My autism fact for Autism Awareness Month – Dogs have been shown to improve autistic children’s quality of life, independence, and safety. The presence of a trained dog can reduce aggressive behaviour, calm the child, and serve as a link to the child’s community.
As a parent I loved cooking with my kid when he was growing up, cookies and cakes were the order of the day as a preteen, and once he was a teen we moved on to meals. He enjoyed it so much that he took it as an exam subject and I spent two years spending far too much money on weird and wonderful chillies, since the focus of his cooking was often Mexican food.
But what if my child had autism, would I still have been able to enjoy the chaos that was teaching him to cook. The simple answer is... yes.
Food can be an issue for some autistic children, so having a hand in making their meal can encourage them to eat it. Motor skill limitations, following directions, sensory aversions, and strong likes and dislikes of certain foods can all be challenges that will need to be overcome with patience, creativity, and possibly a detailed list of instructions. But the rewards can be much farther reaching than getting them to eat a meal. Learning to cook provides confidence, independence, an opportunity to get involved with family and community, maybe even the chance of a job.
Many of my books involve food as flirtation. I planned to run a giveaway of one of those but then I realised I can't think of a single one where food isn't offered up in some significant way. So winners choice of a book from my backlist.
Autism is much more common than many people think. There are around 700,000 people on the autism spectrum in the UK – that's more than 1 in 1001. If you include their families, autism is a part of daily life for 2.8 million people.
When RJ asked us to write a piece on Childhood Toys my first thought was Lego. Lego has played a massive part in my life, both as a child and a parent. When I had Lego it was more or less just coloured blocks, windows, roof tiles and wheels, with the occasional person. When my son started playing with it Lego had developed to themed sets. But either way an obsession was started that has stuck with both of us, and also grips my brother and he has passed it down to his own son. What is it about Lego, then, that causes an infatuation that can last a lifetime? It's appeals to our inner builder and engineer, develops motor skills, teaches us to follow instructions but also encourages us to use our imagination and be creative. Once built Lego an be a great tool for storytelling and imaginative play.
Thinking of all these things I wondered if Lego would make a suitable toy for autistic children. A quick Google search showed me that Lego are already used as a form of therapy with some teachers of autistic children to develop social communication skills, such as sharing, turn-taking, following rules, using names and problem-solving . Even without Lego therapy, Lego are extraordinarily popular among autistic children as they behave in a predictable way and are a repeatable activity that can be worked on by the child on their own. Lego kits or blocks also behave in similar ways and are predicable for the child in the way they work. And due to their very nature Lego are suitable for teenagers and adults as well.
If you're interested on reading more about Lego therapy check out this post.
Want to learn some more facts on autism? Or read other author's memories of childhood toys. Check out the Masterlist of posts in the blog hop here.
Under the Radar
It’s 1942 and there’s a war on. But with a tempting steward in the wardroom and the very real possibility that someone on board is a spy, Zach doesn’t know what is in more danger, the submarine under his charge or his heart.
Autism Fact: Dogs have been shown to improve autistic children’s quality of life, independence, and safety. The presence of a trained dog can reduce aggressive behavior, calm the child, and serve as a link to the child’s community.
The theme of this years blog hop is hopes and dreams. Wow, I feel like Miss World, you know, just without the sash, big hair, and perfect skin. I know I should wish for World Peace (TM) but I've lived long enough to know that is a futile gesture; there is always someone spoiling for a fight. Maybe..., no still too big. Hopes and dreams on a global scale seem futile, like that Miss World speech, it's too easy, too candy floss wishes to say I want peace in our time, acceptance for all, children to be able to grow to adulthood. I want all those things, of course I do, what right-minded person doesn't?
So maybe I need to rein it in, look closer to home. But it seems selfish to wish for happiness for me and mine and the kids in my life to grow up fulfilled and successful in their chosen field. For my writing to... Stop right there. This is what I was hoping to avoid.
