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Autistic Characters In Fiction

Today's Date is: March 20, 2015

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By EelKat Wendy C Allen

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People keep asking me why it is, I use Autistic characters for my main characters in most of my books, and with the mass market release of the Quaraun series, which features a gay, transvestite, Autistic main character, I am once again receiving questions about Autism, specifically this time, what is wrong with Quaraun and why did I decide to write him as disabled.

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QUESTION: Other characters call Quaraun insane, retarded, stupid, an idiot, or a dolt. He seems to have a mental illness. What is wrong with him?

ANSWER: I have Savant Autism, Clinical Depression, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and many people are quick to tell you that I am "insane" because of those things.  My entire life everyone has from my parents and relatives in my childhood, to my friends in my adults years, introduce me to people as "This is Wendy, just ignore her. She's insane." I long ago accepted the fact that I have those disorders and that I must be insane otherwise, why would so many people say it? Actually I came to accept the fact that I was insane at the ripe old age of 8 years old, so you can tell how long people, especially my aunts and uncles have been calling me that. I do not like that people call me insane and often ask people to stop saying that about me because it hurts my feelings. People laugh at the idea that a "retarded crazy person" could possibly have feelings, and continue to call me insane.

I have Autism. I write what I know. So, let's try that again, and see what we get this time, eh?

Quaraun has Savant Autism, Clinical Depression, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. His entire life everyone has from his parents and relatives in his childhood, to his friends in his adults years, introduces him to people as "This is Quaraun, just ignore him. He's insane." He becomes known as Quaraun the Insane, because of the name calling. He does not like that people call him Quaraun the Insane and often asks people to stop saying that about him because it hurts his feelings. People laugh at the idea that a "retarded crazy person" could possibly have feelings, and continue to call him Quaraun the Insane. 

Yeah. There it is. Quaraun's character is based largely off myself. He sees the world as I see the world.

I am also mixed blood (red, brown, and black, but look white) married to a white man, who's family came from a very snooty pure-blood background (and are white supremacists) and are thus very much in non-approval of our relationship. Which is thus why I wrote Quaraun, from a very pure blooded race of Elves, with his lover Unicorn/BoomFuzzy being a black Asian mixed blood.

Other characters in the series are quick to call Quaraun stupid and idiot, because of his Autism, and they are also quick to point to his black skinned, Asian looking lover and say, "Here's proof he's stupid, he's white and he's got a coloured lover." (Yes, white people have actually said this to me and my partner.)

A lot of people don't understand what it is like to live with Autism. Most don't want to understand. Most don't care. Hell, the average person doesn't even know what Autism is.

Watch this video. This is what Quaraun has. This is what Quaraun is acting like. This is what he is talking like. This is why people are picking on him so badly:

Unfortunately, most people think Autism is synonymous with "retard or "crazy" or "insane".

CHAAAAAAAAAAAAARGE!

CRAZY!
Hahahahahahahaha!
CRAZY! CRAZY! CRAZY!
I see CRAZY people!
I see CRAZY people! CRAZY!
WOO-HOO!
Yee-HAAAA!!
They're coming to take me away, HaHa! They're coming to take me away, HaHa! They're coming to take me away, HaHa! They're coming to take me away, HaHa! Hahahahahahahaha! WOO-HOO!
Yee-HAAAA!!

There is a happy dale, far, far, away! There's 13 bodies in the basement! 13 bodies in the basement?!? I keep mine in the attic! There are only supposed to be 12! I put neon lights on mine! Oh, you're all crazy. But officer, it's true, there are 13 bodies in the basment. CHAAAAAAAAAAAAARGE!!!!! Insanity don't run in my family, it gallops. I'm not a taxi driver, I'm a coffe pot! There's an 8 foot tall rabbit over there. His name's Harvey. CHAAAAAAAAAAAAARGE! Honey, quick! Grab the camera! There's a CRAZY person over there!. CRAZY!
WOO-HOO!
Yee-HAAAA!!
Hahahahahahahaha!
WOO-HOO!
CRAZY!
We are all mad as hatters. Mad I tell you. CRAAAAAAAAAAZY!
CHAAAAAAAAAAAAARGE! It's CRAZY time! CRAZY! CRAZY! CRAZY!
CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!!! Yee-HAAAA!!
Zip a dee doo da, zippity ya, my oh my, what a wounderful day. CRAZY!
They're coming to take me away, HaHa! Look ma! There's a CRAZY person!
CHAAAAAAAAAAAAARGE!

CRAZY!
WOO-HOO!
Yee-HAAAA!!
They're coming to take me away, HaHa! They're coming to take me away, HaHa! They're coming to take me away, HaHa! They're coming to take me away, HaHa! Hahahahahahahaha! WOO-HOO!
Yee-HAAAA!!
If you're CRAZY and you know it clap your hands!
If you're CRAZY and you know it clap your hands!!!
If you're CRAZY and you know it and you're really proud to show it...
If you're CRAZY and you know it clap your hands!!


I see CRAZY people!
I see CRAZY people!


Ma I want a CRAZY person for Christmas.



I'm CRAZY!
Hahahahahahahaha!
CRAZY! CRAZY! CRAZY!
CRAZY!
WOO-HOO!
Yee-HAAAA!!

And they only THOUGHT I was crazy before ... now they know it. ;)

Ah! But you see the problem with bullies is this: I've been bullied on a daily basis for over 40 years now. I have a very thick shell now. And, while you are calling me crazy, and making a fool of yourself on a forum, I can laugh, because I KNOW that I'm crazy, and being a carnival Gypsy circus clown I get paid to act crazy, and, I am purposely, intentionally, and professional crazy both online and offline, because crazy is what I'm known for. Crazy is what I do. I can turn it on and off at will. I go out of my way, to make a fool of myself ON PURPOSE. Crazy is my brand. My trademark. And I do thing to make people laugh, so you laughing at me, trying to make your laughter hurt, doesn't work on me anymore, and all you are really doing, making yourself look bad.

