ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrick Erwin is a writer and journalist. His credits include a stint as a staff writer for CareerBuilder.com, and a writer for a Chicago-based LGBT website, covering the 2015 mayoral election and the intersections of religious communities and LGBT communities.
His freelance work includes over a decade of feature writing for local newspapers and magazines. His story took a tangent in 2012 when he returned to college after a long hiatus; during his time there, he wrote for the student newspaper and was the head news and online editor.
In addition to this blog, Patrick’s content about serialized drama has appeared on Marlena DeLacroix’s blog, where he was a featured contributor, and on WeLoveSoaps.net.
ABOUT THIS SITE, IN THE AUTHOR’S OWN WORDS:
A Thousand Other Worlds originally published content from 2008 to 2010. It was rebooted in spring 2015.
The main focus here is serialized TV. The earliest content focused on daytime soap operas. The original focus was on the soaps of Procter and Gamble, who had a big hand in creating the genre and produced several of my favorites, including Guiding Light, As The World Turns, and Another World. I always appreciated those shows for their theatrical realism, versus what was, at the time, somewhat absurdist fantasy elements of the West Coast shows, like Days of our Lives and General Hospital.
When P&G ditched soaps in 2010, I didn’t have much else to say at the time and closed up shop, but I decided to relaunch the blog to talk about serialized shows popping up on nighttime TV, as well as web shows and the promising frontiers on Netflix and Hulu.
While serialized stories get a bad rap (for what are sometimes valid reasons), I also love many aspects of the genre: the ability to capture a single character over a long time frame, the connection between biological families and chosen ones, and, well, just being told a good story. What is Harry Potter but a good soap opera, where you see Harry find a family, when he grows and evolves over a number of years?
SURVIVAL OF THE SOAP OPERA
In 2010, Survival of the Soap Opera was published. It was edited by Sam Ford, Abigail De Kosnik, and C. Lee Harrington, all academics and professionals with a history of researching and writing about soaps. I contributed an essay about Guiding Light, one rooted in my visit to the set of GL (and the Peapack sets) in December 2008.
A | THOUSAND | OTHER | WORLDS 