Happy Thanksgiving!

Blessed are those that can give without remembering and receive without forgetting.
-- Author Unknown

ASPIE by Patricia Shirra

Aspie -- One who has Asperger's Syndrome, which is believed to be part of the autism spectrum. Aspies, while being quite gifted verbally, have social, emotional, and sensory integration difficulties, among others. Aspie is an affectionate term, and is not meant as a put down.
-- Urban Dictionary (©1999-2009)


A coming of age fiction novel targeted at teens, ages 13 - 18.

Sixteen-year-old Morgan Williams is always on the outside looking in. His inability to socialize and make friends alienates him from his classmates and makes him the perfect target of class bully, Peter Davidovitch. One day, Peter’s taunting gets the best of him and he loses it, resulting in Morgan’s expulsion from school. Morgan is hospitalized and undergoes a neuropsychological assessment following his breakdown.

After some time in the hospital, Morgan is released with a working diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome. Unable to understand the disorder, he looks for answers in places outside his comfort zone. His mounting frustration with being “abnormal” and inability to accept his newly diagnosed illness leads him to engage in deviant behavior. This ironically makes him feel in control, for the first time in his life. After an arrest for Breaking and Entering, Morgan is committed to a 90-day residential program.


The stay at Sinai starts off rocky. Morgan is uncooperative and sometime oppositional with the hospital staff. He undergoes psychotherapy; drug therapy is resisted. When Morgan participates in family therapy sessions he begins to understand that he isn’t the only one adversely affected by his condition, nor is he the only one wrestling with a life-altering problem. He meets a fellow Aspie named Janine who helps him to understand and control his disorder.


At the end of the commitment period Morgan returns home and attends the local high school. While he is now better equipped to handle his internal conflict of accepting that he is different, he must still deal with the external conflict of interacting with people.


Status: Manuscript under development; targeted completion fall 2009.

Featured Author

Hi Everyone, I'm one of the featured authors in the Write What Inspires You August 2009 Newsletter. Follow the link and check out the interview. This is a great magazine so while you're there, opt-in as a monthly subscriber. http://www.donnamcdine.com/images/Write_What_Inspires_You_Newsletter-August_2009_Issue.pdf

Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS)

What in the world is PDD-NOS, you may be asking yourself? Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD,) refers to a group of disorders characterized by delays in the development of multiple basic functions including socialization and communication. This group includes Autism, Asperger syndrome, Rett syndrome, Childhood disintegrative disorder, and Pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS.) While PDD is a classification of disorders, PDD-NOS is an actual diagnosis, the most common of the spectrum disorders and one that I have personal experience with. My 13-year-old son struggles to deal with the complications of PDD-NOS on a daily basis. I am an advocate for my son and have spent countless hours, since his first assessment at age four, consulting with physicians, psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, specialists, teachers and other parents about my son's disability. My tireless efforts to understand and help my son manage this disorder, over the past nine years, makes me somewhat of an expert. So after much encouragement to ‘write a book about it,’ I’ve decided to heed the advice. While there are many books in the market that focus on PDD they are largely of the non-fiction genre. My literary focus is on developing fiction short stories and novels featuring characters who struggle with disabilities, such as PDD.

Thought for the Day

"Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing."
- Oscar Wilde

J-O-E Spells 'Brat!' by Patricia Shirra

J-O-E Spells 'Brat!' is a transitional chapter book targeted at young readers between the ages of five to eight years.

Synopsis: Allicyn and Baby Joe sure know how to ruin a perfectly good day. That’s 8 year-old Sam’s thought about his smart older sister and bratty baby brother who monopolize all of his parents’ time. A no-win situation, right? Well Sam sure thinks so when he wins the Good Citizen Award at school and no one seems to care. Tired of being the forgotten one, Sam decides to leave home and in flight overhears Mom and Dad talking about his ‘artistic’ baby brother. When Sam learns about Autism, he begins to understand his role in the family. What he learns that night causes him to think differently about Baby Joe as he no longer sees his brother as a brat.

This 3,627 word fiction book has a real-life twist – Autism – that applies more and more to the average family today.

Status: Manuscript complete; seeking a publisher.

Words of Inspiration ... to Me and Anyone Else Reading!

"Nothing you write, if you hope to be any good, will ever come out as you first hoped."
(Lillian Hellman)

"Writing is like everything else: the more you do it the better you get. Don't try to perfect as you go along, just get to the end of the damn thing. Accept imperfections. Get it finished and then you can go back. If you try to polish every sentence there's a chance you'll never get past the first chapter."
(Iain Banks)

"The writer learns to write, in the last resort, only by writing. He must get words onto paper even if he is dissatisfied with them. A young writer must cross many psychological barriers to acquire confidence in his capacity to produce good work--especially his first full-length book--and he cannot do this by staring at a piece of blank paper, searching for the perfect sentence."
(Paul Johnson)