What is “Shoals Court?”: This blog is a work of “blog fiction” in the form of a narrative soap opera (an “online soap opera” if you will). Each episode is broken into 10 short segments or scenes that advance one part of the story. The stories move back and forth between the different households in the neighborhood. Every post is tagged with the episode number and the household name so that readers can pull just the pieces they want to read. However, the stories are intertwined so that parts of the action that concern one household may show up in other households. New characters will be introduced as the story goes on.
For now, reader comments have been left open to invite discussion or suggestions. Please keep the comments clean, polite, and short.
Setting: “Shoals Court” is a cul-de-sac in a large development in a coastal town. The street is lined with two-family condo units. Each side of the unit features two stories, a garage, and a patio. Walking paths connect the neighborhood to the beach and the local playground while buses connect them to the larger city. Incomes vary in the Court, but most are in the middle, neither very wealthy nor very poor. The ethnic backgrounds and religious leanings of the residents are varied.
Our Header Image: This is Sand Beach, Acadia National Park, in July. You wouldn’t want to swim there without a wet suit but it’s a gorgeous setting. The photo was taken by Glenn LeBlanc in 2007 and is used with his permission. See more at: http://www.gleblanc.smugmug.com/
Our Logo: As mentioned above, Shoals Court is a cul-de-sac, a circle at the end of a short street within a housing development. Our logo is based on a Goggle Map image of a cul-de-sac upon which our founding creative brain once lived. A traditional image of a labyrinth is superimposed on the inner circle. The visual message here is that life is both simpler and more complex in the Court than first meets the eye. The beat cops, Tranh and Saris, see only an endlessly repeating loop of tidy home fronts that never seem to change. For the residents, however, the pathways through life in the Court are unclear, frustrating, and confusing at times.