Trying to make a difference on a global scale is too hard to grasp. But we can all do something every day to make a difference in someone's life. Treat people how you want to be treated. It's easy to say, not always accomplished. If I can raise a smile from someone who is stressing about workloads, or a word of encouragement where someone is struggling. Educate rather than argue when someone expresses a harmful opinion, you might only get through to one in ten, but that is a start. So, yeah, that's what I hope, that we can all do little things to make life better/easier/more understanding for others, and if we have to do it one person at a time, I'm ready.
And I really hope that this damn rewrite, Under the Radar, is ready to publish by the end of the year. And if I could do the entire thing in a dream, all the better
I have nothing fresh to pimp, no new release or cover reveal, since I am mired in said re-write. But since animals are mentioned in my fact and Theory Unproven will be heading to Kindle Unlimited on the 1st May I'm going to share the buy links for anyone who wants it on a different format.
Research is continuing in the area of animal therapy but initial findings appear positive.
Now for the giveaway part of the hop.
Animals play a big part in one of my books. Theory Unproven is set on an elephant sanctuary in South Africa. So to celebrate this year's blog hop I'm giving away a copy of Theory Unproven.
Leave a comment below and I will use random.org to pick a winner.
"If you are hypersensitive to touch, you dislike having anything on your hands or feet, and may have difficulties brushing and washing your hair because your head is sensitive. Only certain types of clothing or textures are comfortable."
This year on RJ's Autism Blog Hop the theme is senses. Thanks Rj (or should I blame Janet, her harried assistant) 'cos every time I think about writing this post I get this song on repeat in my head. (Not that I'm complaining, I loved this song back in the day. And how can I still remember all the words to a song that is over thirty years old and I doubt that I've heard more than a handful of times in the last decade?)
Senses working overtime.
Unfortunately, this isn't always the case in writing. It's not unusual (no more earworms, thank you!) for authors to rely on sight more than anything. A mediocre writer will tell us what their characters see and maybe the sound they hear. They'll often tell you what the MCs taste and smell like to each other but not mention those senses in any other context. A good author will immerse you in not only the sights and sounds of a scene but the smells and tastes, all without you realising it. Touch is slightly harder to slip by unnoticed but it shouldn't be ignored as we touch a myriad of different things all the time and each will feel slightly different depending on the conditions and our own personal quirks. (I have trouble touching some types of cloth. They give me a 'nails on a blackboard' sensation.)
Let's try for a senses laden excerpt from my contemporary novel 'Theory Unproven'. Thank whichever deity you follow that this isn't smell-o-vision as this excerpt may contain elephant poo!
Tying a knot at the back of his head, Eric fastened the bandana over his nose and let the triangle of brightly coloured material fall to cover his mouth. Hopefully it would keep out the worst of the smell, although he doubted it would stop it completely. Not that he minded too much, there was nothing like the healthy aroma of elephant dung to clear the sinuses. Although it might get a little oppressive in the enclosed space of the barn where he was working.
Snapping on his rubber gloves, Eric pulled the tray across the workbench toward him. The level of concentration required for searching animal excrement to locate the seed of any food the animals had eaten was practically zero, and it gave Eric plenty of time to replay the events of the previous night. And not just the enjoyable parts.
Eric thought it was cute the way Tyaan appeared to be more concerned for Eric’s safety than his own. To be honest, though, Eric wasn’t worried; he had little contact with anyone from the town, and as far as the locals went, his work was reliant on no one but Tyaan and Akibo.
While he’d been musing on Tyaan’s initial justifications for not starting anything between them, he’d accumulated a small mound of seeds. Many of them still had crumbs of dried dung clinging to them, but that was fine; after all, it was the way they would germinate in nature.
Eric was going to plant the seeds. He hoped the seeds would give him an indication what the elephants on the reserve were eating and if plant life was spread across the research station by the elephant’s faeces. There were certain parts of The Foundation’s land that the elephants didn’t seem to travel to because they were too inaccessible or the elephants considered them to be dangerous, areas like Tyaan’s landing clearing.
