Author: Susan L. Lin

A Comprehensive List of All the @NBA Jerseys I Spotted in #Taiwan

Lists

As you may or may not know, I’m a huge San Antonio Spurs fan and an NBA fan in general. I grew up just outside of Houston during the height of the Olajuwon era, so I was a Rockets fan as a kid. We were all conditioned to hate the Spurs, our biggest rivals, so it really speaks to everything the Spurs organization represents that they were able to convert me in adulthood. If you follow the NBA, you know that the Spurs made a lot of moves in the off-season. Like any fan, I’m extremely impatient for the new season to start so we can all stop speculating about how all the new pieces will fit into the well-oiled Spurs machine. Finding a way to relate my passion for the sport to my recent trip to Taiwan proved to be a great distraction from that.

I didn’t initially set out to make this list, but after spotting my second NBA jersey during the first few days, I thought it would be interesting to keep a running tally of any jerseys I spotted. I was particularly curious which players and teams were popular overseas in a country that hasn’t really produced any NBA players, and where the fans may not have the same local allegiances that we do here in the States. Keep in mind that I was staying in hotels and visiting a lot of tourist attractions, so my experience may not be an accurate representation of the everyday population. Some of these people may also have been mainlanders. Also, it’s difficult to tell if all of these people are real fans or if they just enjoy wearing jerseys as fashion accessories. Nevertheless, 13 players from 10 different teams are represented here in this list. The Warriors and the Bulls seem to be the most popular teams.

I was a bit surprised not to see a single Jeremy Lin jersey from any of his many teams as he is, of course, Taiwanese-American. Though I am not a JLin fan myself, it made me sad to think that his popularity has waned not only in the States but also in Taiwan. I did, however, see someone wearing a New York Knicks Linsanity T-shirt on the subway.

1. Portland Trailblazers [player unknown]

Since I hadn’t started making this list yet when I spotted my first jersey, I can offer no details here. It was a current design, so my best guess is it was a Damian Lillard or LaMarcus Aldridge jersey. I think we were at a restaurant.

2. Phoenix Suns [Jason Kidd]

Spotted on the MRT en route to the Taipei Zoo. It was nice to see a vintage jersey for a retired player. As you’ll see further down the list, most of the jerseys I spotted were of current superstars.

3. San Antonio Spurs [Kawhi Leonard]

Spotted at the Taipei Zoo in front of the Przewalski’s horse. Kawhi happens to be my favorite current player, so I was happy to see someone with his jersey right off the bat.

4. Golden State Warriors [Stephen Curry]

Spotted at the Daan MRT station. The current golden boy; no surprises there.

5. Miami Heat [LeBron James]

Spotted at the Chimei Museum in Tainan. Again, no surprises there. I honestly thought there would be more LeBron jerseys around.

6. Toronto Raptors [Vince Carter]

Spotted walking the streets at Tamsui.

7. Chicago Bulls [Derrick Rose]

Spotted at the Raohe Street Night Market.

8. Golden State Warriors [Klay Thompson]

Spotted at the Raohe Street Night Market.

9. Golden State Warriors [Stephen Curry]

Spotted at the Raohe Street Night Market. This is the place to go if you’re on the lookout for NBA jerseys, I guess. This is also marks the first repeat player I witnessed. (For the record, #8 and #9 were not together.)

10. Chicago Bulls [Derrick Rose]

Spotted yet again at the Raohe Street Night Market. I would wonder if it was the same guy as the other one, but I saw one right after the other and they were coming from opposite directions. Still, seems like a strange coincidence. I had not seen a single Bulls jersey until then.

11. Dallas Mavericks [Dirk Nowitzki]

Spotted at the Taipei Bus Station. I thought I would see more foreign players, to be honest.

12. Indiana Pacers [Paul George #24]

Spotted at breakfast in the Dandy Hotel in Taipei. I saw this jersey again later that morning. I’m not entirely sure if it was the same person (all Asian people look the same, yada yada), but I assume so.

