Everything Is Better With Dragons
Book blogger, Autistic, Probably a Dragon
No news this week, I sent a slightly altered version to my supervisor last Friday and haven’t heard back yet.
On the creative side, I spent an hour with google maps and satellite images, and now I have a more precise idea of where in the city Lucie is living and have tried to add details to the manuscript.
On the essay side, I tried again without the ‘I’, and I’m a bit more hopeful about this effort. I’ll get there eventually.
I have a headache and I’m coughing and stuffy. It’s either a cold or heyfever. Choices, choices.
Anyway, I’m whiling away my time reading, as usual now I’ve sent in another email with my dissertation, and today’s choice is one of my book shopping spree purchases: Odd Girl Out, by Laura James.
Reading it, I’ve found so many things, thoughts, feelings, that I recognise. That I’ve felt or experienced, despite our different backgrounds and upbringing. The oddness of other people, not understanding the social rules, being immersed in books, not understanding the whole football thing, practical empathy, being overwhelmed by other people’s feelings, especially negative feelings, not quite getting why people lie, there’s so much!
She talks about the irony of an autistic woman in a communications profession – she’s a journalist. Communication deficits are a hallmark of autism. The fact is, we communicate well in writing. I prefer to write than talk, because I can be very precise in writing. I mean what I write. There’s no need to assume otherwise. If I’m being satirical, humorous or sarcastic I can indicate that either directly with a symbol, or with the sentence structure. It’s also solid, I have information in writing, so I can refer back to it if I get confused or need reassurance. Or to win an argument.
Speech is different. If I say something, other people have a habit of deciding the meaning based on my face or body language, rather than the actual words used. My face does not always show my feelings. My words get jumbled up if I’m stressed or answering an unexpected question. I can’t always hear and process speech. I forget what’s been said or what I’ve said. Sometimes. Beware, I also have the ability to recall conversations from months or years ago with accuracy. Sometimes I lose the ability to speak, especially under stress, or if I’m heading into a shutdown. It’s very frustrating.
So, because autists have problems with verbal communication, our ability to communicate at all is written off as deficient. This attitude keeps the non-speaking from being given any respect at all, and those of us who do speak are told we’re too good at communicating to actually be autistic when we go for a diagnosis. It’s not just doctors either, when autistic people advocate for themselves they get push back from certain people – they can’t possibly be autistic if they can write a tweet. *massive eye-roll* Or they must be ‘high functioning’ and don’t understand the experience of ‘low functioning’ people. Almost invariably, when asked what they mean by ‘low functioning’, not speaking is included in the criteria. *again, eye roll*
Just because there’s a block between mind and mouth doesn’t mean there’s a block between mind and hand, or low intellectual ability, or low competancy. People need to stop assuming speech is the only valid means of communication. Give people the means to communicate and actually read what they’re saying.
Right, now I’ve got that off my chest I’m going back to reading my book.
I’ve had a week off from the dissertation. It was my birthday last Sunday, but I’d had so much on in the preceding days that I mostly ate, napped and read, especially after the anxiety-provoking disaster that was trying to go to Lidl. I’ve had a book shopping spree, and I’m expecting four more books, birthday presents mostly. Also, my book from Tess the Neurodivergent Goddess arrived, so that’s been added to the pile. If you follow me on GoodReads, you’ll have some idea of the number of books I’ve devoured in this last week. It’s very calming. I’m at 49 of 100 books read on my reading challenge.
I have actually done some work on my dissertation today, I made some changes to the essay to remove the ‘I’, and I added some books to the bibliography. I like a good bibliography. All nice and alphabetically ordered. I’m currently reading Odd Girl Out by Laura James, an autistic woman who got her diagnosis as an adult. It is interesting to see the similarities and differences in out experiences. This is one of the books I’ve added to the bibliography. I want Lucie to have the same experiences and responses to situations that a real autistic woman would have, and reading various accounts, both in books and online, has added to my own lived experience in the writing process.