He had no idea what each seed was, but there was the possibility that they could grow into something good and worthwhile. A sappy thought struck him, making his stomach flip, and he was thankful that he was alone because he doubted the bandana would be sufficient to hide the soppy look he suspected was plastered across his face. The comparison between the seeds he was about to cover in a mixture of scrubland earth and elephant dung to nurture and grow, and the first kernel of a relationship that Tyaan had finally allowed them to acknowledge was too real to ignore.
If he gave Tyaan enough warmth, encouragement and sunshine, would their relationship grow into something good and worthwhile? Eric rather hoped that it would, but he was more than a little biased. There was a chance he was just a little bit in love with the rugged pilot and the chivalrous way he had of trying to keep Eric safe from harm. Not that Eric needed protection, but the fact that the thought was there… well, the idea left Eric all soft and melty, like a chocolate bar on the windowsill. Or one of those swooning heroines in his gran’s romance novels, all pale heaving breasts and palpitations.
Tyaan had certainly given him palpitations on several occasions the previous evening, but the rapid beat of his heart had nothing to do with either of them being a heroine. Far from it. Male anatomy had been involved on all levels. And lustily put to good, hard use.
But if he had to be the one in their relationship that instigated conversations about feelings and concerns, then he could do that. Tyaan might have opened up in recent weeks, but he was taciturn either by nature or years of self-imposed silence, and words were never going to come easy to him. Apart from when he was whispering them like nonsense into Eric’s skin.
Tyaan had been right about one thing, Masamba was lazy and Eric shouldn’t allow his own unease around the man to stop him from dealing with the matter. The handyman should have been at work hours ago, and while Eric had been pleased Masamba hadn’t turned up earlier to spook Tyaan, he did have a list of jobs that needed doing today. Market day always seemed to be the day he turned up later than normal. Eric assumed it was because Masamba knew Sethunya wasn’t there to provide him with breakfast.
The noises of the scrub life outside the open barn door, which normally drifted over Eric in a gentle murmur, intensified to a level where Eric started to notice the individual sounds.
Maybe that was Masamba now. An arrival at an unusual time would often get the animals chattering and crashing about more than normal,especially the family of rock hyrax Eric had discovered a couple of weeks ago on the rocky outcrop behind the barn. Any disturbance would get the large gerbil-like creatures twittering and whistling excitedly for ages before they returned to worshipping the sun while stretched out on the rocks they called home.
Not willing to be hurried or wanting to lose that chilled-out state of euphoria Tyaan had left him in, Eric finished planting the last of the seeds he had dug out of the elephant dung. He even washed his hands in the old ceramic sink in the corner with caustic soup and hot water he’d brought in from the kitchen. Who knew what manner of bacteria lived in the dung? Actually, Eric did, and that was half the problem. Finally finished, he made his way to the open doorway of the barn and steeled himself for an uncomfortable altercation. If it was Masamba arriving late, he would need to be reprimanded this time.
Nope, there was no sign of a rickety push bike alongside the barn where Eric kept the truck, nor was there any movement along any of the dirt tracks leading to the homestead. Although, there was an elephant lumbering up the slope toward the house. Eric looked closer.Not just any elephant. Jack. Eric scanned the thick bush that Jack had just emerged from, expecting Ianto to appear at any moment. Nothing. He stepped clear of the barn door and into the open to scan the nearby watering hole. No Ianto. That was strange; the two of them were normally inseparable.
Jack changed direction, as if suddenly noticing Eric’s location, and headed straight for him. He kept coming, close enough for Eric to hear the huff and snort of each laboured breath. If he didn’t know better, he’d say Jack had been running a marathon. The elephant stopped just inside Eric’s personal space and nudged him with the bony dome of his head.
“What’s up, boy?” Eric patted the offered head. “Where’s Ianto? You two had a row and you need some comfort, eh?”
Jack nudged him again, more firmly this time, actually managing to move Eric a couple of inches and leaving scuff marks in the dusty ground.