Let's go over some of the things people say about me, which inspired me to create this character.

Autism is not synonymous with retarded, but try to tell people that. They're not gonna believe you.

Autism is not synonymous with genius, but try to tell people that. They're not gonna believe you.

Autism is not synonymous with stupid, but try to tell people that. They're not gonna believe you.

Autism is not synonymous with Downs Syndrome, but try to tell people that. They're not gonna believe you.

Autism is not synonymous with schizophrenia, but try to tell people that. They're not gonna believe you.

Autism is not synonymous with insanity, but try to tell people that. They're not gonna believe you.

People with Autism, live very lonely lives because the average person, would rather tease, bully, pick on, push around, and slap mean lables on anyone who is "different."

While people with Autism CAN live an average lifespan of 70 to 90 years, 80% of all Autistics commit suicide between the age of 25 and 50. Most people with Autism are bullied so bad, that 70% of all Autistic adult commit suicide before the age of 35.  It is very rare to see an Autistic adult over the age of 35 for that reason. 

The #1 cause of death in Autistic adults is suicide. Autistics commit suicide because they feel alone, and in spite of the stereotypes, they HATE being alone. Autistic adults are always alone because every time they try to make friends with anyone they get told they are not allowed in public places with their "friends" because their "friends" don't want people knowing they know "retards. Autistics are single out and bullied because they are different. It's very depressing having no one willing to be seen in public with you, no one willing to be friends with you, and everyone else hitting you, punching you, pulling your hair, throwing stuff at you, and calling you names or saying they want you dead, just because you are different.

And not all different is created equal. There are "different" people who "normal" people consider okay, because they are trying to be different to stand out or be cool or whatever. That's "good different."

Then there's "bad different", which differance you are born with and have no control over, such as race, skin color, gender identity, sexuality, physical or mental disabilities, deformities...or  even war injuries, a soldier who's lost his legs, for example.  These are "bad" different, the type of "different people" who "normal" people, ignore, don't want to see, pretend don't exist, or worse: bully, abuse, take advantage of, tease, injury, or even kill...because they are different.

Quaraun is different on many levels. He's a race that is not well like by most races. Even within his own people he is not accepted because he is gay (in a culture that executes gay men and view them as a plague).  Most gay men in his culture hide it, however, Quaraun is a transvestite, more then that, he's practically an Elf version of Liberace, which makes it rather difficult to hide his "gayness".  And he's a Necromancer in a land that has laws forbidding Dark Arts. And he's not hiding any of these things.

AND...

He is Autistic. He has slightly more independence and self-care ability then say Rainman, but he's not high functioning like say Sheldon. Growing up he was seen as a "curse". Afflicted with a disability that no one around him could understand and no one, especially not his family, was willing to accept. As a child and into his young adult years he was horribly abused by his father and uncle, often locked in an empty room by himself for days on end. Forgotten and alone. His family hides him from society, ashamed of his very existence.

In his teen years Quaraun escapes the house on brief occasions, but is meet with bullying and teasing and being brutalized by everyone he meets, and so flees the outside world, back to the abusive family that hates him.

The series starts when Quaraun is an adult, on his own, and wandering from one end of the world to another, desperately wanting to find a place he will be accepted. All he really wants is to find someone, anyone, willing to spend time with him, for the loneliness he feels is unbearable and he's fast losing the will to continue to live in a world where not one single person cares about him at all. 

Oooh. The song stopped playing. Let's get it on there again. 

One of the problems with my Autism is the "Selective Mutism" which a lot of people do not understand at all. See, I can talk, but I rarely am able to talk. It confuses people, how it can be that I CAN talk but I CAN'T talk either.

Selective Mutism (SM) is an anxiety disorder in which a person who is normally capable of speech loses the ability to speak in specific situations or to or around specific people.

According to Wikipedia:

This is one of the most frustrating and infuriating symptoms of my Autism. I can talk. I have the ability to talk, and yet there are exact seven people with whom I am able to speak with on a normal level. For everybody else, it doesn't matter how much I try to make words come out, I simply can not make the words exit my mouth. And it is extremely frustrating, because I WANT to talk, I'd like to talk, my mouth is moving, but nothing is coming out. You have no idea how frustrating this is for me.

It'd be one thing if I could speak, but the thing is I CAN speak, sometimes. I don't know why I can't speak all the time.

And it's not consistent. With the 7 people mention above, I can talk, fully fluently. There are other people, for example the various D&D game groups I play with, my teachers/professors in college, some of the locals here around town, whom I can talk to, but not well. It's different depending on who I'm talking to, where I am, and what the situation is.

Sometimes, my speak turns garbled, with words reversed and sentence spoken in the wrong order.

Other times I start talking really, really, really, really fast, like an auctioneer.

Other times, I get stuck, like a broken record. I'll be talking and all of a sudden, for no reason at all, I'll just start repeating the same word or phrase over and over and over again, and I'm trying to make it stop and I can't. That's often when you will see me suddenly hit myself in the head several times, because that often works to stop the "broken record" effect I'm having.

This is also why I can not use and therefore do not own a phone. I am physically unable to speak into an object, such as a phone. I go completely mute when confronted with a phone.

You have no idea how nerve wracking it is, to know what I want to say and have my mouth say something completely different or not say anything at all. It's like the "wiring" from my brain to my mouth is messed up and sometimes sort of short circuits.

One psychologist said that he suspected my synapses were not firing properly, so my brain is making the correct information for me to speak, but my mouth isn't getting the message that it's supposed to be involved in the process, thus I'm trying to speak but my mouth may or may not actually say something.

People often say I am shy because I don't talk and that is not the case. I'm actually not shy at all. I just can't talk. And I hate it. I have no problem getting up in front of the lass and giving presentations. I love doing that. I have no problem talking with total strangers about my car, which happened all day long every day, because I drive a car with 2.5million marbles glued to it. I do art gallery showings of my work. I'm a freaking CosPlayer, and I do D&D in full costume and act out my characters.

