BooksChatter: ✉ un/FAIR

Today author Steven Harper takes over our blog to tell us about autism and his latest novel, un/FAIR (6 September 2016, Month9Books, LLC, 214 pages), a Middle Grade fantasy.

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Growing Up with Autism

At this very moment, my sons Aran and Max are deeply involved in a complicated let's-pretend game that seems to involve pirates, monsters, and a search for buried treasure. They're using different voices to play different characters in their scenario, and they're prowling around the house together.

They've shut off the computers and TV and video game consoles on their own.

Aran is autistic, and this is exactly the kind of thing that Aran would have found difficult when he was nine. When he was twelve, I would have had to push him into participating. Now he does it voluntarily with his little brother. This took a great deal of work over several years.

Just now they got into an argument over how the story should go. Aran stormed into his room, thought a moment, then went back and proposed an alternate idea. He and Maksim are negotiating. (Should we have robots in the story or not?) Another incredible thing!

The character Ryan in my fantasy novel un/Fair follows a similar path to Aran's. Autism isn't something you can cure. You can only find workarounds--and get people to understand and accept.

Steven Harper