“Hey, calm down. You’re a big lad, you need to be gentle.” Lifting up the large flap of skin, Eric leaned forward. With a smirk, he whispered into the elephant’s ear. “I could have said that to Tyaan last night, but I didn’t need to. I felt like he was worshipping me.”
If there was a little catch in his voice when he admitted that feeling out loud, it didn’t really matter; Jack wasn’t likely to tell anyone. Letting the ear fall back into place, Eric reached out to scratch at the thick skin between Jack’s ears. Something thick and black wedged under his fingernails. “Jeez, you need a wash. It’s not like you guys not to be clean; Ianto’s always grooming you. Where is your boyfriend anyway? Is he as dirty as you are?”
Eric picked the black matter out from under his fingernails and then rubbed his fingers over Jack’s skin. He raised them to his nose and sniffed. “Smells like oil. Where have you two been playing?”
Theory Unproven
Working with elephants in their natural habitat has always been Eric Phillips dream. Getting what he’s always desired introduces him to Tyaan Bouwer, the bush pilot that flies in his supplies, and Eric discovers the allure of South Africa goes beyond the wildlife and the scenery.
But in an area where bushveld prejudices and hatred bleed across the borders, realising their love will be a hard fought battle. Keeping hold of it might just kill them.
I’m taking part in RJ Scott’s Blog Hop for World Autism Awareness Day. Click the link to see all the other great authors and bloggers taking part.
Since this isn’t the first time I’ve taken part in RJ’s blog hop to raise awareness for autism I decided that I would look more deeply into the history of autism and when it became a recognised condition.
The following pocket history was taken from this site.
Where Did the Term "Autism" Come From?
From the early 1900s, autism has referred to a range of neuro-psychological conditions.
The word "autism," which has been in use for about 100 years, comes from the Greek word "autos," meaning "self." The term describes conditions in which a person is removed from social interaction -- hence, an isolated self.
Eugen Bleuler, a Swiss psychiatrist, was the first person to use the term. He started using it around 1911 to refer to one group of symptoms of schizophrenia.
In the 1940s, researchers in the United States began to use the term "autism" to describe children with emotional or social problems. Leo Kanner, a doctor from Johns Hopkins University, used it to describe the withdrawn behaviour of several children he studied. At about the same time, Hans Asperger, a scientist in Germany, identified a similar condition that’s now called Asperger’s syndrome.
Autism and schizophrenia remained linked in many researchers’ minds until the 1960s. It was only then that medical professionals began to have a separate understanding of autism in children.
From the 1960s through the 1970s, research into treatments for autism focused on medications such as LSD, electric shock, and behavioural change techniques. The latter relied on pain and punishment.
During the 1980s and 1990s, the role of behavioural therapy and the use of highly controlled learning environments emerged as the primary treatments for many forms of autism and related conditions. Currently, the cornerstones of autism therapy are behavioural therapy and language therapy. Other treatments are added as needed.
What surprised me, but probably shouldn’t have, considering the way that perceived mental health issues have been dealt with in the past, was this revelation. From the 1960s through the 1970s, research into treatments for autism focused on medications such as LSD, electric shock, and behavioural change techniques. The latter relied on pain and punishment. I suppose my shock came from how late in the century we were still considering trying to cure people—and by people I actually mean children—by quite literally beating the condition out of them.
The practise sounds similar to attempts to cure homosexual behaviour several decades earlier. And just as barbaric.
Enough, of the doom and gloom. *inserts photo of rubber ducks to lighten the mood*
photo credit: alles-schlumpf via photopin cc
Thankfully, although we live in a time that is not without its issues, the world we live in is, for the most part, more enlightened. And we can do our part by teaching our kids, hell no, teaching anyone we come into contact with, to be open minded and accepting of all and to encourage them to embrace the differences in people.
To raise awareness for World Autism Day and celebrate all things different I’m giving away one copy of Theory Unproven (or another book from my backlist).