Published By: Red Door Books
Publication Date: 31st May 2018
I.S.B.N.: 9781910453568
Format: Paperback
Price: £8.99
Blurb
Polly, 28, lives in London with her ‘perfect-on-paper’ boyfriend. She works a dead-end job on a free London paper. . . life as she knows it is dull. But her banal existence is turned upside down late one drunken night on her way home, after a chance encounter with a man on a packed tube train. The chemistry between them is electric and on impulse, they kiss, giving in to their carnal desires. But it’s over in an instant, and Polly is left shell-shocked as he walks away without even telling her his name.
Now obsessed with this beautiful stranger, Polly begins a frantic online search, and finally discovers more about tubing, an underground phenomenon in which total strangers set up illicit, silent, sexual meetings on busy commuter tube trains. In the process, she manages to track him down and he slowly lures her into his murky world, setting up encounters with different men via Twitter.
At first she thinks she can keep it separate from the rest of her life, but things soon spiral out of control.
By chance she spots him on a packed tube train with a young, pretty blonde. Seething with jealousy, she watches them together. But something isn’t right and a horrific turn of events makes Polly realise not only how foolish she has been, but how much danger she is in…
Can she get out before it’s too late?
Published By: Red Door Publishing
Publication Date: 5th July 2018
Format: Paperback
I.S.B.N.: 9781910453599
Price: £8.99
Blurb
In the second book in the exciting and atmospheric Shadow of the Raven series we rejoin novice monk turned warrior, Matthew as he marches ahead of King Alfred, to Exeter to herald the King’s triumphant return to the city, marking his great victory at Edington.
It should have been a journey of just five or perhaps six days but, as Matthew is to find to his cost, in life the road you’re given to travel is seldom what you wish for and never what you expect.
In this much-anticipated sequel Chris Bishop again deposits the reader slap-bang into the middle of Saxon Britain, where battles rage and life is cheap. An early confrontation leaves Matthew wounded, but found and tended by a woodland-dwelling healer he survives, albeit with the warning that the damage to his heart will eventually take his life.
Matthew faces many challenges as he battles to make his way back to Chippenham to be reunited with King Alfred and also with the woman he wants to make his wife. This is an epic tale of triumph over adversity as we will the warrior with the pierced heart to make it back to those he loves, before it is too late.
Continue reading “Book Review: ‘The Warrior with the Pierced Heart’, by Chris Bishop”
The second blog tour I’m taking part in this month is for The Warrior With The Pierced Heart, by Chris Bishop. It’s historical fiction set in 9th century Wessex, and follows the trials and tribulations of former-monk Matthew after the Battle of Edington.
The tour starts tomorrow and I’ll be adding my review on Tuesday 19th June. Check out the other book bloggers involved.
Blurb
In the second book in the exciting and atmospheric Shadow of the Raven series we rejoin novice monk turned warrior, Matthew as he marches ahead of King Alfred, to Exeter to herald the King’s triumphant return to the city, marking his great victory at Edington. It should have been a journey of just five or perhaps six days but, as Matthew is to find to his cost, in life the road you’re given to travel is seldom what you wish for – and never what you expect.
In this much-anticipated sequel Chris Bishop again deposits the reader slap-bang into the middle of Saxon Britain, where battles rage and life is cheap. An early confrontation leaves Matthew wounded, but found and tended by a woodland-dwelling
healer he survives, albeit with the warning that the damage to his heart will eventually take his life.Matthew faces many challenges as he battles to make his way back to Chippenham to be reunited with King Alfred and also with the woman he wants to make his wife. This is an epic tale of triumph over adversity as we will the warrior with the pierced heart to make it back to those he loves, before it is too late.
It is also my birthday today. Happy birthday to me.
Published By: Sapere Books
Publication Date: 16th February 2018
I.S.B.N.: 9781912546039
Format: Paperback
Price: £6.50
Blurb
Jack the Ripper is stalking the streets of London. Can anyone stop the serial killer before more women are murdered?
