Tag: disability

As a dyslexic, autistic etc. who wasn’t diagnosed until after graduate school, I’m owning that doctorate; it took a wicked large amount of work, pain, and perseverance. It is possible to overcome tremendous odds to reach a goal, something I like the young people I mentor and teach to remember. Some things are impossible – others are just really, really difficult.

I began writing as a child first and foremost to communicate. Language was often difficult and seldom captured what I was trying to say. I started by writing notes for my mother and leaving them on her bed, trying to explain things that had happened during the day. Then I wrote some stories, to imagine a world where things that I wanted to happen, did happen, even if they only happened for other people. Finally, I began to write books.

My non-fiction was the first that was published and was directly related to what I live and breathe for my livelihood: disability support, services, and studies.

Succeeding as a Student with a Disability: https://us.jkp.com/products/succeeding-as-a-student-in-the-stem-fields-with-an-invisible-disability?_pos=2&_sid=f54ae7c3c&_ss=r

Supporting College and University Students with Disabilities: https://us.jkp.com/products/supporting-college-and-university-students-with-invisible-disabilities?_pos=1&_sid=f54ae7c3c&_ss=r

Disability Services and Disability Studies in Higher Ed: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9781137502445

While I continued to write fiction off and on for family and friends, three strokes in a year put a damper on my writing for a while. After a couple of years of recovery, I went back to writing, gradually increasing the length of my projects. Then covid hit.

That’s when I decided to start killing people.

Houghton, Michigan. Remote. Isolated. Home to a fantastic STEM research university. A good place to off-victims, while continuing to work my day job.

And so I began writing what I am tentatively calling my Copper Country Mystery Series. Eventually, my investigators will have to branch out and investigate crime in other areas of Michigan and probably the northern-midwest. But we’re always going to come back to solve crime in the area we love.

I have a growing list of ways to do people in but if you have a location that you think is perfect for a crime, or a way of doing someone in that you’ve always wanted to see explored, or a thinly disguised person you’d like to see at least fictionally get theirs, please pass it on!