Every psychologist and psychiatrist always makes me retake the Briggs Myers test and I ALWAYS score Extrovert, not Introvert, every time. Shyness has been proven, again and again by several doctors to NOT be my problem. I am not shy and yet, I suffer from a symptom of social anxiety that is typically thought of as the primary indication of shyness. It's completely contradictory and doctors can not explain it.

One of the worst parts of having Selective Mutism, is that EVERYBODY assumes that because you can't talk, you MUST know sign language.

Some people think they are being helpful by signing to me. Nope. Not helpful at all. It's just you flapping your hands around with me not a clue what you are trying to tell me. I'm not deaf. I can hear you talking. I don't need you to do sign language.

Everybody is always shocked that II don't know sign language, they always want to know: "Didn't they teach in in school?"

No. 

In the 1970s the nearest school that taught sign language was half way across the country and cost $10,000 per semester (3 months). I don't know how public schools are run today, but in the 1970s, if you couldn't speak the language, to hell with you, you can stand in the corner until you learn to speak English like the rest of us.

That was also a time period when teachers were ENCOURAGED to carry a rule and beat their students soundly - I hear that's banned today.  

Keep in mind, you are also looking at a time period when Opium syrup was the "cure all" for Autism, and me and every other Autistic child in America in the 1970s, were too busy watching unicorns and faeries flying around the room to notice anything anyways.

If you were in school in ine 1970s and you had Autism, they feed you cupfuls of opium syrup and set you in a corner with a stack of picture books. They did not teach you ANYTHING let alone sign language!

The worst ones are OMG! People call me retarded...this one is sooo STUPID. A woman, once came up to me and said: "{NAME OF BUSINESS} is looking to hire someone who knows sign language to communicate with mute customers. I told them you'd give 'em a call."

Yeah. I'm mute. I don't know sign language. This woman knew I didn't know sign language. And I'm MUTE - how the hell am I supposed to give them a call?

And people call ME retarded? 

Well, because I know what it is like to like with Selective Mutism and have people judge you and tease you and serious overreact in some cases, because of it, I write Quaraun as having Selective Mutism the same way I have it.

So, in the series, Quaraun is very quiet. He can talk, but he rarely does. There are a few people, whom he can talk to with no trouble at all. He and Unicorn can and often to have lengthy dialogues. He has some trouble talking to BeaLuna but it's not that noticeable. Most readers won't pick up on the slight variation of his speak change between talking to Unicorn verse talking to BeaLuna.

You do see him having issues talking to Bullgaar, and you especially see him breaking down and losing control of his speak around his father and uncle. Around all three of these characters, Quaraun is prone to falling into "broken record mode" and start repeating words and phrases. It's not as bad around Bullgaar as it is around his uncle and it's at it's worst with his father.

He's also more likely to talk to himself or to inanimate objects when he's alone, then he is to speak to anyone at all when he's not alone.

And because of the physical and emotional abuse he grew up with at the hands of his father and uncle, Quaraun's immediate response to anyone talking to him is to flinch and expect to be beaten. Quaraun is not necessarily shy. He is often very outgoing and he is the person most likely to step up to help anyone needing help, but at the same time he's very scared of everyone.

So many people have abused him, that by the time he's 330 (equivalent to 35 Human years) he just expects everyone to beat him up and completely given up on ever finding a friend. He's so used to being beaten up for being different that he doesn't try to stop people from hitting him anymore. He has become rather glum and silent as he's come to the conclusion there isn't anyone out there who actually wants to have a meaningful conversation with him, which is why in the early stories, he and Unicorn are having conversations that are somewhat mismatched, with Quaraun not necessarily answering Unicorn outright. 

When Unicorn talks to him, Quaraun's mind actually is thinking properly and correctly, but his mouth isn't necessarily conveying that. Unicorn says one thing an Quaraun's response appears to be five miles away on some other topic, which makes people hearing the conversation, assume Quaraun is off his rocker, when the fact is, he did hear Unicorn correctly and in his head he did respond correctly, but his brain miss fired the message so his mouth said something completely different then what he had actually wanted to say.

People who don't understand Selective Mutism, assume it means the person doesn't talk, but often, it means, the person does talk and says he wrong thing. It's very frustrating, when you want to say: "Isn't it a wonderful morning!" and all your mouth will say is "I don't know." And this is why you see Quaraun say "I don't know" to things, you know he knows. It's not that he doesn't know, it's that his mouth is refuses to say the words his brain is telling it to say.

The Elf you see at the start of the series is a very broken Elf. He's almost to a total breaking point and he's about to reach the point where he has had it with people bullying him and he just going to start killing everyone that does anything no matter how slight. He's not a hero. Far from it. This is the prequal to The Twighlight Manor series and Quaraun is Roderic's grandfather, the previously "unnamed" serial killer who built The Twighlight Manor. The quaraun series tells the story of how the guy who built the Manor, came to eventually build it. So the series starts out with him, still not a villain yet, but damned close to becoming one.

The series starts right when he's given up, he's basically heading back to where his family died, to kill himself, whem he meets Unicorn, and suddenly he has a friend in his life, but then Unicorn dies, and that crushes him, and, Quaraun's like Roderic, you really can't tell if what's happening to him is real or just in his head...so after Unicorn dies, Unicorn is back, and parts of the story indicate that Unicorn is now an undead creature, because Quaraun's a Necromancer, but then, not everybody sees Unicorn and sometime the story indicates that he's not there, he's just a figment o Quaraun's imagination. And the story, never says one way or the other, which is actually true.

But then later in the series, Quaraun finds a baby that's been left behind, during a battle, and he raises this girl, who he assumes is a Human, until it one day occurs to him, he's raised he for close to hundred years and she's still just a teenager, and, he starts trying to find out what she is, and then the story starts crossing over into the Twighlight Manor story, with the Ecrodon spaceship crash. But then she dies and Quaraun just kind of snaps, which results in the Battle of Ongadada between the Flamites and the Crystonites, he goes on to take control of both empires, builds the Twighlight Manor, yadda, yadda, yadda...and in the end it does say what actually happened to Unicorn, which actually if you know the Twighlight Manor series, you can kind of put the pieces together and figure it out.