Thanks to Katherine Halle for tagging me in this blog tour. Check out the post about her own writing process here.
I haven’t tagged anyone of my own but if you are a writer and you wish to take the baton and run with it, be my guest. I’d love a mention (and a link back to this post) on your blog if you do. Or not, the choice is yours.
1) What am I working on?
Normally I like to just work on one project at a time; it helps me keep characters and storylines straight in my head. If I have an issue with a particular part of a story I tend to pass over it and go on to a part that is flowing. I’d never jump to another story to avoid writer’s block.
That being said, what am I working on?
I’ve just sent Under the Radar, a WW2 spy story set on a submarine, off for submission. A story of traitors, heroes, new beginnings and, of course, love beneath the waves.
I’ve been adding some chapters to Theory Unproven, my contemporary story set in a South African elephant reserve, for a Revise and Resubmit.
A plot bunny for a short contemporary wormed its way into my brain while I was attempting to work on something else and I had to write that before anything else. It’s now finished and out with crit partners.
I’ve outlined a 1920s master and valet style mystery which will hopefully be light in tone but I'm thinking about deferring that (and all the research it would entail) for a contemporary about miscommunication and language barriers.
2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
I don’t know that it does. Ultimately, for all the different styles (historical, contemporary, paranormal) and settings (South Africa, London, Boston, the ocean), my stories are about two guys falling in love. It isn’t always easy (readers who have followed me since pre publication days will tell you I never make things easy for my characters) but they get there in the end.
3) Why do I write what I do?
I’d been trying to write a book for years, there are still pages of handwritten notes and research from before the days when everyone owned at least one computer in the home. But the words wouldn’t flow right, they never sat comfortably on the page for me and I couldn’t work out why. The novel got shelved, along with my dreams of being a writer, and I got on with normal life.
Then I discovered fan fiction. Slash fan fiction, except my slash couple soon became canon. Reading fan fiction, watching the show, inspired me to write again. Seeing what a friggin mess the official writers made of my OTP, forced me to continue writing. I (and thousands like me) had to put things right.
But soon I found myself restricted by the confines of the show, I started placing those characters in settings and time periods that they would never be in (not without a TARDIS, anyway). And as my settings got further removed from the show, so did the actions of the characters until I found I was having to force them to act like their show counterparts. I’d always prided myself on making the characters recognisable whatever the setting, so the first time I found myself making apologies to readers for OOC behaviour I decided it was time to branch out on my own, without the benefit of a guaranteed readership, and let my characters go where they wanted.
I appear to have gone off at a tangent there, but why do I write what I write? Because they are the stories that inspire me to put pen to paper. Because a tv show lit the touch paper and then shuffled back to let me take to the skies of my own imagination. And, while the show in question ultimately broke my heart, I have to thank it for reviving my dream.
4) How does your writing process work?
Badly.
I am so disorganised. When the muse strikes I have a tendency to grab the nearest thing and start writing; consequently my house is filled with notebooks, ideas and scenes scribbled willy-nilly amongst their pages. It is commonplace for me to find ideas of scenes or lines of dialogue for stories long since written.
When it comes to the actual writing itself, I’m generally a fly by the seat of my pants kind of writer. I rarely outline (the story I mentioned above was slightly different in that I had several scenes already partially scribbled in my notebooks and I wanted to get them typed up and into some sort of order), but work off several key scenes that are already alive on paper and let the story and characters grow around them.
My characters are never fully formed before I start. It’s unlikely I will even know their names when I first sit down to write (they regularly start life as X and Y!). Some traits might be in my head for each character but often I see how they react to a given situation, assessing whether that fits with their behaviour previously. I’ll make more notes as I go, confirming eye colour, number of siblings, scars etc as I mention them to ensure continuity.
If I’m writing a historical or something that requires more knowledge than I possess, then I leave comment boxes with facts I want to check out, so as not to break the flow of the scene, and then I go back to them at a later date. Although not too much later. There’s nothing worse than getting to the end of a manuscript only to discover one integral part of the plot isn’t actually feasible.
