Possibilities

This is a subject that I've been thinking about a lot in recent weeks, due in part to someone asking me to try and explain what makes me different from other people.  When I consider that for any length of time I find myself going back to the moment when I first realised why people talked to one another.

It was when I first held my sister in my arms as a baby and I can remember quiet clearly the instant that I realised that here, in this little body, was a different soul.  Even now the memory of realising at this little being had a different soul to me can shake me.  The realisation that she did not think the same thoughts as me, did not know what I knew, blew out more of my circuits that I can explain even now.  It sudden knowledge that we weren't just two different bodies but two different souls was a revelation as blinding as the vision on the road to Damascus.

Before that I had been silent because I thought that everybody knew what everybody else was feeling and thinking.  I thought that what one knew we all knew, what one thought we all thought.  I didn't like talking because to me it was a wasteful noise that stopped the music in my head.

What is more, even now I will have a moment when because I know something I expect everybody else to know it.

Having been looking at this for some time now I've started wondering something.  Is it possible that without knowing the meaning of the word telepathy, the infant autistic mind automatically assumes its existence?

Is that why we struggle with speech?  Because we are expecting knowledge and emotion to transfer on a wave length of the mind, a direct connection of thought to thought?

When Isaac Asimov wrote about the people of Ghia in 'Forward the Foundation' and 'Foundation and Earth' who, when they speak of themselves, say "I/We/Ghia" was he describing the world that autistics expect themselves to be born into?

Are autistics the people who are reaching for an evolution, not of the body, but of the mind?

And if that is so, then what is the human race throwing away by forcing us to close off that possibility and live life on society's current terms?

To Book Covers and Beyond

O.K. I'm doing a late night to type this one up but since I don't think that I'm going to have much time to write one up over the weekend I thought I better get one in quick.

The design for my book cover is progressing.  I'm pretty sure that I have the right lay out and format now, as inspired by the front covers of the Artemis Fowl books (big thanks to Eion Colfer and his design team!) however, I am struggling to get the right back ground colour.  It is being a pig and using up a lot more paper than I want it to.  I'm beginning to wonder if I should start looking through the sheets of coloured paper I have laying around the house.  I don't want to use dark blue because that would just be a total rip off of the a fore mentioned Artemis Fowl books and nobody likes a thief but a light coloured back ground just wouldn't look right.  Believe me I've tried it and it definitely doesn't look right.  Would a dark royal purple go well?

Any way, the main question I want to posse you lovely people who read my blog is this - when my book is published what would you like me to do on my blog?  I can do world descriptions or I can do character profiles?  Either/or is good or would you like me to do both?

I'm hoping that I can get the cover wrapped up soon and not just so I can start selling but also so that I can move on to other projects as I started work with my editor today on the second book in the series.

Galloping Gargoyles!  I've just realised that I need to do a series logo for the spine!  Great, even more work.  Hopefully it will all pay off when I'm up on the best selling lists.  Still until then it is more pressure for me to carry.  And no sight of that Time Turner I asked for a couple of weeks back.  Can you grow time in a pot do you suppose?

People say that writing is a job for lazy people that is the get rich quick route.  Sorry to disappoint you but it isn't.  It takes an awful lot of work and there are no guarantees of riches at the end of it, especially with the tax man eyeing up half of your profit.  Why can't he go and bother Amazon for a while?  Or maybe Vodaphone.  That would probably pay off half the national debt in one go, if the politicians didn't grab it all before it could get to there.

Any way, if I'm to get any sleep at all tonight I need to wrap it up there.  Talk again soon and let me know what you want me to do once the book is on the shelves.

Ghoulies, Ghosties and the Things That Go Bump in the Night

Last night I went on the Tuesday edition of the Norwich Ghost walk, also known as the Elmhill wall.

It was brilliant.  It turned up parts of Norwich's history that I didn't know existed and showed me a couple of buildings that I hadn't notice before.  One of them particularly in Tombland looks like the architect was high on something when he built it, especially when you view the back and discover the 'door to no where'.  Did the Tudors have reefer?  Or did they make do with dried banana skins?  That's a point, did they have bananas in those days?  I don't know but what ever the designer was smoking I don't think it was normal tobacco.

There were suitable ghoulies and ghosties wandering about, although the helicopter which persisted in buzzing around and making it difficult for all of us was a serious annoyance.  If I'd know who it was I be tempted to go and put a walnut down the exhaust pipe.