But, yeah, that's the quiet 2 paragraph summary of the entire series which is 130+ volumes long. But the whole thing takes you through, seeing his being REALLY frustrated with just one thing after another, and his Autism is really tripping him up.

Well, the thing is, a lot of people see Autism as a childhood illness. There's all kinds of help for parents of autism, and teachers of autism, and day care providers of autism but soon as that autistic child turns 18, that it's. Their are done. There's no more help for them, like POOF the Autism went away because they are adults.

People don't seem to understand that an adult with Autism, can't take care of themselves. They can't get jobs, because no one will hire them. I average 400 job applications a year, every year for more then 20 years now.

And why will no one hire me? Have you ever seen the movie Rainman? People don't hire me because I am like THIS:

I talk just like that^^^

I act just like that ^^^

I rock when I stand just like that^^^

I write for a living because I don't have any other option, and contrary to what other authors have said about me, I've never made more then $2,000 in a single year. Not once in my entire life.  YES, my TOTAL yearly income is LESS THAN the average person's MONTHLY income.

And the $2,000 thats the MOST, a lot of years it's only $1,000, and I've had several years under $600. Yeah, $50 a month. 

And Quaraun has hundreds of strange phobias. And it baffles the other characters, the things he does, just to avoid the things he fears. In Vampire Leprechaun, they are travelling along, and they are not far from where they want to go, and they reach this point, where they have to cross a brook, and the brook is only a few feet wide and, where they are at, only a foot deep. They can easily walk across it, and are about to, when Quaraun has a meltdown screaming fit. They can't get him across and they don't know what to do, because they don't know what the problem is.

They end up, having to find another way to get to where they want to go. They are only 2 or 3 days from where they want to be, but the phobia, Quaraun has, is so bad, that they end up backtracking and taking a different road that bypasses and goes around, and adds an addition 2 weeks to their getting to where they want to go.

Have you ever seen Rainman? Watch this scene:

I do that. ^^^ You can't get me on a plane. You can't get me in a car, unless you can prove to me that car is safe. 

Quaraun does that ^^^^ that is what you see happening, several times in Vampire Leprechaun. Quaraun is just having one melt down after another, the whole story.

That's what is going on, in Vampire Leprechaun. A fear that to others, looks utterly irrational, but to Quaraun, is completely crippling.

I write him doing these things, because he has Autism, and he's doing the same things I do in those situations.

In addition to Autism, I have Chronic Tendonitis. If I walk too fast, fall, or pick up an item weighing more then 20 lbs, the tendons and ligaments tear themselves off of my bones. Do you have any idea, how hard it is for me to type? 

 I not only can't run, most days I can't walk. Many days I'm on crutches. They want to put me in a wheelchair, but I am actively refusing that for as long as possible.

I walk with a cane, and wear a back brace, a leg brace, two wrist braces, and special "cleats" strapped onto my shoes.

I wear my braces under my clothes, so other then the cane and the shoe "cleats" and the fact that it takes me 10 minutes to get from walk only a few feet, you wouldn't know from looking at me, that I am what doctors term "critically disabled".

It is for this reason that about half way through the serious Quaraun gets critically injured and never recovers and suddenly finds himself very limited in his ability to ... well ... do anything. Autism is a horrible disability on it's own, but couple it with something like this, something that rips through your body and destroys, takes away your ability to walk, when all you've done for years is walk, and now all you can do is sit in one place for days on end, unable to even get out of bed for months to a time- it's horrendous. 

I was bedridden from November 2013 to February 2014, because I slipped on the ice - I didn't fall - I caught myself, but the movement was enough to pull a muscle in my leg, off of the bone 2nd I could walk for 12 weeks.

And then February 27, 2014, I was walking again, for only a few days, and it happened again. I slipped, this time I did fall, and the force of the fall, ripped a muscle off my spine, and my hip, and my knee, and I was bedridden until May 2014.

This sort of thing starts happening to Quaraun, because it happens to me, and I base his health off mine. Anything that happens to me is going to end up in these books. This health issue, first showed up in my life in November 2001, while I lifted some clothes up over my head to put them up on a tall shelf, and suddenly completely lost the use of my arm.

ER doctors said the muscle had separated from my thumb and wrist. My arm was in a cast for 8 weeks and a brace after that for 3 more weeks. 

A few months later, I was packing a box with books, I tripped and slammed my shoulder into the door jam/wall around the door. It hurt really bad, but I kept on packing books in a box, only I could this arm. A few hours later, my entire arm is red and swollen and hurts. 

My "husband" had one of his brief moments of remembering who I was and took me to the ER.

ER doctor says,  because this happened before, "You're gonna have to be careful with that arm if it keeps doing that." I tell him, it was the other arm last time. He looks at my charts. It was the other arm.

He looks at my old records, and that's when he realizes I haven't had a primary care physician since my medical insurance expired the day I turned 18, and I've not had live in caretakers since the bomb in 2006, because I haven't been able to afford them since then. And he checked and found a note from one doctor which said: "She comes in with dislocated ligaments frequently, I think she may be a victom of domestic abuse. She says no one hit her. She says she fell."

Then he notices it's in my record, a notation, I've never gone to the hospital of my own free will, each time I was brought in my a relative who found me, injured, several days after the injury happened. Then he asks, have they been any times this happened and no one found me and brought in? When? Where? Why? How often?

Yes. It happens two or three times a year. Sometimes my hand won't move for weeks, sometimes my elbow, sometimes my shoulder, sometimes my ankle, sometimes my knee...my left hip, is so bad now, that I'm no longer able to walk, it's been happening to my left hip since I was 16 years old. 