13. Chicago Bulls [Ben Gordon]

Spotted in the Dandy Hotel lobby. I’m not 100% sure on this one. The guy was wearing a jacket (in that heat, why?) so all I saw was a #7. As far as I can tell, no superstar ever wore #7 for the Bulls. Of all the players on this list he is the only one I’m not familiar with, but I see he won Sixth Man of the Year once, so I guess he has name recognition. (I don’t really follow the Eastern Conference.)

14. Oklahoma City Thunder [Kevin Durant]

Spotted in the Dandy Hotel lobby. She was with #13.

15. Chicago Bulls [Michael Jordan]

Spotted in the Dandy Hotel lobby. Again, I’m not 100% sure on this. She was also wearing a jacket that obscured most of the jersey. But she seemed to be wearing MJ’s number. She was with #12. Only #14 and #15 on this list were worn by young women.

Northern Coast of Taiwan

#fbf “Losing Grip” 10 Years Ago in #Taiwan

Images, Musings

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As I tweeted earlier this week, I will be visiting Taiwan for the first time in 10 years at the beginning of September. I thought I would take this opportunity to throw it back to the summer of 2005 when I took that last trip because so much has changed since then. In doing so, I also got to look through all the photos I took during that trip (with my cumbersome 3.2 megapixel digital camera, I might add) for the first time in years. I plan to take many more on this upcoming trip.

a plane takes off from some airport in Taipei probably

I flew to Taiwan from Houston mere days after my high school graduation. I did not walk at commencement, a personal decision of mine that everyone told me I would one day regret. To this day, I do not regret it. If anything, it made my college graduation, which was one of the happiest and proudest days of my life, that much more meaningful. At that time, however, it gave me a strange feeling of being in limbo, as if I had never actually graduated at all.

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While I was in Taiwan, I wrote a short essay about that feeling. I don’t think I ever read it again afterwards — maybe once, long ago, but certainly not recently. I think I was honest with myself in a way I very rarely am, and it’s also worthy mentioning that I wrote it by hand in a blue notebook. (Now that notebook has been dismantled because the covers were always falling apart. I used to carry it everywhere, though I never wrote anything substantial in it because I so disliked writing anything longhand.) Here is an excerpt of that essay, which I am just now reading again:

I’m writing this essay by hand because I feel that that’s the way it’s meant to be. I always had trouble with my fingers moving my pen fast enough to keep up with my mind the way they could on the keyboard of my laptop. My typed words always seemed to fit more perfectly together. But maybe they aren’t as real. And maybe that’s kind of the point. Maybe everything in my head isn’t worth putting down on paper and my pen can filter out those useless words. Or maybe not. I guess it doesn’t really matter just so long as I write what I’m feeling. I’ve always felt that I feel things too deeply. Or maybe the trouble was that I didn’t feel them deeply enough. It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes.

[…]

I’ve seen that so much in the past couple of weeks. They’ve been hard, I guess. Too much change happening too fast. Graduation was kind of what made all my thoughts on the matter. Everybody was walking onto the floor and I was crying before they’d even reached their seats because I was already at my seat but it wasn’t where it should’ve been.

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Frankly I cannot share most of the essay because it was rather angst-ridden, and most of what I was angst-ridden about is no longer worth revisiting. But I think it was rather an insightful look at my state of mind at that point in time and I’m really glad I wrote it. I stopped journaling in the middle of college because I just found it exhausting and I was very busy. I stopped journaling on real paper way before that; it was during my freshman year of high school, I believe. I miss being able look back on a specific year and remember what exactly was going through my mind in those days. I wish I’d kept it up.

taiwan sunset

One of my goals this fall is to start blogging more often. It always feels so daunting. I do not like writing long things. I do not like it, Sam-I-Am. I do not like it sitting in a chair. I do not like it sitting on a bear. That’s why I started tweeting in the first place, and that has been great. But sometimes 140 characters can be a bit limiting. I vow now not to feel intimidated by a non-existent page quota! I can write a 3-sentence microblog if I want to! This is not college! I do not have to have perfect grammar! I don’t have to write filler! I don’t even have to sound coherent if I don’t want to! This is my blog! And I can do what I want to, do what I want to!

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Whew, I feel much better now that I’ve gotten out all the inane children’s books quotes and 1960s song lyrics that are forever bouncing around inside my head. Anyway, assuming I can get decent wifi in my various hotel rooms, I will be blogging throughout my trip. These will most assuredly be brief microblogs because I will be writing them on my phone.