Anyway, the ghoulies and ghosties where brilliant and apparently 'Brother John' rather liked me.  I didn't think that monks where allowed that sort of thing but as my friend Stormie pointed out, they used to have a passageway that ran below the road so they could nip out to the Maid's Head Hotel for a sneaky drink.  If they were doing that you have to wonder what they were getting up to with the bar maid.

All in all, it was a thoroughly enjoyable night out and was highly entertaining and informative.  The Man in Black, as our host introduced himself, was brilliant at spinning a yarn and playing up the atmosphere.  If you like slightly creepy and rather funny then I high recommend going on one of the walk.  The Man in Black and his creepy crew can also do birthday parties but only if the ghosts are not on strike.

If you want to go on one of the walks, then just meet up outside of the Adam and Eve pub, Bishopsgate, Norwich at 7.30pm on Tuesday or Thursday night (they do a different walk on the different evenings) or check up www.ghostwalksnorwich.co.uk.

I loved every minute of the two hours and these a Halloween special coming up but apparently you need to book that one 'cause they've had to impose a number limit for health and safety reasons.  That and the ghosts get shy if there are too many people there.

Post Me a Time Turner Please

The title is a general cry for help right now because between my book, my script, my own artwork, a commission, work from the Norwich Writers' Circle (I'm the Membership Secretary) and the house work I am pretty much utterly swamped.

Let's put it this way, yesterday I had twenty five jobs on my list of jobs to do, today I have twenty two and counting.  It seems as fast as I chop one of them off the list another one jumps up and attaches itself to my butt.  I'm up to my aft in alligators and I can't find the plug to drain the swamp.

So saying, most of the big jobs are being to approach being complete.  The script for 'Sleeping Beauty: A Pantomime' is over half way done so I'm hoping to post that up on RPGnow for sale by the end of the month.  It will be interesting to see how well it does as I've already had two amateur dramatic groups voice interest in it.

The front cover of my book is also making head way.  I've found a design that I much prefer.  Writers' Tip: Keep the front cover of your book simple.  Have a look at the recent editions of the 'Farseer Trilogies' by Robin Hobb, 'Harry Potter' by J. K. Rowling and the 'Artemis Fowl' series by Eoin Colfer.  All of them hit the best seller charts and though the contents of the books are what gains you fans, it is the front cover that gets the books off the shelves in the first place.

I know that the new author wants recognition for their years of hard work crafting, researching, rewriting and generally sweating and bleeding over their manuscript (hello I am one remember) but I'm sorry to say that it is the book cover that turns your manuscript into a book and it is the book that sales.

That is still pretty cold comfort when you are rushing around disappearing up your own backside, wishing that you could be in two places at once (hence the plead for a time turner) and still trying to improve the world just a little bit.  Homo autistic I maybe, I still care about the fact that there are people in Africa starving because it gets £30 billion in aid and looses £129 billion to exploitation, most through so-called tax havens. (Check out World Development Movement for details.)

And politicians will still try and tell you that slavery was abolished centuries ago.

Autistic and I Have Friends

For my regular followers, the cover art work for my book is progressing, in as much as I've done one design and rejected it so my book is inching towards publication.

For those of you who are just dropping in, the title of this post was done in response to something that was told to my friend Michelle.

Michelle, through an unfortunate series of events, has wound up spending her teenage years in care. More specifically in placements that have not encouraged her to make friends with people.  Let's put it this way, in one placement one of the other girls used to go round pouring water into the sockets in an effort to start a fire and burn down the building.  Not exactly the sort of people you want to be hanging round with.

Michelle, thankfully went to the same church as me and we got talking one day.  One thing led to another and by the time she was posted back to Yorkshire we were firm friends.

However, at the placement where there was the little fire starter, Michelle was being picked on by the staff because she 'didn't have any friends'.  When she turned round and said that she had me, she was informed by a member of staff that "she can't be your friend, she's Autistic and they don't know how to be friends."

I've had a lot of accusations thrown at me over the years because I'm Autistic and I have to say that this one has to be one of the most insulting that I have ever heard!

Yeah, so we have to be taught empathy and compassion.  So what?  That just puts the responsibility on your shoulders to teach it to us, if you want us to be able to use it.  Once we've learnt how to use compassion and empathy we can't stop.  Once the ability is turned on, we can't turn it off so all we need is for someone, like my Mother, to put the time in to teach it to us.

We can be friends and we make for very loyal friends, probably because once we have found someone who can put up with our little querks then we stick to them like glue.  So what if when one of our friends has a problem we don't just sit there shaking our heads and going 'oh what a shame' but get up and go out of our way to fix said problem.  Doesn't that make us the better friend because we are willing to pour our time and effort in to fixing other people's problems before our own?