I've always had difficulty with my right leg. I walked with a cane when I was 4 and again a couple of times in my teen years. From the time I was 17 until the bomb (because the bomb blew it up) I walked with a staff (6 foot tall) it was easier then a cane, because I could lean on it.

He asks if anybody has ever checked for MD or similar disorders.

No. I grew up in the 1970s, when "retards" weren't worth the trouble of anything. Medicate them to keep them quiet and hope they die in their sleep so you don't have to worry about it anymore. That was the attitude my grandfather and uncles had, and they out ranked my parents in the pecking order. Gypsy parents don't have control over their own children if they don't rank high enough in the clan. My parents were low ranked, it's why it shocked everyone, when the Matriauch, left me in control of the clan. I was 17 when she died and made me (in her will) the matriarch of the clan. I outrank everyone now, even the king, who at the time was my grandfather. 200 members of the clan deserted the clan over it. They are why I didn't get medical care, hey wouldn't allow it - my uncles. They still wouldn't except one of the them is dead, and I went to the police and the other two are gone now. I was abused from childhood, until I was 27. I did have medical treatment between 27 and 31 years old. That was First Care Medical Center - the medical center that blew up in 2003.  

All the doctors in Maine remember First Care Medical Center it was on Saco Avenue in Old Orchard Beach. They all remember it because, someone built a bomb and blew it up in 2003. It happened early in the morning before patients arrived, but some doctors died. And there was a chemical lab in the building - the fire was so hot it melted the parking lot out back and the road outfront. They never found the bomber.

There was a doctor at First Care Medical Center who was treating me for free. I had my last physical check up in 2003 and I've had no medical care outside of the ER since then. I only had 1 caretaker by that point and he was in the house in October 2006 when the grease fryer bomb went off. I have had no caretakers since 2006, and no help with medical treatment outside of the 2 times my wrists were damaged and the 2 times my hip was damaged, and the even that just happen in November. In each case I was supposed to get "follow up care" with a primary care doctor, but, I don't have medical insurance and my income is under $2,000 a year, so I've yet to find a primary care doctor to do the follow up care.

This ER doctor did a lot of tests, which he said, normally the ER wouldn't do, but he said mine was the worst case of neglect by the medical system he had ever seen and he said he felt if he didn't run the tests himself, right then, while I was there, they wouldn't get done. He kept saying "the system" had failed me. He said I'm not alone, he said Maine laws make it really hard for adults with Autism to get proper medical attention because Autism is both seen as a disability but also not as a disability, so they can't get medical insurance but they also can't get a disability check to live on either.

He came to the end conclusion that I had "Severe Chronic Tendonitis" (which he said is a symptom, not an illness) and my muscles are "like butter" he said, so there is not much keeping them attached to my bones, thus norml every day activities cause them to just unattach from the bones. He suspected I have Muscular Dystrophy or something similar, but without proper tests and long term primary care, he couldn't be sure, and he said he was very concerned because I needed more tests and he'd done all he could do. He gave me a list of doctors he thought might help, but none of them did because I don't have medical insurance, so, it's been 4 years and I've still not had anything farther done about this issue, because there simply is no help available for people in my situation, in Maine.

But that's what you are seeing, in Quaraun. Before the series starts, in the backstory, Quaraun had a family, had a community, he was disabled, but taken care of, on some level between the abuse and neglect. An uncle controlled everything, so he got far less care then he would have had someone else in the family had a say, and then, a horrible event takes them all away, and suddenly he's completely alone, and living in a place where, he can't get help, because there is no help for people like him, and so, the series starts at that point where you see him, really bad off ad kind of ignoring how bad off he is, because he knows he can't do anything about it so he's just trying to get by however he can.

When the series starts he is alone, made homeless by a horrific event that killed his family and destroyed his home. Quaraun now wanders the world alone. But he has Autism and he's not mental or physically equipped to live on his own.  He can survive on his own, he does survive on his own, but he's not thriving, he's not getting the care he needs. He literally carries everything he owns in a bag, granted it's a pink, heart shaped, beaded bag of holding and it holds quite a bit, but still, he is living out of a bag, with no home or family to go to.

Quaraun is sort of child-like in a lot of the things he says and does, because he doesn't have "adult supervision" and he really does need it, no matter how much he tries to pretend he doesn't.

Quaraun is not only a representation of a gay, Autistic transvestite, he is a  representation of a homeless, gay, Autistic transvestite whose basic survival needs are not being meet, he's often going hungry, he doesn't have a warm dry place to sleep,  he's in very poor physical health, and he's not get the medical attention he needs.

And yes, this series is a very accurate representation of my life being homeless these past 8 years since the grease fryer bomb that blew up my house in October 2006. 

Quaraun is walking from one side of the continent to another and back again, several times, because he has Autism and really can't stop himself from just walking for days on end for no real reason at all.

I do this all the time. I just start walking and I don't stop. I am usually at minimum 4 miles away before my caretakers track down which direction I've walked off too, and once I had gotten 13 miles before they found me. I often walk from Old Orchard to Clifford Park in Biddeford. That's about 10 miles away.

I don't know why I walk. I just do. I can't stop. I just start walking and keep going. My driveway is 175' long. By the time I get to the end of the driveway to get the mail, I've forgotten why I was walking down the driveway and go right past the mailbox and next thing I know I'm in Pine Point or Scarborough or Saco or Biddeford or Ocean Park or Camp Ellis. I don't know how far I'd go before I stopped on my own. My caretakers find me and bring me back.

That's why you see Quaraun doing so much aimless walking from one place to another and not really having a reason to.  I mean he says he's hunting Liches but, he's really just parroting back what he hears people saying about him. He doesn't really know where he's going or why he's going anywhere. He has Autism and like me he just can't stop walking aimlessly for no reason at all.

Quaraun has temper tantrums and screaming fits for what other characters see as "no reason at all." He has things his does, that he has to do every day, which baffle his traveling companions to no end.