Calling all sleuths! Join me May 11-15 @ClueTFF for the 2015 #TwitterFiction Festival!

Honors, News

When a college reunion ends in murder, everybody is a suspect. Who did it? Where? With what weapon?

It’s a modern-day twist on the classic Parker Brothers board game “Clue,” where the usual suspects are glued to their smartphones and social media accounts during a tense dinner party in Presidio Heights. What are they all hiding? What are they oversharing? Before the night’s end, old secrets will be revealed and new secrets will be formed.

If you have a Twitter account, feel free to interact with these colorful characters as the homicide and subsequent investigation unfold in real-time. Ask them questions. Try to trip them up. Make them confess. Can you trust what they tell you? If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can still follow along by visiting the @ClueTFF Twitter page during the festival. The whole narrative will also be published on Storify for posterity after the event.

During May 11-15, follow all the major players here:
@MrBoddyTFF
@MissScarlettTFF
@MrsPeacockTFF
@MisterGreenTFF
@ColMustardTFF
@MrsWhiteTFF
@ProfPlumTFF

For the full schedule and a taste of all the festival has to offer, follow @TWfictionfest and @TwitterBooks on Twitter during the week.

 

Full disclosure: I am beyond excited about being a featured writer (contest winner) for this year’s festival. However, I have never written a murder mystery before. I have also never written a multi-character story on Twitter (or any social media) before. I am beginning to think it’s a bit insane to attempt doing both for the first time, at the same time. Nevertheless, this will definitely be an adventure, and we can never have too many of those. So grab your magnifying glasses, your casebooks, and your Sherlockian nicotine patches. I hope you will join me for the ride.

Colonel Mustard in the Hall Closet with the Traumatic Childhood Memory #FLASHBACK2SCHOOL

Musings

Essay Prompt: “Write an essay somehow inspired by super-huge mustard”

As students of writing, we are constantly reminded that we should try to write an hour each day. And if we can’t manage an hour, we should still write a little bit each day, even if only in the twenty minutes that exist between our alarm clock and the breakfast table. The best reason I’ve ever gotten for this advice (thanks Aaron Reynolds!) is that we sometimes, without even realizing it at first, find inspiration in the most mundane, everyday moments: that routine trip to the dentist, the leaky bathroom faucet that needs to be repaired, a freeway traffic jam on the drive home from work. Over time, I’ve come to realize how true this is. Because many of my best stories were indeed inspired by major life-changing events, like international travel, natural disasters, and hospital stays. But sometimes these stories—including the novel that I’m currently writing—are stitched together from much smaller details. Sometimes we even find inspiration in containers of bulk-size mustard.

Allow me to explain. In May 2012, two separate “everyday moments” happened. Those led to the beginnings of a complex novel-in-progress, which then branched out to a comic series and a trio of short film scripts. But first, I went home for a couple weeks after my first year in grad school. One afternoon, I was having a conversation with my mother about smoothies when my dad misheard us (as he often does) and thought we were discussing movies (as we often do). I went scrambling for a pen and a piece of paper, and the seeds for my hybrid invention known as the Smoovie were planted. Fast-forward another week or so, when I was back in San Francisco for the summer. A few friends and I decided to head to Golden Gate Park during the 75th anniversary celebration to participate in the festivities.  As the evening wore on, we decided to buy food at one of the booths. The cheapest item was an extremely overpriced hot dog, which I purchased and then topped with condiments from the self-serve table displaying bulk containers of ketchup, mustard, relish, and the works.

