Cast in Silence Chapter, and a question
Jul. 1st, 2009 02:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
msagaraBecause it's the first of July, and it's Canada Day, I've posted the first chapter of the upcoming Cast in Silence on my web-site. Which can now be reached at www.michellesagara.com, (ETA: apparently, this doesn't work as a page-line in LJ, but does work if I cut and paste it. I don't know why. But: the website is here) but is still the same wordpress site it's always otherwise been. It's tucked away in the Chronicles of Elantra side-bar, under the Cast in Silence entry.
—–
Okay, and now, the question. Well, first the preamble (because of course I can't ask a question without a lot of preamble).
Well, actually some pre-preamble. This question was lifted in its entirety from what I just posted on the web-site, and if you've read it already, there is nothing new here, and I apologize. This actually brings up another point: I'm now (mostly reading) Twitter, Facebook, LJ and my usual RSS feeds. One thing that makes me crazy is the people who post to Twitter and then repost what they've written on Twitter to every other feed. Which shouldn't bother me. I've taken to watching only the Twitter, or only one of their various sites, if they do this, though, because I don't need to read the same thing four times, no matter how interesting it was the first time. So. I'm happy to read anything once. I hate to read it multiple times. And, of course, I'm posting almost the exact same thing (minus this small rumination) on two sites.
You may throw fruit now. Hopefully you will be as bad an aim as I am.
It’s been suggested that I’m not very active on-line, and this is partly true. I spend time reading on-line, but I don’t post often, and if I do, it’s frequently with a sense of driving outrage. This implies that I’m normally a fairly silent person, unless pushed, which is sadly not entirely representative of the truth, especially not if you ask my brother. (Hands up, any brothers who feel that their sisters actually do not talk all of the time).
I’m a fairly housebound person. But I’m not really a gardener (because I have black thumbs), and knitting is always a proof-in-concept of extra-dimensionality. I am not a very visual person, and I can draw stick figures on a good day. I can’t sing, and if I listen to music while trying to write…well, I listen to music. I don’t travel very much.
I work in a bookstore, which I managed until my oldest son was born. I like the part-time work there, because I get to handle new books, and I get to see real people. I understand parts of the writing process, I understand parts of the publishing process, and the business therein.
I do read, because I can’t actually remember a time in my life when I didn’t. Reading is very much part of what I do, and how I think or feel. I see movies, but mostly, I see movies that I can take the kids to see. The two exceptions to that in recent memory that stand out: The Lives of Others and Il y a Longtemps que Je t’aime. Both of which were, in their own stark way, so profoundly beautiful I still try to make people watch them. But I don’t watch very much television at all, and if I do, I play catch-up on series when they’re released as DVDs.
I do have children, and my oldest is now a teenager, and he has given me permission to talk about some of his earlier life and his earlier experiences; I’ve never felt entirely comfortable talking about them in public before because only part of them are my life. My oldest was diagnosed with Asperger’s, part of ASD, when he first hit school, and some of that experience occupied a great deal of my thought and time.
I also read some manga, and play some computer games. I spent a number of years playing World of Warcraft, and I have some things to say about the nature of on-line MMO’s in a variety of different ways (gender roles immediately come to mind, and, ummm, I may have been guilty of long, looooong rants about the difference between “male” clothing and “female” clothing in game, among other things. Age disparities. Social values & communities, and how they're pared down, possibly in a bad way.)
But I’m not sure that any of these things are profoundly interesting to people; they are all, of course, interesting to me.
Writing is not a terribly entertaining spectator sport, unless it’s been a particularly bad writing day, in which case it’s at least audibly interesting. At a safe distance. (My son says no distance is safe at that time).
So… what I’m wondering at this point is: What do you want to see, when you drop by here, or, you know, any author home? Would posts about the disconnects experienced in raising an ASD child or posts about funny/infuriating things in an MMO, or more frequent ‘read this book’ posts be reasonable? I've done publishing/business related posts in the past, and I'd also be happy to continue with those, but in general I tend to post them reactively now because so many smart people do post about them; I fill in the edges if I think they weren't clear enough.
—–
Okay, and now, the question. Well, first the preamble (because of course I can't ask a question without a lot of preamble).
Well, actually some pre-preamble. This question was lifted in its entirety from what I just posted on the web-site, and if you've read it already, there is nothing new here, and I apologize. This actually brings up another point: I'm now (mostly reading) Twitter, Facebook, LJ and my usual RSS feeds. One thing that makes me crazy is the people who post to Twitter and then repost what they've written on Twitter to every other feed. Which shouldn't bother me. I've taken to watching only the Twitter, or only one of their various sites, if they do this, though, because I don't need to read the same thing four times, no matter how interesting it was the first time. So. I'm happy to read anything once. I hate to read it multiple times. And, of course, I'm posting almost the exact same thing (minus this small rumination) on two sites.
