"Sharing stories reminds me of lessons I've already learned..."
RYAN CHIN
WITHOUT RAIN THERE CAN BE NO RAINBOWS
New Zealand is home to wave-filled coastlines, meandering trout streams, and the intense Maori culture. For Ryan, an elementary school teacher, it’s also a world where animals are loved and lost and a brother is gone but never forgotten. For years Ryan dreamed of teaching overseas but would never break the bond with his first dog, Toughy. With Toughy’s premature death, though, Ryan finds himself mourning his best friend while booking a flight to his childhood dream destination. In a new country with no friends and no prearranged job, he finally confronts his brother’s passing, bonds with a class of Maori children in a beautiful and sometimes dangerous land, and slowly learns to love new pets. All the while, he longs for the seemingly unattainable woman he left behind. Mr. Chin, as his students call him, learns what it means to live life “full on.”
Two dozen videos enhance the written word in electronic versions of the book.
A MULTIMEDIA MEMOIR
Throughout the print book, you’ll see a monitor symbol indicating
that a video accompanies the text. Electronic versions have links to the videos or the videos are embedded.
Although the book stands alone as its own storytelling device, each of the twenty-four videos adds visual and audio accents to the written story. The footage in the videos was extracted from over sixty hours of tape that I shot in New Zealand and in the years since my return.
As a writer I have strived to make every word count, and as a filmmaker I have agonized over every second of video that you will see. I had no idea how the two practices would come
together to deliver my story, but as the Kiwis say, I had to “give
it a go!”
Available at Amazon, iBooks, and Autographed Copies