Another week later, my summer class (the now-retired “Brevity,” taught by the incomparable Cooley Windsor) began. For my first piece, I wrote about a Smoovie that featured two dinosaurs fighting over a single foot-long chili cheese coney. It’s a fragmented, non-linear narrative that reawakens a boatload of childhood trauma for our protagonist and ends in a sinister shot of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, teeth-bared, a smear of mustard on his chin. This short piece, combined with a flash fiction piece I had written a year earlier, was the basis for this novel, which spans the course of 21 years in one boy’s life and has now grown to 65,000+ words and counting. Never mind the fact that I started such a project in a class called “Brevity,” though the story’s humble yet defiant beginnings do continue to amuse me. (Thankfully, my professor was equally amused.) The realization that a simple container of mustard could have started it all is even more intriguing. And what if I hadn’t ordered a hot dog that night? What if my father hadn’t made a comment that gave birth to an idea, which then gave birth to a disturbing, prehistoric progeny with a penchant for carnival grub? It’s likely the novel would still have existed in some shape or form as I continued to be inspired by uneventful occurrences that happened to me later that year. But it’s likely that it would’ve been vastly different in many respects. Would it have been worse? It’s impossible to say. Maybe I would’ve been hit in the head by a golf ball that summer and been inspired to even greater heights.

Nevertheless, it’s in anecdotes like this where we realize that art does imitate life. All these random, inconsequential moments lead into other random moments, causing greater moments that branch off and later prove to be life-altering—the collective whole adding up to more than the sum of its parts. Writing consistently every day ensures that we don’t let these moments slip by undetected, that we look more carefully at the things we initially deem as unimportant or uninteresting, that we allow ourselves time to be inspired by the ordinary before discarding it from our brains at the end of the day.

I know all this. I know now why the daily ritual exists. And yet, full disclosure: I still don’t write every day.

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Note: This is the final essay in a 3-part blog challenge inspired by this NYT article about the new wave of creative college admissions essay prompts. Read more about the rules and logistics of the challenge and my reasons for taking it on in this previous post. There, you will also be able to find links to my other essays and those of my friends when they become available.

* Find out how Ren and Elizabeth were inspired by super-huge mustard, and thanks for following along with us this week! I have more blog posts planned for the end of the year, including some Top 10 lists (who doesn’t love lists?), so keep on keeping on.

So Where is Waldo, Really? #FLASHBACK2SCHOOL

Musings

Essay Prompt: “So Where is Waldo, Really?”

This is a trick question! I call shenanigans. Obviously “Waldo,” who answers to several dozen variations of his name across the globe (can we say assumed identity? On the run?), has the ability to pop in and out of random scenes amidst the strangest crowds of people with just a blink of his bespectacled eyes. He can be everywhere at once. Wining and dining on one page, while riding a mechanical bull on another. (I made those examples up—has he done these things before?) Like the Charlie Browns of the world, he also seems to possess a very limited wardrobe. Needless to say, this is the real question we need to ask: Who is Waldo? Yes, what exactly is the deal with this mysterious Waldo/Wally/Willie/Walter/Ali/Charlie/etc character? Just what is he guilty of? How many candy cane-striped shirts does he own anyway? And most importantly, does he want to be found or not?

With such an elusive character, it’s impossible to know for sure—at least until one of the members in his similarly clothed entourage decides to talk. But humor me for a minute. Allow me to speculate. I’m sure it would be fun to imagine that Waldo is wanted for a long laundry list of nefarious deeds, teasing law enforcement officials in a brilliant game of cat-and-mouse as he trots across the globe. But I don’t personally think he is guilty of any terrible crime(s).  I think he’s just a kid—just trying out different names and locales until he finds the one that fits. Like the kid who grows up in the same small town from which no one ever seems to escape, Wally wants to travel, to find his corner of the world. He wants to be noticed, but a part of him remains afraid of the attention. He’s a contradiction, like so many of us are as we are still coming of age.  We haven’t quite figured out who we are, so we experiment; we do things that don’t seem to make sense in conjunction with each other. We don a wacky trademark outfit so we’re easily recognized. But then we negate it by hiding in the company of other people, people who are even louder and wilder so that we can still remember what it’s like to get lost.

I can relate. During a recent classroom discussion, a professor of mine said that you have to watch out for a kid who decides without warning to up and change his name. I neglected to mention then that I’d done that very thing twice—once in sixth grade (Sandy) and another in ninth grade (Suzun)—so I’ll cop to it now. Here’s my full confession: I didn’t fully understand back then why I was doing it, but suddenly it makes sense. It’s probably worth noting that those were both years in which I had just started a new school (middle school and high school, respectively) and in many ways, just beginning a long journey into the unknown. The landscape had changed, and with it, a new sea of faces awaited. I wanted to be one of those new faces. Likewise, I understand what it’s like to wish to be both lost and found, all at once. I grew up dreaming of fame and fortune, aiming to shock and intimidate at every turn. But at the same time, I valued the idea of privacy and the need to blend into the crowd. There were times when all I wanted was to be ordinary and unseen. A contradiction…maybe.  But one that is both natural and understandable.