With a semblance of a story, I go back to the start, rereading reactions with my new knowledge of the characters and their motivations and behaviour. Or armed with more facts about, I dunno, the Franco Prussian war. This is when I add and reshape, polish the manuscript into something worth reading before it goes off to my crit partners.
I’m a slow writer, favouring novels that push at the top limits of the word count for most publishing houses in our genre, and this is reflected in the frequency of my new releases.
I'm aware I have only a handful of dedicated readers out there, but never fear, even though you might not see anything new from me every couple of months (the industry recommendation for a successful author’s releases), I am still writing.
If you include an autistic person's family, autism touches the lives of over two million people every day. April 2nd is World Autism Awareness Day and I’m taking part in RJ’s month long blog hop to promote this. The theme of this year’s blog hop is Prejudice.
photo credit: alles-schlumpf via photopin cc
I have to admit that my heart fell a little when I saw that I would be expected to write on this subject. Luckily for me it is something that I never experienced, if I have been the victim of prejudice then I’ve never been ‘aware’ of this fact, or it was such a fleeting event at the time that the memory of it no longer resonates with me. Not a flicker. And no amount of dredging the deep dark recesses of my mind helped reveal any—I did find a few coins, a very sticky, fluff-covered sweet, one odd sock and a wheel off a toy car that had been thrown away years ago. Nope, that was the time I moved the sofa—anyway, no prejudice. Of course I was thinking on too epic a scale, of words ending in ‘ism’ and great injustices. And me, even in the scheme of this blog hop, I am an insignificant thing—most of you probably skipped over my name without even seeing it—so it is no surprise that the world at large would give me nary a glance. Prejudice - preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience; dislike, hostility, or unjust behaviour deriving from preconceived and unfounded opinions. That is the definition of prejudice according to the oxforddictionaries.com. And the first of those definitions is something all of us have been on the receiving end of at some point and, I hasten to add, something we have all been guilty of too. You start to form opinions and beliefs about somebody from the first point one of your senses registers them. Strangers on the bus, make that a fat stranger eating a pie, first thought for most people would be ‘fat bastard get on a diet’, no matter that the stranger eats porridge every morning for breakfast, that their alarm clock hadn’t gone off and they were running late for work, that this was the first pie they had eaten in a whole year, that their weight was due to a thyroid condition… I could go on but I think I’ve made my point, the person is a stranger to you, you know nothing about them so how can you make any sort of judgement. How many times have you put a face to the voice of someone you’ve only ever spoken to on the phone only to meet them in person and have your ‘preconceived opinion’ altered by the reality. On the internet it can appear to be even worse often with nothing to go on but a person’s words, but here is where you would probably get the best chance of finding out my true self without the rest of your senses bringing to bear. You can’t judge me on my race or sex, my height or my hair colour because in all fairness you don’t know. You can judge me on the fact that I am an author of m/m romance—and many out there do—without even picking up a copy of my books, or even one of my more esteemed colleagues tomes. The books are there for all to see, they are fact. You may make a judgement based on that fact and your own misguided perceptions, and that would take you into the second category You are reading my words, they are integral to me and show a part of me that anyone looking from the outside in will never see, unless they too chose to read my words. Even if every word I have ever written on the internet is untrue that will reveal something about me, that I’m a liar. Every word we write exposes something about us whether we want to or not; that comment posted in the heat of debate might not completely reflect our true opinion but it shows that sometimes we are quick to anger without giving the issues due care and attention. The process of putting words down on paper might come from the brain, but I’m a great believer that the words themselves, they come from the heart. __________ If you would like to read some of my words—and yes, I do feel I put my heart and soul into my stories, which is why you only get one a year—then leave a comment below to win a book from my backlist (excluding the anthology because that isn’t mine to give). See who else is taking part in the blog hop by stopping over at RJ's blog.
