The Video Below: During a reading on Zoom for New York's F-Bomb series, I decided to simultaneously record myself live on Instagram. Check out the very beginning of Joe the Salamander and also I read a second section somewhere in the middle below by clicking the picture.
Some Background: Joe is my third novel, and this journey all started back in 1999 when I published my first book, an e-book of eight short stories. Back then I put book before craft, which is opposite of what I am doing now. Joe is probably my most focused work---but there were also outside issues I needed to clear first, before Joe even earned a spine. The first one was, as a person not diagnosed with neurodiversity or on the spectrum, I needed to be sure that if I was writing a character in a way to give it justice. Early versions of the manuscript were sent to some people with that diagnoses and some parents of those as well. The feedback was encouraging. It was important that throughout the book I never used the words, "autism", "neurodiversity", "spectrum", or any other label or diagnosis.
Some Luck: One of the initial readers at Golden Antelope Publishing is, in fact, diagnosed to be on the autism spectrum. He loved the book and recommended that it be sent through to the next round of submissions of work to be potentially published by Golden Antelope. Well, it made it, but even before the book was published, I was reading from the manuscript every week at my series, Virtual Fridays Dire Literary Series. I started on page one in 2020 and in the next few weeks this will be completely finished. As always, I thank people for the support I've been given, the work of my ART team who got the book up to #1 on an Amazon Best Seller List.
best
TG
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