Waldo, Waldo, everywhere. Indeed.

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Note: This is the second essay in a 3-part blog challenge inspired by this NYT article about the new wave of creative college admissions essay prompts. Read more about the rules and logistics of the challenge and my reasons for taking it on in this previous post. There, you will also be able to find links to my other essays and those of my friends when they become available.

* Read what Ren and Elizabeth had to say regarding the age-old question, “Where’s Waldo?”

Robots, Dinosaurs, or Aliens…? #FLASHBACK2SCHOOL

Musings

Essay Prompt: “If you could be raised by robots, dinosaurs, or aliens, who would you pick?”

This may come as a mild shock—because it’s something I’ve never discussed openly before—but I was raised by humans. (I know, right? Humans? Like, who does that anymore?) I can’t say that I had a particularly unique childhood; in fact, aside from a few aberrational occurrences, it was downright ordinary.  I was your typical ‘90s kid in America: I grew up watching The Simpsons on T.V. and wishing I were a Mighty Morphin’ Power Ranger (I had the lunchbox!) so I could communicate with a floating head and a perpetually high-strung robot by talking into my wrist. I wore troll doll barrettes in my hair and had a small collection of pogs, even though I had no idea what to do with them (they were just cardboard circles with pictures on them, right??). I thought Goosebumps and Animorphs were the “bomb diggity” as far as book series went, and yes, I even owned my share of toy dinosaurs. And yet, despite these shared experiences, I know a great number of other ‘90s children who were also raised by humans but had vastly different upbringings.

The problem with the essay prompt at hand is that it seems to assume all robots, dinosaurs, and aliens are created equal.  This is simply not true.  If pop culture has taught us anything, these three categorical groups of “species” really come in all shapes, sizes, and temperaments—more so than even humans. Can we compare the irreverent and alcoholic Bender of New New York (Futurama) with the sleek, Peter Sarsgaard-voiced robot helper in the film Robot & Frank? How about the slimy aliens in the sci-fi comedy Men in Black with those angst-ridden heartthrobs that appeared on the WB/UPN teen soap Roswell? Not to mention the dinosaurs in a horror thriller like Jurassic Park versus the anthropomorphic ones in the children’s animated feature The Land Before Time? This is, of course, just my personal speculation, but I’m guessing their respective parenting techniques just might differ.

Robots. Dinosaurs. Aliens. Oh sure, we all have our preconceived notions about what these terms might mean—a free-association snapshot that immediately comes to mind despite any differences that might exist. A robot might be nice to have as a legal guardian, for example. They might be smarter than your average human counterpart, able to compute complex and difficult calculations in a fraction of a second. They could double as appliances or electronic devices. You might even be able to program it to do exactly what you want! However, there is also a good chance that the robot will be emotionally stunted and unable to think outside the ol’ circuit board.  On the other hand, an alien might also be nice to have as a guardian. Think of the intergalactic travel and the ray guns and the alien powers! But an alien would likely have its own languages and cultural customs. It might be difficult to assimilate back on Earth someday. And I can’t honestly think of any pros when it comes to being raised by a dinosaur, but I can think of many cons: dark ages, cannibalism, sheer intimidation factor, not to mention the difficulties of communication. (Just how many things can “RAAWWWRRR” possibly mean, anyway?)

But at the end of the day, if I had to choose one, I would probably choose to be raised by aliens. I’ve always wanted to know what it’s like to be abducted by a strange beam of light emanating from an unidentified aircraft. Preferably one that is commandeered by Kang and Kodos because them two aliens have got it going on. (I just hope they don’t decide to eat me.)

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Note: This is the first essay in a 3-part blog challenge inspired by this NYT article about the new wave of creative college admissions essay prompts. Read more about the rules and logistics of the challenge and my reasons for taking it on in this previous post. There, you will also be able to find links to my other essays and those of my friends when they become available.

