Sunday, May 1, 2011

Meet Tam Linsey

My name is Tam Linsey, and I was the kid who took AP Chemistry and AP Biology my senior year of High School. I won a scholarship to a DOE camp at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, toured the superconducting supercollider, karyotyped DNA from the HIV virus (I know, your eyes are crossing, right?) and then …
… realized if I pursued biomedical engineering like I planned, I might never see the outside of a lab again.

So I got a Bachelor of SCIENCE in … English. What a bunch of B.S. (kidding! I totally value my college days.) I never thought I'd write science fiction, however, until I caught myself reading scientific papers online - for fun. My imagination ran wild. Why not put my English degree to good use?


So, here I am, creating characters who have taken biomedical engineering to extremes while I get to live in Alaska where I can garden, fish, hunt, and thankfully enjoy the light of day. At least in summer. Our dark winters are a different story …

13 comments:

Judith Ashley said...

Love your photo(?) of the DNA thing? I'm laughing now...I was the one who wrote extra credit reports so I could pass Freshman Biology without having to even be at school the day the dissected the frog!
But I will be forever grateful to being paired with you a year ago for 1st Turning Points Platform Building Class.
See where it got us?! Who knew...

Judy said...

I really enjoyed your post. Sounds like you changed fields in mid stream. I have never been to Alaska, but I bet it is a great place to visit in the summer time.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like an interesting combination of backgrounds that might make for fascinating stories. I am intrigued!

Sarah Raplee said...

Tam,Your website has me totally intrigued! What an awesome concept your current work is based on!

I lived in Alaska on Annette island, in Sitka, and on Kodiak Island years ago when my husband was in the coast Guard. We loved it!

Anonymous said...

Hi Tam. It's not all that weird, I got a BS in Architecture (having started in aeronautics), then went on for an MA in literature and got a job as a technical writer (for a computer center). So now I mostly write dark fantasy/horror (though sometimes with romantic subplots)!

Judith Ashley said...

One of the things I find so fascinating and RTG is a great example of it - and that is the various and varied roads we've taken to be here, today, in this cyber place together.

Tam Linsey said...

I cut my teeth writing 5 contemporary romances set in Alaska. They say write what you know. I say write what you love! I love Alaska, but I'm infatuated with bioengineering. I'm so glad to be part of this group as we all explore our genres together. Cross genre studies can teach us all to make our own writing a lot richer!

Greta said...

Hi,Tam. Those dark winters are perfect writing weather, aren't they?? (If you manage to stay out of hibernation mode, I mean.)

Thanks for your post and good luck with your writing!

Terri Molina said...

Okay...I'll admit my eyes crossed. ;-)

I spent two very long years in Petersburg Alaska..the only good thing to come out of that stay was my daughter. haha

Diana McCollum said...

Hi, Tam, I really like your fishing picture. Alaska sounds like a great place to live. I bet you get a lot of good ideas for story lines, and unusual characters. Bio-tech sounds really intriguing. Glad we will be blogging together.

Sarah Raplee said...

I have to laugh at Terri's crossed eyes! Isolated Alaskan panhandle towns are places people either love, or go crazy in. At least, that was my experience. Annette Island had 12 to 14 FEET of rain per year! Either you adapted, or you never left the house.:)

Dark Fantasy Horror from a Tech Writer - no surprise there! I still have nightmares from my mind-numbing tech writing years. :) Have you read Blood Brothers by Nora Roberts? It's a rare animal - a Horror Romance.There are three books in the series. I loved them, and I'm not a huge Nora Roberts fan.

Tam Linsey said...

Thanks, everyone! I'll have get a copy of Blood Brothers. Sounds interesting.

Judith Ashley said...

Here I am, scrolling through comments to make sure I got all the new ones (they keep coming in) and my eye caught "Blood Brothers". I have the trilogy but have not and can't imagine I'll ever read it...Horror Romance? I probably can't get pass the horror to appreciate the romance...