For example:

Every morning, he brushes his hair...for exactly three hours. He won't do a damned thing until he has done this. If the other characters try to stop him from doing it, all hell breaks loose. If after say two hours of brushing his hair, they do stop him, he has a screaming fit and then starts over, because he must brush his hair for 3 hours without interruption, so now they've been waiting 5 hours for him to brush his hair, which goes almost to his knees, this guy has wicked long hair.

BeaLuna often bemoans the fact that every day, they waste three hours of travel time, because of "Quaraun's vanity." What she doesn't understand is, it has nothing to do with vanity and even Quaraun himself does know why he does this. It is an impulse that he doesn't feel he has any control over, and it actually frustrates him just as much as it frustrates BeaLuna.

And before his packs up camp go somewhere else, he has to unpack that bag, which is full of, oh my god,... the other characters are so busy complaining about this particular ritual, that never once look at what he's ACTUALLY doing here... they pack up camp and Quaraun unpacks the bag of holding, in which there is a box of holding, which contains HUNDREDS of small glass bottles, which to other characters look like tiny perfume bottles and they assume to be magic potions of some sort because Quaraun is after all a wizard.  

In actually each bottle contained the body of someone who had bullied him at some point in  his life (keeping in my here that this is the prequel series to the Twighlight Manor series and Quaraun is Roderic's grandfather "The First Ecrodon King of The Flamites" For those who've not read the TMseries, Roderic's grandfather is the psychotic serial killer who built the Twighlight Manor and it's infamous *couch* wax *couch* museum, which is a huge display of hundreds of dead people who were stuffed by a taxidermist....well...that's them. He's killing people, and each bottle is itself a vial of holding, all stored in the box of holding, kept in a bag of holding

(...and yes I know, somewhere now there is a Dungeon Master screaming: "But you can't do that! A bag of holding in a bag of holding cancels out both bags" -- yes, yes, I know, I own the Dungeon Master's guides for all 5 and a half editions, plus the Pathfinders and OSRIC too. I know the D&D rules, but this ain't D&D.)

And every time they get ready to break up camp, Quaraun pulls out those bottles and starts lining them up and counting them. Lining them up and counting them. You should see me line stuff up and count it. That's why I know how many forum posts every body posts. I count them. People used to call me "Count Von Count" (from Sesame Street) because I couldn't stop counting thing. Do you know I can't go to WalMart without buying a Crayola BigBox crayons. 120 colors. I have thousands of crayons. I have more crayons then I will ever be able to use, but I can't stop buying them.

And every day, when I get up, I take out all my crayons and I dump them in a big pile, and then I spend several hours sorting them out in rainbow order from dark red down to light purple. Every day. And then I put them away. Every day. And I don't know why.

Do you know I hold two world records? I can't stop buying books. I buy books bulk on eBay .25c a pound. 75 pounds at a time (that's the post office limit for box weight) and that's $18.75 for 200 to 800 paperbacks depending on page count of each book. I spend $20 a month, to buy one of those bulk boxes a month. 

That's a grand total of $225 a year for 2,400 to 9,600 books a year, and I've been doing this for 40 years, which means, I've at minimum 384,000 IF that was the only way I buy books. I also got to every library in the state of Maine, day after they have a book sale and buy EVERYTHING that didn't sell for a $1 a bag. There's usually about 50 books in a bag, so I usually get 500 to 2,000 books in a single day for about $10. I also go to Salvation Army and Goodwill, and buy the ENTIRE BOX/BIN of their .05c books. That's a couple thousand books a month for under $10. 

AND I go dumpster diving for books, watch Craigslist for curbside listings of boxes of books, and buy entire tables of .25c books at flea markets. In all I'm averaging as many as 20,000 new books added to my collect EACH YEAR FOR 40 YEARS and paying under $500 a year for them. 800,000 fiction paperback books, not including hardcovers, non-fiction, cookbooks, or comic books. The two records that I have are these: I own more Historical Romance paperbacks  then anyone else in the world and I own more Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck comic books  then anyone in the world, because I own every copy in 13 languages. I have 8,000 Erotica ebooks on my Kindle cloud ALL free downloads. 

I don't have a house, but I have several barns and sheds and storage units full of books.  I have more Disney comic books then anyone else in the world. I own them in every langue. Nearly every issue of every language from 1937 to current issues. 

Doctors and psychiatrists and psychologists like to come look at my book collection because they say they've never seen anything like it.  They said they've never seen an obsession get this far out of control before.

I buy on average 800 books a month.  And I've been doing that for close to 40 years now. And I spend weeks alphabetizing and sorting and counting and lining them up and unstacking them, just so I can restack them, and I have no idea why I do it but, I feel my most calm, relaxed, and stress-free when I'm stacking books or sort crayons. It put me into this sort of euphoric meditative state. It's very peaceful and relaxing.

One doctor said once that if they measured insanity by how my books a person owned, I'd be the craziest person on the planet.

My caretakers often worry about me in the book shed because the books are stacks, no bookshelves, just books stacks on books, all the way to the ceiling - that's more then 8 feet tall.  They are terrified the whole thing will fall over and I'll be drowned or crushed in a landslide of books. One of the book storage units is 42' long by 36' wide and 13' tall. I have more books then all of the 5 local public libraries combined, and every day I just keep buying more.

Their have been a lot of people tease me mercilessly about the books and why I have so many. I can't stop. I don't know why.

Have you ever seen the movie Rainman? Do you remember the Wapner scene? That's what happens if I don't bring home a new book every day. Here, I found it for you on YouTube:

I can't explain it, but buying books is like it's more important them eating or sleeping. I get physically sick if a day goes by without my getting a new book. It doesn't even matter if it's a book I already have a copy of, just as long as there is a new book added every day. I have some serious, major, melt down panic attacks if I don't add a new book to the collection every single day. And I don't know why. Doctors can't explain that either. If I don't add a new book it feel like my brain is being ripped out of my head and beaten with hammers. I don't know how else to describe it, but that's what it feels like if I don't add a new book every day. Doctors say it is one of the most baffling symptoms I have.

