole. Every reader will search the shelves of books they have read, relate to and know they love in order to find the next novel that will grab them. Those shelves have to be labelled to make it easy for the reader to find their next novel. I suppose every author finds it difficult to find the correctly labelled shelf for the novel they have created that, in the author’s eyes, says so much has many different dimensions, but place it we must. I’ve placed Original Earth on the shelf labelled science fiction adventure and added young adult and coming of age for greater clarity.
But does that really explain what the novel is about? Does it convey the depth and complexity of the novel series?
There’s a human community establishing itself and first contact with an alien race… And then there’s Anu who is exploring a jungle and ocean that’s very like the jungles and oceans on planet Earth and through Anu, the reader’s eyes will be opened to our own potential… Our hope for the future.
Well, there’s a long and short answer.
The short answer is: I love the character Tarzan and everything he stands for…
The longer answer is: when I was a young boy, my bedroom shelf was full of books. There were three wildlife encyclopedias, but mainly rows of novels. Up until aged ten, I suppose, every novel I read involved animals - Kipling’s Rikki Tikki Tavi for instance, a few stories about foxes and Mary O’Hara’s The Green Grass Of Wyoming, Thunderhead, My Friend Flicka et al. I did read Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five, but, for me, Kiki the parrot (actually a cockatoo if memory serves) was the star of the show…
I can’t now recall when exactly I discovered Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan, but do remember my imagination exploding when I read about this amazing character who was raised by Kala the she-ape. I devoured every Tarzan novel and re-read and re-read each one until the words faded… To me, at that young age, the Tarzan stories were pure adventure with my perception of the person Tarzan was, etching deep patterns, which shaped the person I was to become. In so many ways, the world Edgar Rice Burroughs had created became my reality. I didn’t only imagine I was Tarzan, he became my spiritual guide. The clear misanthropy woven through Tarzan’s character, became my misanthropy. I truly did begin to see humans as the enemy, especially white man. Tarzan is uncontaminated by human society and so, I began to see the huge flaws in aspects of humankind and the way we collectively live our lives. That insight has stayed with me and is the inspiration at the core of each of my novels.
Which brings me to Original Earth, my science fiction adventure series – three books so far published, but currently writing the fourth and an unlimited series planned.
It’ll be clear to everyone who’s read this that Tarzan is the core inspiration behind the series. Edgar Rice Burroughs published Tarzan in nineteen-twelve, but he would have written and developed the character years before. Africa was still being explored and Rice Burroughs never travelled to Africa, so the creation of Tarzan is an incredible feat of imagination. For me, writing fiction is about seducing the reader into a world of believability and, to the young boy/man I was then, the jungle where Tarzan grew up was completely believable. I was totally seduced.
But, whilst I humbly admit Original Earth is my interpretation of Tarzan, I wanted Original Earth to stand apart and alone, to be different. Anu is an eight-year-old female when stranded in the jungle of an alien planet and I wanted her to offer hope and to say something about the human relationship with planet Earth. The question I posed to myself was the same question I pose to the readers: imagine if we were offered a new, uncontaminated planet and a fresh start, how would I wish to see humanity move forward…? Now, armed with some knowledge of the complex relationships that exist between both fauna and flora - all life with whom we share this incredible planet - what lessons have we learned? This is a story about a new beginning… And then I wanted to give Anu a gift and that gift is her personal vibration being in perfect harmony with the natural world.
For marketing reasons, I had to slot Original Earth into a pigeon hole. Every reader will search the shelves of books they have read, relate to and know they love in order to find the next novel that will grab them. Those shelves have to be labelled to make it easy for the reader to find their next novel. I suppose every author finds it difficult to find the correctly labelled shelf for the novel they have created that, in the author’s eyes, says so much has many different dimensions, but place it we must. I’ve placed Original Earth on the shelf labelled science fiction adventure and added young adult and coming of age for greater clarity.
But does that really explain what the novel is about? Does it convey the depth and complexity of the novel series?
There’s a human community establishing itself and first contact with an alien race… And then there’s Anu who is exploring a jungle and ocean that’s very like the jungles and oceans on planet Earth and through Anu, the reader’s eyes will be opened to our own potential… Our hope for the future.
June 5, 2025
Writing a series...
Even after writing five novels and a memoir, tackling the story that is now Original Earth was very intimidating. After having spent a lifetime loving the Tarzan character and re-reading again and again the whole series created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, this was the story I feel I was born to write. So, writing those first few lines took many years to build up the courage of embarking upon the journey. But, of course, I need not have worried, because in Anu, I'd found a character who could carry me, the author.
Anu has a gift: her personal vibration is in perfect harmony with the natural world.
That has always been my aspiration, so it was very easy for Anu to quickly become a vivid real individual in my imagination. I would even go as far as to say, Anu is the real author and I've just been along for the ride.
This connection with my characters isn't new. All my main protagonists have come to life and as the author I have handed over the reins, so to speak, but I've never experienced a character so immediately becoming their own entity.
There's now three novels packed with Anu's adventures and I'm about to begin writing the fourth. The last few months have been about ironing out the manuscripts prior to publication. I've also prepared and published two other books. One a full length thriller titled The Need To Know Principle and another a personal account of my experiences during the Falklands war, which I've titled The Falklands Engagement, a story that has finished up as a novella - I set my real-life experiences against a love story in order to attract a wider readership - but I can't wait to get back to Anu's adventures. In book four, our heroine is heading back to Original Earth... What does the world look like in a hundred and thirty-five years time....?
Anu has a gift: her personal vibration is in perfect harmony with the natural world.
That has always been my aspiration, so it was very easy for Anu to quickly become a vivid real individual in my imagination. I would even go as far as to say, Anu is the real author and I've just been along for the ride.
This connection with my characters isn't new. All my main protagonists have come to life and as the author I have handed over the reins, so to speak, but I've never experienced a character so immediately becoming their own entity.
There's now three novels packed with Anu's adventures and I'm about to begin writing the fourth. The last few months have been about ironing out the manuscripts prior to publication. I've also prepared and published two other books. One a full length thriller titled The Need To Know Principle and another a personal account of my experiences during the Falklands war, which I've titled The Falklands Engagement, a story that has finished up as a novella - I set my real-life experiences against a love story in order to attract a wider readership - but I can't wait to get back to Anu's adventures. In book four, our heroine is heading back to Original Earth... What does the world look like in a hundred and thirty-five years time....?