So what that we sometimes get confused and have to ask someone to explain it all to us?  We are human, we make mistakes like homo sapient do, at least we tend to be more ready to admit that we've done a goof up.  Doesn't the ability to say 'I was wrong' make a more forgivable friend?

So we seem to think sideways when compared to everyone else?  Doesn't that make us the more interesting friend?  The one that you can count on to bring something something new to the table?  Something different?

Or is that the problem?  Do people find different scary?  Are we the big bad Bogey man?  Are we the one where it's not what we've done, it's more the fact that we exist?

Well, I'm autistic and I have friends, even if with some of them I count them as my friends and they don't count me as theirs.  I hope that I haven't picked up any of those in recent years, I don't think I have since I left High School.

Cover Artwork

Right, having managed to scrape together half an hour to sit down and compose a blog, I set out to do just that.

I'm in the process of discovering the joys and the exhaustion of being both a writer and an artist.

My first book is just about ready to publish and after much thought, much submissions and a lot of disappointment (would it hurt for these people to at least send you a rejection note), I've decided to go self published through the medium of RPG.NOW, a print on demand service that a friend of mine is already using, hence the recommendation.

Reasons for this:

1. To get published these days you have to have an agent.
2. Said agent has to be paid.
3. Said agent has no legal responsibility to push your book to the publishers and therefore can sit on your manuscript for years and be paid for the privilege.
4.Said agent will, when you get published, take 17% of your pay as their cut.
5. As a new, first time author you will be lucky to be given 2% of the profits as your royalties.
6.Therefore, if the publisher makes 1 pound profit from your book, you will be lucky to receive 2 pence and your agent will want 17% of that.
7. Publishers are only responsible for the printing and posting of your book to bookshops and the like.  It is the authors responsibility to maintain their website, their fan base, twitter feed, blog, contacts with writers' circles, organise talks and book signs, convention visits and generally do everything to actually shift their books off the shelves.

With all of that I decided that I might as well do all that work (which I would be doing anyway) and receive 100% of the profits, particularly as half of everything I receive has to be put aside for the tax man anyway.

The reasons I'm using a print on demand service is because:

1. It is already on the Internet so I don't have to worry about trying to make the links into that market.
2. I won't have to store piles of books every where.
3. If Mother takes another bad turn and I have to revert to being her carer for three months I don't have to worry about my e-mail inbox filling up with orders and complaints for books that I haven't had time to view and therefore, haven't completed.
4. In short a print on demand service is like a publisher but a lot more approachable.

The only thing I have to make sure of is to employ a very good editor to make sure my book is up to scratch, which I have already done so the written part of my book is jut about ready for publishing.  However, that engenders the downside of doing it myself, which is I need to have the cover artwork done.

See as I'm a artist as well as a writer, I can do the front cover myself but that does mean that my time is being gobbled up almost faster than I can credit, especially when I look at all the other stuff I have to squeeze into it.

As I mention to WillowRaven the other day, "As a writer and an artist, I don't sleep much."

Twitter Success

A little good news for me and rather a leap forward.

Don't ask me why but if I'm using my laptop on WiFi connection she will not link straight to the twitter website, which is more than a little annoying as it means I've become months behind in my posting.

However, I've just discovered to today that I can access my twitter account through all the e-mails they have been sending me.

Not only has this meant that I've been able to finally catch up with my long neglected twitter posts (granted only through retweets but some is better than none) I've also managed something I've never done before.

I started following WillowRaven, a fellow artist that specialises in book cover illustration, for which she sent me a thank you note over twitter and asked me what I was working on at the moment.  I think my reply of 'Four books, twelve paints, a script and trying to busk my work.  As an artist & a writer I don't sleep much' must have impressed her as I pretty much instantly had back 'I know the feeling'.

I've managed to start a thread on twitter!

O.K. it doesn't sound like much if you are a techno-genius like some of my friends but I, however, am not.  In fact you could say that I am a techno-idiot so for me it is a big deal that I've managed to finally pull this off.  Especially as I had no idea what was really meant by 'threading' on Twitter.  It's been one of those things where I've recognised it when I've seen it and done it.

Also, as a heads up, I've spoken with an art busker in Norwich and it appears that even the cities have no set authority for those of us who are just busking our stuff.  So the general consensus of opinion seems to be as long as we keep ourselves quiet and don't make trouble for anyone then you can just get on and do it, so expect to see me in Dereham sometime soon.