My books are also one of the most distressing things online. I'm on a lot of forums for readers and writers. Dozens and dozens of them. And every one of these forums has a thread where people ask "How many books does everyone have?"

And I will tell people how many books I have, and that I have two world records, because of how many books I have, and every time, on every forum, there will be at least one person (often several) who will accuse me of lying and saying that no one could have that many books.

And others accuse me of boasting. I have Autism - I never boast. I speak only the facts. Boasting would be if I went there and just randomly started bragging for no reason about how many books I had, but that's NEVER what happens.

THEY asked me how many books I had, and I told them. I was answering their question. How is that boasting? If they didn't want to know, then why did they ask?

It's one of the single most common reasons I get bullied for online, though, is because no one ever believes it's possible for someone to own as many books as I own. No one ever believes it and always accuses me of exaggerating, until they actually see the books.

Every time, a local person starts getting upset and saying I'm lying, I show them my books, and they get flabbergasted, because, we are talking stakes of books 40 feet long by 30 feet wide by 12 feet tall. I'm fast closing in on a million books. I should hit a million books within the next 5 years. I'll have a third world record ithin the next 5 to 7 years (more paperbacks  in a private collection- total across all genres-  then anyone on the planet). And within the next 12 years, I'll pass a 4th one (most books TOTAL - all types - in a private collection) , if I continue to buy books at the rate I'm buying them right now. And within 20 years, I'll pass a 5th one - more books than ANYONE either private collection OR public library collection - on the planet. Within 20 years I will own more books then the Library of Congress and that big library in Italy - COMBINED.

When I mention this fact online, on forums, people go ballistic and start accusing me of showing off and trying to be better then them. They say I'm competitive and trying to compete. 

They don't understand: I can't control this. I don't want to buy more books. I don't know why I'm buying these book. I've tried to stop buying books and I can't. I literally, pass out and have MAJOR medical problems with my heart, if a day goes by and I don't get a new book. I am not trying to compete with anyone.

More then 10,000 of my books were destroyed in the bombing of my house in 2006 - that's the hing that sent me into massive meltdown more then the bomb itself. I didn't care that the house was gone, all I cared about was that the books had been destroyed.

People ask me, when did I start collecting books like this. At age 3. First book I learned to read was Green Eggs and Ham. I was 3 years old. That same year, Captain Kangaroo did a contest. You signed up for this contest. Every week, he would send you a workbooks. You watch the show, and answer the questions in the books, and mail them back, and he would send you a book. There were 26 books in the set, one for each letter of the alphabet. I have every one of those books. 

After 26 weeks of a book in the mail every week, I asked my grandmothers, for more books, and THEY were REALLY competitive. Grammy Helen would give a book, and then Grammy Eva next day would give me 2. So next day, Grammy Helen would give me three.

One subscribed me to the Weekly Reader Book Club, so they other subscribed me to the Dr. Seuss Early Reader book club. Than the other Subscribed me to the Disney book club, so the other subscribed me to the Little Golden Book book club. One subscribed me to Harlequin Romance novels and the other to Hitchcock books. (I was only 4 years old).

By the time I was 5 years old, I was a member of so many book clubs, that I had books coming in the mail EVERY DAY.

For my 8th birthday, my parents bought me the Encyclopedia Britannica. I read the whole this within 4 months. 30 volumes. I read them like novels. They bought me Funk/Wagner Encyclopedia for Christmas.

Grammy Helen had started collecting comic books in the 1920s and lots of paperbacks, those kind with monthly subscriptions? I was 8 years old, when she died and in her will, she left me her books: more then 10,000 platinum age and golden age comic books and more then 10,000 paperbacks, murder mysteries, Hitchcock's, Agatha Christies, Nancy Drews, Audubon guides from the 60s and 70s, gardening books...

By the time I was 9 years old, I already owned 30,000 books.

For my 9th birthday my parents bought me "the 100 Greatest Classics" I had read them all by by 10th birthday, Jane Eyre and Treasure Island being my two favorites.

Grammy Eva continued giving me books every day until she died when I was 17.

I was "married" when I was 12. He was 42. (Two more Gypsy traditions - girls are always married before they are 16, men are almost never married before they are 30.) He picked up the tradition and brought books home with him everyday after work.

I was 14 when people at church and around town, realized that I would take ANY book, in any condition, and people just started cleaning their attics and basements, and garages out, and leaving boxes full of books in our driveway and by the mailbox or at the door. 

The local hospital, when it updated it's library, it had hundreds of medical books - they heard about me and asked me if I wanted them. Step-by-step how to books for surgery, psychology guides, 2,000 page nurse manuals. Medical college textbooks. 

I became the "dumping ground" for ANYBODY in the area that had books they were done with and didn't want to throw away.

To this day, 40 years later, my parents continue to by me sets of books and/or encyclopedias for my birthday and Christmas.

Yeah. I have a lot of books and if I live to be 100 years old and I'm still hoarding books then at the rate I am now, by that point, I will own more then TWENTY MILLION books. Of course, I'll have a lot of duplicates, but, duplicates doesn't matter. This is an obsession, that's beyond obsession. An addiction that is beyond all sense of logic or reason. It IS out of control. I know it's out of control and I have no clue how to stop it or if I even want to stop.

But this is what it is like to have Autism. This is the sort of thing Autism makes you do, and you have no idea why you do it.

Books remind me of my two grandmothers. They weren't evil live my grandfather and uncles. I think, looking back, they bought me the books, because they felt trapped and they wanted to escape, but they didn't want to leave me alone with my grandfather and uncles. While my two grandmothers were alive, the uncles never hurt me. They lock me up in rooms back then. Grammy Helen died when I was 8 and after that Grammy Eva never let out of her sight. 

You want to know how they died?

458

ll my readers know 458. Of course they do. The 458 obsession, makes the book collecting obsession look normal. It's in all my books, all my forum signatures, all my forum posts. It's painted on motorhome nd car. Every time I see a 458, I stop and take a picture of it.

