My Upcoming Autism Memoir

tyunglebower ♦ November 27, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

Over the course of this year, I have mentioned in passing, both here and on my Facebook Author page, that I’ve been working on a memoir. Now I can announce it should be ready on Amazon Kindle (and other ebook places) by the middle of next week. When it is ready for purchase, I will post the link here on my website in the “My Books” section as usual.

A Fear of Butterflies: My Autism vs. Capitalism is what it sounds like. It will be a brief “memoir of eras” in my life as I call them in the text, summarizing how much my constant social and professional struggles from childhood onward can be traced back to my brand of Autism, even before I knew I had it. I use the stories of my difficulties in all eras of my life both as a means for the reader to get to know more about me, and to elucidate just how stacked against me and people like me, our American society, with it’s myths of meritocracy really is.

The latter half of the book is also autobiographical, but deals with specific useless advice I have gotten the most from many different corners, all ineffectual and dismissive when taking the burden of neurodivergent masking into account.

It is by an Autistic man, for other Autistic people, so they may recognize themselves in my story, when perhaps they have never recognized themselves in any body else’s.

I am not adept at marketing in this culture, and part of that is because of the very Autism I have mentioned. It was one of the reasons I wrote the memoir to begin with. And now that I am faced with the ironic but necessary task of marketing and promoting a book about how impossible it has been for me to promote anything (including myself) I have unconventional decisions to make. Such as the above minimalist cover for the book.

And the (hopefully) affordable price of 3 dollars for the time being, so many in my position can have access to it. (Another reason it is not yet in the more expensive paperback format, though with time I will make one available, I think.)

If anything I have written here or elsewhere has mattered to you, I hope you will spread the word about ,y memoir to those you feel would get the most from it. Word of mouth is after all the best of the promotional and marketing activities.

More to come.