You may throw fruit now. Hopefully you will be as bad an aim as I am.
It’s been suggested that I’m not very active on-line, and this is partly true. I spend time reading on-line, but I don’t post often, and if I do, it’s frequently with a sense of driving outrage. This implies that I’m normally a fairly silent person, unless pushed, which is sadly not entirely representative of the truth, especially not if you ask my brother. (Hands up, any brothers who feel that their sisters actually do not talk all of the time).
I’m a fairly housebound person. But I’m not really a gardener (because I have black thumbs), and knitting is always a proof-in-concept of extra-dimensionality. I am not a very visual person, and I can draw stick figures on a good day. I can’t sing, and if I listen to music while trying to write…well, I listen to music. I don’t travel very much.
I work in a bookstore, which I managed until my oldest son was born. I like the part-time work there, because I get to handle new books, and I get to see real people. I understand parts of the writing process, I understand parts of the publishing process, and the business therein.
I do read, because I can’t actually remember a time in my life when I didn’t. Reading is very much part of what I do, and how I think or feel. I see movies, but mostly, I see movies that I can take the kids to see. The two exceptions to that in recent memory that stand out: The Lives of Others and Il y a Longtemps que Je t’aime. Both of which were, in their own stark way, so profoundly beautiful I still try to make people watch them. But I don’t watch very much television at all, and if I do, I play catch-up on series when they’re released as DVDs.
I do have children, and my oldest is now a teenager, and he has given me permission to talk about some of his earlier life and his earlier experiences; I’ve never felt entirely comfortable talking about them in public before because only part of them are my life. My oldest was diagnosed with Asperger’s, part of ASD, when he first hit school, and some of that experience occupied a great deal of my thought and time.
I also read some manga, and play some computer games. I spent a number of years playing World of Warcraft, and I have some things to say about the nature of on-line MMO’s in a variety of different ways (gender roles immediately come to mind, and, ummm, I may have been guilty of long, looooong rants about the difference between “male” clothing and “female” clothing in game, among other things. Age disparities. Social values & communities, and how they're pared down, possibly in a bad way.)
But I’m not sure that any of these things are profoundly interesting to people; they are all, of course, interesting to me.
Writing is not a terribly entertaining spectator sport, unless it’s been a particularly bad writing day, in which case it’s at least audibly interesting. At a safe distance. (My son says no distance is safe at that time
So… what I’m wondering at this point is: What do you want to see, when you drop by here, or, you know, any author home? Would posts about the disconnects experienced in raising an ASD child or posts about funny/infuriating things in an MMO, or more frequent ‘read this book’ posts be reasonable? I've done publishing/business related posts in the past, and I'd also be happy to continue with those, but in general I tend to post them reactively now because so many smart people do post about them; I fill in the edges if I think they weren't clear enough.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-07-01 09:05 pm (UTC)This is interesting to me, because my son's godfather's wife was traveling and met a woman whose child was diagnosed ASD, and she came back furious about the discussion. And I asked why, because at that age, we did frequently discuss my son. She said "Your son is your son. He's his own person. She talked about her child as if her child was nothing more than textbook symptoms."
But I should also make clear that he was raised in a two-geek household, and we tended to be more experimental and less social-conformist. If something worked, we would pursue it. If it didn't work, it didn't matter to us whether any other parent thought it damn well should work; we didn't.
But there's a variety of different aspects to ASD (which used to be called PDD), so each child diagnosed with it is going to be totally different, and what works with one, won't always work with the other - which is why the label itself is ... tricky. I can't think of a neat little box in which to put all of the children with that diagnosis; they simply wouldn't fit.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-02 01:42 pm (UTC)Now at close to 16, he is an amazing, quirky, fun kid who I wouldn't change for the world. Besides, if I rejected who he is, I also end up rejecting myself. They didn't have any understanding of those of us a little sideways from the norm when I was growing up in the 60s, but today I'd likely be diagnosed on the spectrum as well.
The truth of it is, I'm a happy geek. A wife and mother. A professional and a writer. My son is my son. He has as set of strengths and struggles, like anyone alive has. His particular set just happens to have a name.
I enjoy your blog and would be happy to read anything you happened to be passionate about, be it writing and publishing or not.