Sorry, There's No Script to Steal Yet

Hey, readers! At this point, most of you probably came over my stories on AO3, and I really appreciate you taking the time to look at my blog. Thank you so much.

See, most articles and agent interviews say that it’s important for an author to build an online presence... which I have, but not for anything sufficiently professional. This blog is where I’m going to start that process, and I hope that I can create something enjoyable and interesting in the process.

Here, I’m going to go in-depth on whatever topic is occupying my mind each week. Most of the time, that’s going to be about popular media. I’ll talk about Harry Potter and some of the themes found in it, or I’ll talk about why Teen Wolf is such a compelling fandom even though the show is terrible. My mom’s birthday, and therefore our annual rewatch of LOTR, is in a couple of months, so I’ll probably talk about Lord of the Rings then, maybe about how Tolkien’s time as a WWI soldier affected his work. You get the idea.

However, my first blog post is going to be about Someone Stole My Script.

Someone Stole My Script is original project that I’ve been working on for around a year or so. It’s a middle grade fantasy novel, and the main character, Wren, is an autistic preteen girl. Completely nonverbal, but only somewhat sensory-sensitive. If you look at the top of the page, you’ll see a link that will explain the premise and present to you the three driving forces of the story: Wren, Marigold, and Jezebel. (I am not a good artist, so only Wren has art right now, and down the line I’ll probably commission pieces of all three to use on this website.)

For those of you that didn’t look, the story is this: because of her struggles with communication, Wren has a strained family life, and when she finds the gateway to the fantasy world, she uses it to avoid her problems. Instead, she focuses on rekindling the passion and life that their community lost in a recent disaster. Of course, sooner or later, she'll have to confront those problems anyway, and things just got a lot more complicated.

Thematically, Someone Stole My Script will focus heavily on Wren’s difficulty communicating, and how she learns to adapt to her growing struggles. She is in ABA therapy, and the story will aim to address some of the controversies around that system. Finally, I’ll be highlighting the importance of joy, storytelling, and kindness while recovering from tragedy.

Above anything else, I also intend to illustrate Wren’s inner life in rich detail. A lot of parents of autistic children struggle to understand what their child is experiencing. Flat affect, stereotypal movements, and communication gaps can all make it very difficult to find common ground. I want people to understand the motivations for some of the things autistic kids are known for – why their interests are so intense, why they rock or flap their hands, and even some of the complex emotions they experience because of their unique challenges in life. How do you think a neurotypical child would feel if nothing they said reached their parents, or if they overheard their father talking about whether or not they’d ever be able to live independently? I want to extend that instinctive empathy to Wren.

As of now, the first draft of the story is a little more than halfway done, which is further than I’ve ever gotten with an original project before. As I reach more milestones, I’ll keep people updated on this blog, but of course I’ll be sure to include plenty of more popular content as well.

Thanks again for checking this out, and I hope to see you all around!