London, 1888
Whitechapel is full of the noise of August Bank Holiday celebrations. Everyone is in high spirits until a woman – Martha Turner – is discovered brutally murdered.
Her friend, Esther, a lowly seamstress turned female sleuth, is determined to find the killer.
A young police officer, Jack Enright, takes the lead on the case, and he and Esther soon embark on a professional – and personal – relationship.
When another murder is committed and whispers of a slasher calling himself Jack the Ripper start flowing through the London streets, the search becomes even more desperate.
The police are on the wrong track and the young couple take matters into their own hands, and soon find themselves navigating through London’s dark underbelly.
Can they find the murderer before he kills again? Will anyone listen to their suspicions?
Or will this dark presence continue to haunt Whitechapel…?
THE GASLIGHT STALKER is the first crime thriller in an exciting new historical series, the Esther and Jack Enright Mysteries, a traditional British detective series set in Victorian London and packed full of suspense
Continue reading “June Bonus Review #2: ‘The Gaslight Stalker’, by David Field”
Some progress has been made since last week. Although I haven’t been writing much.
The dissertation supervisor now likes my villain, and the hints of a darker undertone, but is still holding out on Lucie. He said he knows I think I’m writing a stereotype but people won’t realise she’s autistic unless I do. I think we’re at stalemate on that front.
The other thing he mentioned was the landscape, it still isn’t ‘solid’ enough, and he suggested adding the texture in the passage about Lucie taking a night walk around Lincoln. I need to get back to Lincoln and walk around a bit making notes, I think.
I also need to re-write the essay for the third time. It has to be objective, I need to take the ‘I’ out of it. This could be interesting.
In other Rosie news:
I’ve submitted Hidden Fire to Inspired Quill, an independent, traditional publisher. Inspired Quill was recommended to me last September by one of their authors, at a Book Connectors meet-up.
I have book post! So much book post, because I treat myself to a stack of books once the money the county council owed me arrived. Plus, a book from Authoright, which I will be reviewing for them at some point later in the month. After I make my way through my pile of lovely books. Some of them are actually doing double duty as research for my dissertation, but still. Books! I don’t often get to buy new books, so I’m very happy.
Saturday 16th June marks the first anniversary of the publication of Hidden Fire: I will be at The Crafty Collective Open Day/Craft Fair selling copies of my books. If you’re in North East Lincolnshire, or nearby, come and support a local craft club. We have a raffle! I have donated gift packs of books and bookmarks to the raffle, and some peg bags that I made, to the club’s table. I’ll have a few of my dragons with me.
And now i have to go and collect up all the bits that have blown out of my plastics bin. It’s recycling box day; the box is rather full, and the wind is rather high.
Published by: ICON
Publication Date: 24th January 2017
ISBN: 9781785783180
Format: Paperback
Price: £8.99
Blurb
Many people believe that, at its core, biological sex is a fundamental, diverging force in human development. According to this overly familiar story, differences between the sexes are shaped by past evolutionary pressures: Women are more cautious and parenting-focused, while men seek status to attract more mates. In each succeeding generation, sex hormones and male and female brains are thought to continue to reinforce these unbreachable distinctions, making for entrenched inequalities in modern society.
In Testosterone Rex, psychologist Cordelia Fine wittily explains why past and present sex roles are only serving suggestions for the future, revealing a much more dynamic situation through an entertaining and well-documented exploration of the latest research that draws on evolutionary science, psychology, neuroscience, endocrinology, and philosophy. She uses stories from daily life, scientific research, and common sense to break through the din of cultural assumptions. Testosterone, for instance, is not the potent hormonal essence of masculinity; the presumed, built-in preferences of each sex, from toys to financial risk taking, are turned on their heads.
Moving beyond the old “nature versus nurture” debates, Testosterone Rex disproves ingrained myths and calls for a more equal society based on both sexes’ full, human potential.
Continue reading “Bonus Review: ‘Testosterone Rex’, by Cordelia Fine”
A couple of days late, I know, but I was busy Tuesday and spent a lot of Wednesday asleep, recovering.
