Tag: autismacceptancemonth

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#BlogTour: A Family Affair by Robyn Carr

For this blog tour, we’re looking at an otherwise strong family drama marred by COVID references and bigotry. For this blog tour, we’re looking at A Family Affair by Robyn Carr.

Bigotry And COVID Mar Otherwise Strong Family Drama. On its whole, this is a mostly solid family drama about a mom and two of her three children dealing with a tragedy and trying to move on with their lives in the wake of it.

However, it does have significant problems, problems I’ve yet to see any of the other 44 Goodreads reviews in existence at the time of this writing address.

The first is the near-constant references to the insanities of 2020-2022, mostly as a way to ground the story in a sense of time and place. But here’s the thing: I DO NOT WANT TO READ ABOUT COVID. PERIOD. And thus a star was deducted for this. Maybe you, the reader of my review, are less adamant about this or maybe you even appreciate such references. Good for you, you’ll enjoy those parts of this text. But for those who feel as I do on the matter, know that it happens here.

The second major issue is the portrayal and handling of the Autistic third child. To say that this is a highly bigoted view along the lines constantly spewed by the Autistic hate group Autism Speaks is still being a bit too polite, to this Autistic’s mind. This character is every tired and worn out Autistic stereotype rolled into one, and while the family claims to love her, they also drug her into oblivion so that Carr can write her out of the back half of the book. Indeed, if an author treated pretty well any demographic other than the neurodiverse/ Autistics like this in a book, that author would likely go viral for social media cancelling them – and yet something tells me most will be silent about or even praise Carr’s reprehensible treatment of this character. That it publishes just days after World Autism Acceptance Day and during World Autism Acceptance Month is a slap in the face to Autistics from the publisher, but perhaps they were not aware of just how offensive this characterization truly is and were not aware of April being so designated.

The third issue, a throwaway line that further reveals Carr’s political leanings, is a reference to a school shooting where the shooter got “automatic weapons” from his dad’s garage. In California. In the 2000s. BULLCRAP! For one, while *some* automatic weapons *are* legal, the manner in which they are legal is INCREDIBLY expensive to obtain and subjects one to an entire alphabet soup of agencies – both Federal and State, particularly in California – knowing exactly where and how you store such weapons. Further, in the *extremely* rare case of Columbine/ Parkland style attacks as is described in this part of the text, such truly automatic weapons are virtually *never* used. But someone who only follows certain paranoid propagandists on this matter would have no clue about these facts, and Carr reveals herself to be just such a person in this instance. However, this did *not* result in a third star deduction as this was more of a one-off throwaway backstory line and not a pervasive element within the book as the first two issues were.

Ultimately, this is one of those books where your mileage may vary quite a bit. If you don’t mind references to COVID in your fiction and if you agree with Carr’s views on Autism and guns, you likely will enjoy this book quite a bit. And to be clear, other than these issues – which were *not* on every page – the story itself really is quite good. But if you feel as I do on these issues… still read the book. It really is that well written, mostly. Just know there is going to be some infuriating moments. Recommended.

After the jump, an excerpt from the book followed by the “publisher details” – book description, author bio, and social and buy links.
Continue reading “#BlogTour: A Family Affair by Robyn Carr”

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Featured New Release Of The Week: The Spectrum Chick Trilogy by Janey Klunder

This week we’re looking at a book truly near and dear to my own heart. This week we’re looking at The Spectrum Chick Trilogy by Janey Klunder.

Now, I don’t actually have a Goodreads review to post of this book – even though I’ve read every word of all three Spectrum Chick books.

You see, the story of this book’s existence is that long ago, I started on Facebook what I wanted to become an Autistic advocacy organization that had Autistics helping fellow Autistics. Not in pursuing government “services” or in spewing propaganda, but simply members of our community doing what we could to help other members of our community. We would also be able to use our own voices to share our own experiences directly with the larger world and hopefully destroy the “veil” that exists between the larger world’s understanding of Autism and how we Autistics actually think about it ourselves. Thus, because I sometimes lack any degree of creativity, it was called “Autism Through Our Eyes”.

