Since 1987, Timmerman has operated Middle East Data Project, Inc., a small business that has provided investigative support and policy guidance to government agencies and private companies on three continents. Born in New York in 1953, Timmerman obtained a BA from Goddard College in 1973 and an M.A. from Brown University in 1976. He moved to France, where he pursued a career as a novelist, publishing a novel called Wren Hunt in 1976 and a novella called The Iskra Scrolls in 1980. As a contributing editor for Newsmax Media, he examined new security measures at U.S. ports in the fall of 2005. His just-released third novel, St. Peter's Bones, is a witness to the persecuted church in Iraq, and is based on numerous reporting trips to northern Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon. It is a war novel with a political twist.