* Whew! I just barely got this in on time! (Just like high school and college!) Read what Ren and Elizabeth had to say about the robot/dinosaur/alien debate!

This December, My Friends and I Are Going Back to School!

Musings

You heard me. My friends (Ren and Elizabeth) and I are hard at work on our college application essays—our creative college application essays.

Inspired by this New York Times piece on the increasingly whimsical and thought-provoking questions that elite colleges employ to stretch their prospective applicants’ imaginations, we (writers in our late 20s to early 30s) are challenging ourselves to take on some of the REAL essay questions being pondered by current high-school juniors and seniors.

We’ll be answering the same three questions and posting our essays here. Follow along—or better yet, join us.

Dec. 16: “If you could be raised by robots, dinosaurs, or aliens, which would you pick?” 

Dec. 18: “So where is Waldo, really?”

Dec. 20: “Write an essay somehow inspired by super-huge mustard.”

Here are the rules:

  • We write as our current selves, not as 17-year-olds.
  • Work in personal elements where possible (these are personal essays), but be as creative as you like.
  • Upper word limit per essay is 750 words. No lower limit.

Logistics:

  • We post our essays to our writer blogs by 5 PM Pacific on their respective due dates.
  • Link each essay back to this challenge info.
  • Once each person has posted her essay, share the direct link to that essay with the other challengers, so that we may link to essays on the same topic.

Before the fun officially starts, I have a confession to make: despite being a college graduate, I have never written a college admissions essay!  Why? The only university I applied to when I was a senior in high school simply didn’t require it as one of the application materials. I did also apply to the Honors College within the university, but their requirement of a generic “writing sample” allowed me to submit an excerpt of a retrospective short story I had been writing about a girl who drops out of a high school. It was written in the first person like a personal essay and I made sure to include a note that made it clear the piece was a work of fiction. To this day, I have not finished that story, but it wasn’t the only piece of fiction I wrote back then with a dropout as the protagonist.  I guess you could say it was somewhat of a fantasy for me back in those days—even my contribution for the writing portion of our TAKS exam* was about someone who had dropped out of college in her freshman year but couldn’t bring herself to come clean to her parents. Once again, I had to preface it with a note stating that the best way I felt I could answer their prompt was through this imagined scenario. This pseudo-essay was ultimately deemed “highly effective” and given a 4, the highest possible score.

To add to my clearly complicated memories of high school, popular culture in America has always treated The College Admissions Essay as some sort of rite of passage for teenagers transitioning into adulthood.  There is so much focus on it—not only in the news but also in the fictionalized stories we discover in YA novels and teen soaps.  Everyone is struggling to figure out what to write, how to define him or herself, and how to stand out from the rest of the pack as they vie for acceptance into their so-called “dream school.” As school was certainly not something I dreamed about with anything resembling positivity in those days, this very notion was foreign to me. Of course, when I started applying to graduate schools six years later (this time around, I applied to 8 separate schools and got into 4), I wrote plenty of personal essays. But by that time I was no longer a teenager—I was a completely different person at a completely different stage of my life.  It was not the same.  And for personal reasons I won’t waste time delving into here, I also refused to walk at my high school graduation. So yes, despite (begrudgingly) completing all the necessary credits and passing the exit exam with flying scantrons and #2 pencils, a part of me did feel that perhaps I never really graduated from high school.

I was personally inspired by and a bit envious of the situation described in the New York Times article because some of these newer, more delightfully bizarre essay prompts are exactly the type of thing that invite and reward creativity and innovative thinking, one of the few things I excelled at in high school. While my friends and I were conceiving the idea for this blog series, we did briefly consider writing our essays as our teenage selves. The idea appealed to me; however, I was such an unbearable and obnoxious person back then (as I am constantly reminded of any time I read a blog post written back in those days—some of these things still exist online!) that I felt such an undertaking would be counterproductive. At the same time, I make the promise to approach my essays with a certain amount of innocence regarding the future and what it might mean for me as I go “back to school.”

* The TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) is the 5-part exit exam everyone had to pass in 11th grade to graduate from a public high school in Texas back when I graduated from high school in 2005.  It replaced the TAAS test that most of us had been raised with, and is currently being phased out by the STAAR (State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness) test. I believe the writing prompt for that year was about the ramifications of keeping secrets.

