That workshop produced writers such as Kelley Eskridge, Nicola Griffith, and Peg Kerr, and within a year, Tiedemann began selling short stories.

His first major sale was Targets, sold to Gardner Dozois, editor of Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine.

This first in his Secantis Sequence, the novel approaches an interstellar empire from the perspective of the underclass, the main characters being so-called Freeriders---essentially hobos who stow away on translight ships and maintain a loose but widespread community.

The third Secantis novel, Peace and Memory, takes place some 80 years after the civil war and considers questions of self-determination, identity, and the parameters of appropriate political growth.

While working for the independent bookstore Left Bank Books (10 years), he composed the historical novel Granger's Crossing, which is set during the Revolutionary War era in frontier St. Louis.