During the course of that short-lived project, a young Scottish lass reached out to me. She was trying to write a book, but she couldn’t figure out how to get it published. It was semi-autobiographical in that while completely fiction, it was also to some degree based on her actual real life and her struggles both before and after the fateful day when she first heard the term “Asperger’s”. This was 2014, the lass in question was named Janey Klunder, and the book in question was one she was calling The Spectrum Chick.

Even at that point in my life, I had read a LOT of books and was already doing *some* proofreading level Advance Reader Copy reading for one other author. I also knew that if it involved code or similar computer constructs, I could largely figure it out. So I told Janey that I would help her out. I couldn’t guarantee anything, but I would read her book and help her edit it as well as I could, and I could help her get it online through Kindle Direct Publishing.

We’ve been on one hell of a ride ever since, releasing four more books between 2014 and 2022 – The Spectrum Chick II, Led By Example, The Spectrum Chick III, and last December’s In An Office. And now, this combined edition of all three The Spectrum Chick books. I was working on this particular edition primarily on April 2, World Autism Acceptance Day, and got it fully on Amazon, Goodreads, and Bookbub over the last couple of days.

If you’ve read this far, I really hope you’ll give this book a chance, and if you like the tale of Tigerlily, maybe you’ll leave us some reviews on both the original books’ pages and this combined edition’s. Maybe you’ll even read Janey’s other books and hopefully review them, if you’re so inclined. Janey truly is a great storyteller, particularly for the stories she chooses to tell, and she really does bring Autism to life through her own eyes quite well. She and I have largely divergent experiences with Autism, but hers is a much more commonly known – though I would say still quite misunderstood – version of the Autistic Experience, and Tiger Lily’s story reflects this.

Thank you for reading these nearly 600 words. Below the jump, the Book Description for this new The Spectrum Chick Trilogy edition, which encompasses all three of the prior The Spectrum Chick book descriptions. 🙂
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#BookReview: On The Spectrum by Daniel Bowman Jr

I made it a point to get this one in during #AutismAcceptanceMonth, even though it doesn’t actually release until August.

This is apparently officially a “collection of essays”, but the organization works such that it never feels disjointed, as other efforts of this vein I’ve read tend to do. But that could just be my own #ActuallyAutistic mind working similarly to Bowman’s.

If you’ve ever heard of the late great Rachel Held Evans, and particularly if you like her style, you’re going to enjoy this particular book. Bowman has a roughly similar background to Evans (and thus even rougher similar to myself) in that he has experience in the Baptist church and now finds himself in a more progressive mainline church, and in both of their cases are more academic-oriented to boot. Thus, even while explaining his own version of the intersection of faith and Autism – and on being Autistic more generally, but through that lens – his words really do evoke the same kinds of tones Evans’ work did.

This was enjoyable for me due to the *lack* of constant “Autistics need government intervention” diatribes that so many books make their central point of Autism – even from among fellow Autistics (such as Eric Garcia’s We’re Not Broken, which publishes a week earlier and which, IIRC, I posted about here roughly a month ago). Instead, Bowman’s life and thoughts flow more closely to my own, with key community members becoming mentors over the eras and helping him naturally become all that he now is.

Indeed, if I have a criticism of the book – and I do, though it isn’t large enough for a star deduction – it is the emphasis on an “official” Autism diagnosis. I trust docs as much as I trust politicians these days – which is to say, I don’t trust them to accurately tell me the color of the noontime cloudless sky, and verify it myself. And one does not need someone else to dictate a word based on their own understanding of it, particularly when that person isn’t even living with the thing in question. And this ignores the very real, sometimes very negative, real world repercussions of having such an “official” label.

Still, for anyone interested in knowing more about what life is really like as an Autistic, this truly is one of the better books I’ve come across in my own readings. Very much recommended.

This review of On The Spectrum by Daniel Bowman Jr was originally written on April 26, 2021.