Deep in the Heart

Excerpts, News

Susan Lin - deep in the heart map

[ full size ]

Here’s a look at an ongoing mapping project I’m working on in conjunction with my in-progress collection of short fiction and CNF taking place in or around my hometown of Sugar Land, TX.  I created this first draft for my final project in the “Maps and the Geospatial Revolution” course (taught by Dr. Anthony Robinson at Penn State) that just concluded on Coursera.  Next month I’l be taking the “Dino 101: Dinosaur Paleobiology” course out of the University of Alberta.  I expect I’ll have much inspiration for my novel as a result of that class.  Speaking of which, the first excerpt for Tyrannosaurus Rexia has surfaced online at Ghost Town.  Go check it out: A Lifetime Spent Documenting the World

Check out what I had to say about my map below:

As a writer whose work is heavily influenced by place and location, I set out to create a map that could act as a companion to an in-progress collection of short fiction and creative non-fiction set in and around my hometown of Sugar Land, Texas.  I moved to the west coast two years ago with the plan to attend graduate school and work on a novel set primarily in the California wilderness. And yet, when I arrived I found myself writing constantly about the very place I’d just left. During my first week, I visited the Oakland Museum of California and found Gene Autry’s “Deep in the Heart of Texas” on a jukebox in their historical exhibit and immediately set it to play. I don’t think I realized how much I loved my home state until I wasn’t there anymore.

Currently, the map contains short synopses of each work and attempts to plot out crucial points of interest throughout the region using a color-coded system.  As I mentioned briefly on the side column, my goal was to show in a dynamically visual way how all these characters from disparate circumstances and situations and time periods exist in and share the same space, their paths in life overlapping.  I’m a firm believer of the notion that while we take away a piece of a place wherever we go, we also leave a piece of ourselves there.  The Earth forgets nothing.

In print, this map will act as both a reference guide and a table of contents with page numbers at the beginning of the book.  On the web, the possibilities are endless.  Once implemented online, the map could link directly to each piece and be an interactive tool for the reader, featuring more pop-up photos and zoomed in locations. It would also have the potential to evolve over time if I decided to write more pieces about the region and plot additional points, for example.  In the future, I hope to create more detailed maps for each individual story in the collection.

The base map was created using Google Maps API Styled Maps Wizard and then laid out and designed with Adobe Photoshop.  Some of the plotted photographs are from my own collection; others have been appropriated from the web.

Also, you may have noticed I haven’t posted a new installment of “As Seen on TV” in a couple weeks.  This does not mean I won’t be writing these posts anymore, but that particular series is on hold as I explore other distribution options.  I will say that since my last blog on the subject, Dexter (particular Julie Benz, which is ironic since I’ve had an irrational aversion to her since she appeared on Roswell) has completely won me over.

[AS SEEN ON TV] Week Three: Showtime’s Dexter

As Seen On TV

As Seen on TV is a new weekly series of blog posts I’ll be doing in response to reading/dissecting the pilot scripts of various television programs, both old and new, and then watching or re-watching the pilot episodes they spawned, whenever appropriate.

Week One: The WB’s Supernatural
Week Two: AMC’s The Killing

Warning: spoilers up to episode 1×04 of Dexter are inevitable

This installment of ASoT is going to be considerably different than the last two because I just started watching Dexter last week and I’m only up to episode four. I haven’t read the Jeff Lindsay novel it’s inspired by either.  As a result, I can’t really speak in broader terms of series-long or even season-long arcs—spoiler-phobe that I am, I can only guess where the story might be going. This week will also differ due to the overall tone of the series.  I didn’t plan the line-up this way, honest, but Supernatural and The Killing share a lot of the same viewers—and their respective fandoms seem to overlap quite a bit from what I’ve observed.  Given some thought, it’s easy to see why.  Despite the differences between the two shows (many of which I outlined last week) both are heart-wrenching and at times devastating dramas with a pair of brooding leads who carry the weight of the world on their shoulders.

From the first page of Dexter’s pilot script, it’s painfully clear that we have a different kind of animal on our hands…