Anyway. I wrote 2000 words about the representation of autistic women in crime fiction, only to be told by my supervisor that I was doing it wrong. So that essay got put to one side and I re-wrote it, covering a range of subjects in relation to my dissertation. I’ve sent that, and an updated draft of the creative piece off on Wednesday morning.
On Sunday, before all that, I got an email with feedback. As usual, the supervisor doesn’t like Lucie or the murderer. I accepted that there was something flat about the murderer, because in the first 13,000 words I’d been concentrating on setting up the situation and establishing Lucie. What I didn’t appreciate was being told Lucie wasn’t recognisably autistic.
I may have been a bit blunt in my response email:
I have written Lucie based on my own, and other women’s experiences of being autistic. If you are unfamiliar with autistic women it may not be immediately obvious that she is, but to those who know or are autistic women, it is. Current representations of autistic women in popular culture are limited to socially-inept autistic savants, an unrealistic stereotype. The vast majority of autistic women are not Sheldon Cooper with breasts and I’m not writing Lucie as such just because the rest of the world are too ignorant to look past stereotypes created by non-autistic people about autistic people. She needs to be realistic, to widen popular representations of autistic women beyond the ‘autistic savant’-type, because there are autistic police officers and to provide a role model for those autistic women who aren’t Saga Noren. That’s what I’m trying to do with this character.
My description of her autistic traits goes beyond the ‘likes pattern and order’ you mentioned:
- She is described reacting to sensory stimulation in several chapters. Sensory Processing Disorder is a common co-morbid condition, as is anxiety. She mitigates her processing problems with the use of noise-cancelling headphones
- She stims, tapping and running her fingers across patterns and materials
- She blocks out visual stimuli in meetings and in busy rooms so that she can concentrate on her work or the meeting by looking at her computer screen and by building her file fort
- She has hyper focused on the idea that someone at Witham View is the murderer and is ignoring the other lines of enquiry. This is based on her putting together small clues that others have missed, and looking at it from a different angle. Her autism is relevant because it helps her see the case differently.
- She struggles with social interaction and communication, forgetting her carefully learnt ‘scripts’ when tired or stressed, and oversharing personal information with colleagues. This causes conflict with her colleagues and will be a subplot that evolves through the full length novel. This is where her autism is also relevant.
- She has a limited sense of danger – wandering around Lincoln, a place she doesn’t know well, in the early hours of the morning to take photographs in the rain because she enjoys photography and needs to relax.
- She’s blunt, although she’s learn to hold back when dealing with witnesses – for instance in her conversation with Vera. And it is a learnt behaviour, she doesn’t have the instinctive ability to gauge other people that neurotypical people have.
These are recognisably autistic traits. Your response was the equivalent of ‘but you don’t look autistic’, an insulting comment the majority of autistic women hear at least once in their lives that is used to dismiss their experience of autism because it doesn’t fit with the stereotypes.
I have yet to hear back, either about this complaint or my dissertation drafts; I suspect my dissertation supervisor is ignoring me now. I added extra stuff, making it obvious when Lucie was stimming and her anxiety about dealing with work colleagues. I felt like I had to exaggerate to appease the ignorant.
I don’t like humans very much, at times.
Some of you are okay, I suppose.
In other news, I went to my first Adult Autism Forum Cafe on Tuesday evening (after going to craft club in the afternoon); the topic was supposed to be ‘confidence’ but I ended up on a table with two other women, we drew trees and talked about yarn. One of them got out her spinning so I got out my crochet. It was fun. I think I’m going to go to the sensory group on the 18th and the Forum on the 19th. Also, I have an appointment with a clinical psychologist and a support worker from the High Functioning Autism Service (I didn’t name it – I don’t like the functioning labels) on Tuesday morning to see what support they can offer. I need to write a list.
Right, it’s 5.15 a.m., and I should try to get back to sleep. The dogs are snoring at me.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 