One day, Tim the turtle was asked what he would like to be when he grows up.

Join this adorable shelled friend as he explores the possibilities of his future.

“This a wonderful book! I love the flowing text and charming illustrations! It’s one of those fun stories that opens up the imagination and transports you to a world where anything is possible!” – Pinklady 

“Dream Big by Leslie Zimmerman is a wonderful children’s picture book for the young one in your life! The storyline and illustrations are wonderful and my girls loved discussing what Tim the Turtle was on each page.” – CBC​

“Dream Big is the perfect book to help inspire kids, and it is adorable and fun as well. My 5-year-old nephew LOVES it and it makes him so happy! The illustrations are also wonderful. Recommended for every family!” – Natalie

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Written by Leslie Zimmerman
Illustrated by: Paige Briscoe

Some years ago, I got married. Like most newlyweds, I was happy for that first year. But then child number one came along. I don’t know if this is the same for every father, but it was a big moment for me.

My Motivation

Suddenly, I realized that I was responsible for raising a family. My wife and I decided that we wanted to give our children the best possible upbringing that we could, so she decided to stay at home to raise our kids instead of trusting that job to someone else. This isn’t for everyone, I understand, but it was what we wanted for our family.

All of a sudden, my little salary and our 700 square foot condo on the top of an old, ghetto complex, seemed very small. Since we saw the police more than we saw the mailman, we knew that we didn’t want to raise our kids there long term.

It was about this time that I felt an overwhelming need to up our living standards. I was already working ten hour days doing construction. Any more side jobs would take me out of the house when I needed to spend quality time with my family.

I remembered a conversation I once had with an English college professor. After awing my class with a story, she told me to publish the short. I never did. Good thing too. I revisited that story a couple years ago, only to find out how much I needed to bury it. But the conversation still lingered in my mind. I always enjoyed writing, for as long as I can remember. I just never thought it a practical path to money.

So I brainstormed with my wife over a good story, then sat down at my laptop to type. In all honesty, this wasn’t my first attempt. Before I’d met my wife, I’d halfheartedly attempted the feat. But now I had motivation. It was rough and go for the first three years. I hadn’t developed a routine. But I kept at it.

Then a funny thing happened. I fell in love with writing. I got to the point, where I actually felt like I was a writer. Somewhere around year two, I developed a routine that has guided my writing discipline. Every morning now, for about an hour before I start work at my real job, I write my stories. I love this time of day. Most people I know are still sleeping and nobody is in my office. It is my time.

I can’t really describe why writing is so important to me. As I’ve stated, I started doing it to create another revenue stream. So far, I’ve spent more time and money pursuing my writing than it has generated for me. But there’s something about telling stories and honing an age-old craft that fascinates me. I’m constantly reading and trying to find better ways to tell my stories. The more I learn, the more I want to apply those principles.

I do have another motivation, but I’d still keep writing even without it. I plan to start an independent movie studio someday. To do that, I’d either need to buy other peoples’ stories, or I’d need to have a few of my own to draw from. I’d rather make my own.

The best part about writing is perhaps that I’m allowed to daydream. As a kid, that was always getting me in trouble. My head was always in the clouds. Now I can make those imaginations real. If done right, I can give other’s a sense of wonder and adventure. I can even build a world so completely foreign to this world, and make it more real than this world. Writing does good for others, even fiction. It helps people escape some of their dull-drums and find excitement. They’re able to place themselves in someone else’s shoes. They can receive the same excitements and anxieties, then recover from those traumas from the safety of their sofa, living out some other character’s adventure. The stories can teach, or they can just offer a diversion. But I know of few other things in this world that are a more powerful tonic for the human condition than stories.

I am proud to be a writer, but more importantly, I want to be known as a quality storyteller. Stories, both fiction and true, whether handed down from family or from strangers, has helped shape my life. They are the core of what shapes all of our lives. We are all story tellers. I just like the idea of putting mine on paper to share with a larger audience. I hope you enjoy my stories. As I continue to pursue my craft, I hope you follow my writings and have patience with my earlier works that may not be crafted as well.

Most importantly, I thank you for giving me a chance to inspire a sense of wonder in your idle time.

“Okay, so you’re writing some books about Nephilim. Great–What are Nephilim?” This is usually the first question I get when I tell people about the books in my Nephilim Series.

נפלים (Hebrew for Nephilim)

Nephilim are a group of people, mentioned in the Bible. Depending on which version of the Old Testiment you read (or have but don’t read), the Hebrew word is often just translated as “giants”.

Nephilim also translates as “the fallen ones”. Other names mentioned in the Bible for these people are: Emim (the fearful ones), Rephaim (the dead ones), and Anakim (the long-necked ones).

There is a lot of speculation about what is really meant by these groups of people. Some claim that they are the offspring of Cain, some believe that they are demons or angels or the offspring of those supernatural creatures that wanted a little fun with mankinds’ women. After all in Genesis 6:4, it states that the “sons of God” basically came in unto the “daughters of men” and their children were the mighty men of renown known as giants or nephilim. A lot of people also believe that Noah’s flood was meant to destroy them, but the children of Israel saw them and were fearful of them when they were being led from Egypt. When they decided not to fight, God punished them by making them wander in the wilderness for 40 years. For those of you who didn’t pay attention in Sunday school, this was after Noah’s flood.

What’s the real story? Nobody really knows for sure. You’ll find all sorts of pictures of people exhuming grossly over-sized skeletons, but most of these are fakes. I think there are two or three possible explanations. One is that the giants encountered were a prosperous nation. One that ate very well, and their diet reflected their stature. Look for instance at Americans today vs two hundred years ago. We are much bigger than we used to be. If an average American were to go back to the days of Christ, I think we’d be surprised how little everyone would be. If any of you are like me, and have spent much time in Asia, you know the feeling of being tall. I’m under 5’10, and I was at least a head taller, often more, than most people I encountered. I was a giant over there.

The next option is that these people had a high percentage of their population with the genetic disorder known today as Gigantism. A condition where a person has too much of a particular hormone, causing them to be well above the normal height of even a tall person. They often have heart problems, but just like we see communities of “little people” who may share the common traits of dwarfism, perhaps back then, there were communities with a high percentage of people with gigantism.

The third and last explanation, though highly improbable, is that these “sons of God” were really refugees from another world. Theologically speaking, if there were aliens out there, they wouldn’t be the green-skinned, bulgy eyed beings that are popularized in media. They would be more like us. After all, if God is all powerful, and the Universe is infinite, then it makes sense that our god is not the god of just one world. And if we are all made in His image, then it would suggest that aliens from another world would still be human. Differences in gravity and environment might cause minor differences, like size. But for the most part, we’d be no more different than say a white person vs a black person, or an Asian vs an Aborigine.

In the Nephilim Series, I chose to go with this third explanation. I like it because I can make sense of it. I don’t have to turn the Bible into a fantasy. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good fantasy. But for a book anchored in the Bible, I feel better writing things that don’t conflict greatly with my personal beliefs about God. The idea came to me to write these books as I contemplated the idea of people, not of this world, coming to Earth, and how that would really have played out. So I hope this sheds some light, not only on a Bible quandary, but also on where I started writing from. Please enjoy the Nephilim Series, starting with my first book, the Nephilim Device, available for FREE, here.