Ho Lin - Writings and Thoughts

Writings and Thoughts

I believe I've been writing since I was four years old. At the start, it was primarily picture books and recreations of Batman TV episodes. If I had known this would become a life-long habit, I would have saved some of this period's germinations; sadly, they were all trashed when my family moved in 1977. I actually had more success as an illustrator, as some of my work appeared in Stone Soup magazine (which is an excellent publication irregardless of my contributions). I would supply an average of five illustrations for someone else's story, and receive $5 per illustration -- a fortune for a nine-year old boy. In 1984 I finally had one of my own stories ("Love, Brad" -- argh, what a title) published in the magazine, and as is customary for prose submissions, received nothing. Let that be a lesson to all writers.

The turning point came in 1977, when I happened across an E.W. Hildick book. This generation has J.K. Rowling, I had E.W. Hildick and his McGurk mysteries. Great characters, great stories, and lots of sneaky narrative subtlety (Rashomon-like perspective changes, for instance). As just another reminder that I am indeed old, most of these books are out of print, but I still remember the titles: The Case of the Secret Scribbler, The Case of the Condemned Cat, the Case of the Vanishing Ventriloquist, The Case of the Invisible Dog, The Great Rabbit Rip-Off. So I started composing my own preadolescent, pseudo-McGurk potboilers: The Case of the Missing Bikes, The Case of the Dead Dog, The Case of the Disappearing Acrobats. Imitation and flattery, you know. My "books" were pretty small back then ... about 32 handwritten pages each, with an illustration every other page. I'm happy to say that most of these are preserved somewhere in my parents' basement.

[Update: Three cheers for Alibris! Through them, I've procured a handful of McGurk books, including The Case of the Nervous Newsboy and the all-time classic The Case of the Secret Scribbler.]

In my pursuit of the cultural Zeitgeist, I've taken a lot of strange paths. During the Star Wars phenomenon in the late 70s, I wrote a 200-page (handwritten, maxi-size, plenty o' illustrations) novel involving our now-intergalactic young sleuths. It was called The Space Affair, and while it lacked any of the perverted elements you might glean from a title like that, it did feature suspense and intrigue, battles for control of the Earth, and pictures of spaceships. Lots of pictures of spaceships.

The next major step was my first "real" novel, a sci-fi thriller called The Kuram Assignment (don't ask -- read the book). That one owed more than a little bit to the film Blade Runner, but hey, it was 200+ pages (single-spaced typing, no less), and I finished it for a high school class project. One of these days I may dig it out and try to get it published as a parody. My old high school friends still delight in reciting the first line of the story over and over: Neil Daniels was bored.

Since then it's been a series of false starts, abandoned projects, short stories, and sidetracks -- but you know all about that from my background section.

Here you'll find excerpts from my writings, past and present. Some of these have been labored over for years; others are still young and innocent; still others have been abandoned altogether. I am currently hunting for an agent for Western Dreams, and Beijing Blue is my current work in progress.

I serve as co-editor on Caveat Lector, a San Francisco magazine which has been around for a dozen years. Be sure to check out the Web version at www.caveat-lector.org. I have also been a sometime book reviewer for Pulp Magazine, a monthly compendium of adult manga and commentary on Japanese culture (now sadly defunct). I have included the pieces I have written for the publication here. It's worth checking their archives, especially if you don't suffer from overdelicate sensibilities (or overdeveloped morals?). The editor-in-chief of the magazine, Alvin Lu, is a friend of mine from my days at Brown U., and his first novel, The Hell Screens, has just been published. Find it at your local bookstore if you can.

Note: This is an awful lot of text to sift through, I know. Remember that if you encounter eyestrain, you can always increase the font size on your browser (Click "View" on the top bar and then "Text Size" if you're in Internet Explorer, or hold down the Ctrl key and hit the ] key if you're in Netscape). Enjoy!

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