Friday, July 5, 2013

How It Started

What started as a project to help my autistic son with his writing, turned into a novel and eventually a series.  Language arts tend to be a difficult subject for people with autism.  I have two sons, and my older son has autism.  I set out to create a story with the both boys and decided we would do maybe a ten page tale of a superhero duo.  The characters would have my kids' names.  I couldn't decide who was who, so I named one Jimmy Miller temporarily.  Since I envisioned a pair of male heroes, I thought to bring a female character to bring some balance...the Princess Leia of the group, if you will.

I gave her the name Annie because my wife's grandfather had called her this most of her childhood instead of her actual one.  My sister's middle name is Ann and I had a friend, when I was a child, named Annie, short for Anastasia.  She was only eight and tragically died--a victim of a heinous crime.  Anyway, the more I brought the character to life, the more I fell in love with her.  It's a fictional resurrection for that girl I knew who perished way too young.

As for the villains I placed Etyouth (pronounced Et-Youth) in New Mexico not because of the Roswell/UFO/government conspiracy cliche, but I had a grandfather who sexually abused me most of my childhood and had an associate, and both of them went to New Mexico every winter.  He often desired to take me with him and when I was eleven, while my parents' separation was heading towards divorce, he did attempt to abduct me, hoping to abscond with me to his place in New Mexico...only, I ran off.  This was back in the late '70's and early '80's, still the dark ages for sexual abuse, when kids were never believed.

Anyway, not to dwell on my personal childhood trauma, the story in some ways is allegorical to my own background.  However, it's told as a science fiction story. So...this is a behind the scenes look at the evolution of Jimmy Miller, The Super Powerful: Forecast Acid Rain.

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