Fireproof Garage #10 – Eleven-year-old Beefcake
October 6, 2016
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Fireproof Garage #6 – Fuelled By Alcohol And Caffeine
August 9, 2015
Fireproof Garage Podcast Are You Seeing Me?, ASD, Authors, Autism Fiction, Autism Writing, Books Podcast, Death, Difference, Disability, Fictional Characters, Go Set A Watchman, Harper Lee, Literary Characters, Literary Podcast, Marcus Zusak, Mark Haddon, The Book Thief, The Brothers Groth, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, To Kill A Mockingbird, Writing, Writing Podcast Leave a comment
Fireproof Garage #2 – If These Jerks Can Make A Podcast…
February 21, 2015
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Fireproof Garage #1 – Technical Difficulties
February 21, 2015
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You See What I Did There?
July 17, 2014
News Are You Seeing Me?, ASD, Authors, Autism, Autism Fiction, Autism Writing, AYSM, Books, Brothers, Daughters, Disability, Fathers, Fiction, Inspiration, New Books, New Release, New Work, New YA Lit, Random House, Random House Australia, Random House New Zealand, Siblings, Sisters, Sons, Twins, Writing, Writing Books, YA Lit, Young Adults 2 Comments
With Are You Seeing Me? having just hit the shelves in Australia, I’d like to share with you some insight into what inspired me to write the novel.
Anyone who’s spent any time with me knows I am Dad to a set of twins: one girl, one boy. My daughter is ‘neurotypical’, which is how people in the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) community sometimes refer to regular, everyday kids who do not have autism. She is amazing. She plays trumpet, creates short animated films and adores The Hunger Games. My son, who is three minutes younger than my daughter, is diagnosed with autism. He is amazing, too. He is awesome at Minecraft, swims like a champ and enjoys Pixar films. They will officially be teenagers in 2014.
Are You Seeing Me? is a gift to my daughter. She was due a book – my previous novel, Kindling, was a gift to my son. (By the way, all of my books are gifts for my beautiful
wife). When I first started considering what to write, I kept coming back to a message I held dear for my daughter: ‘You should never feel like you must be your brother’s keeper. Love him, as he loves you, but live your own life to the full.’
‘Another’ Post About Book Diversity
May 15, 2014
Arguwrite #WeNeedDiverseBooks, Another, Are You Seeing Me?, Authors, Autism, Autism Fiction, Autism Writing, BookCon, Books, Children's Books, Difference, Disability, Diverse Books, Diversity, Fiction, Kindling, New Work, Novels, Other, We Need Diverse Books, Writing, Writing Books, YA Lit, Young Adult Books Leave a comment
First, the good news:
The recent #WeNeedDiverseBooks Twitter coup was an admirable rebuff of the longstanding hegemonies in children’s and young adult fiction. It doesn’t look like a flash in the pan either, so that’s good too.
Now, the bad news:
The whole exercise has further illustrated – dare I say, reinforced – the pecking order of minorities in both the book debate and the wider society looking on.
Fertile Imagination
April 4, 2014
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With our twins now on the cusp of becoming teenagers, it seems a lifetime gone since their very existence was in question.
It wasn’t that long ago, though. Latter part of the nineties, turn of the millennium, to be precise. While couples worldwide were daily adding millions to Generation Next, we were trying – and failing – to supply just one.
Difficulty having a child was not something I’d ever imagined. Not in high school (all too easy to get a girl knocked up); not in university (I’m never having kids anyway); not when my beautiful wife and I married (let’s have some fun first), not as a school teacher (I’m not ready to have one of these jokers). Not even when we decided to give it a go, see what happened.
Nothing happened.