People are always asking. What is 458? What does it mean.

Then again, people are always asking: 'Why Liberace? How did you get so obsessed with Liberace?"

Grammy Helen, she loved Liberace. She's the one who died and left me the books. She died during the Battle of 458. It was a clan feud between several Gypsy clans. They nearly tore the town of Old Orchard Beach apart. The police couldn't stop them. No one could. They were out of control and it cost Grammy Helen her life.

She was dead 3 days before they even noticed. 

Here she is, downtown Old Orchard Beach, Maine with her orange metalflake ATV (which I still have and still use.) She's about 70 years old in this picture.

The last year of her life she was very sick, had cancer an as in the hospital more then she was home. She was close to death, doctors said and she wanted to die at home, so was sent back to her house the 16’ x 9’’ house known as The George Ricker Homestead House), seen here, in July 2013, 30 days before vandals ran over it with a bulldozer.

At the time, there was a feud going on (yes, the infamous 458 feud that rocked this town to it’s knees ending in the 458 shoot out) and clansmen were too busy loading rifles and shotguns and shooting at each other from across the street while tourists tried to drive by without getting shot.  Seeing how the clansmen were too busy shooting each other to take care of the Matriarch/Holy Woman, they assigned me (age 8) to take care of her.

Each night at the end of the day, I was to report Grammy Helen’s condition to the clan. The days were spent with me and Grammy Helen watching Liberace, Bonanza, Vincent Price movies, and other shows on her 10” black and white TV. We also washed clothes in her 1948 Speed Queen wringer washer (which miraculously did not get crushed by the bulldozer - it was outside the building - I still have it) and cook in her 1820 enamel wood stove (also stolen when the house was torn down) and crochet doilies (I still have these) and embroider quilt blocks (still have the quilt) and wax the hardwood floors and and play her Liberace records on her phonograph. 

This continued every day for about 3 or 4 months. The shooting and feuding continued going on outside and one day, Grammy Helen as she often did, fell asleep in front of the TV. I went about the cooking and cleaning and washing and waxing the floors. 

That night, I went across the driveway to the house I lived in at 144 Portland Ave (see photo below) the house that in October 2006 would get blown up by a grease fryer bomb. The clansmen, as usual, asked me what me and Gramm Helen had done that day and how was she. I reported, everything we had done, including to say that she fell asleep in front of the TV in the early morning and was asleep the whole day.

The next morning bright and early at sunrise the clansmen went back to loading guns and shooting at each other and I walked across the yard to 146 Portland Ave to take care of Grammy Helen, which was my job because I was “Faerie Sighted” and next in line to take over as the clan’s Holy Woman, thus I was required to spend pretty much every waking minute with her.

So day two, the fighting between the clans continues on, and Grammy Helen is still asleep in front of the TV. I spend the day cooking and cleaning, turn all her shows on for her at the right times, played her Liberace records for her, polished her tea set, etc, etc, That night I go back to the house that would eventually get bombed and over supper, tell the clan, what me and Grammy Helen had done that day, including to say “she was still asleep in front of the TV, she hadn’t woken up yet from yesterday”

Day three came and went exactly as day two. Once again, I resorted to my parents and aunts and uncles that Grammy Helen still had not woken up from the day she had fallen asleep in front of the TV. I was also reporting that she had not eating a thing in 3 days, as well as report that she was leaking black stuff all over the couch (it was July, it was very hot, and she was very dead) and it was becoming quite a mess, too big a mess for me to clean as she was too heavy for me to move to clean under her and besides that when I tried to move her, she felt like an ice cube and was just frozen stiff.

Day four, was a weekend. Weekends were my days off. It was Helen’s cousin Joanie’s turn to take care of Grammy Helen. She arrived around 8AM and the hearse arrived about an hour later, and had to try to drive between the shooting clansmen who were still shooting each other and did not stop feuding just because someone had died.

Joanie who lived down the road and was one of the people who had shunned clan life for becoming an American citizen, spent most of the week screaming and yelling at clansmen for not noticing Grammy Helen was dead and had been dead for several days, long enough for the July heat to have boiled her insides which were leaking out all over the couch and floor.

The police interviewed me over is, because, even though I was an 8 year old severely Autistic child the adult in the clan had left me in charge of caring for Grammy Helen all those last few months of her life, and they never once went into her house to say good morning, good night, to see how she was doing. Nothing. The last about 6 months of her life me and her cousin Joannie were the only two people she had any contact with. And my parents and aunts and uncles, blamed me for her death. They said I didn’t take good enough care of her.

Yeah, that's why when people die in the Quaraun series, you see them dead for 3 days. Because I have Autism and didn't understand death. I do now, but I didn't back then.

In the Quaraun series when BoomFuzzy dies, it's the first time Quaraun losses somebody to death and realizes what death is. His mother died when he was younger, but he doesn't understand that she's gone as dead. He understands that people leave and don't come back, they move to other towns and don't come back. He thinks of death like that, until BoomFuzzy dies. BoomFuzzy kills several people and then kills himself. He tortures them, cuts them up, eats them, and then poisons himself, and Quaraun's with him and doesn't really notice what is going on.

Quaraun has Autism so he's not really "connected" to the events around him...not until he realizes, something is really wrong with BoomFuzzy. BoomFuzzy's dying and Quaraun doesn't know what to do about it, and still doesn't realize the other people are dead, because his concept of death is warped. It's not until after BoomFuzzy has been dead several days and, Quaraun is just sitting there the whole time, kind of waiting for BoomFuzzy and the other to get back up, and it isn't until after he's sat there several days and watched their bodies stack to deteriorate, that he suddenly starts realizing what death is, and that these people aren't coming back. BoomFuzzy is dead, he's not coming back, and it hits Quaraun hard.

That scene replays in his head, every day. Because he has Autism and forgets nothing. Every day, in his mind, he is reliving BoomFuzzy's death. It's like a full colour movie, that just plays inside his head every day.

In the books, BoomFuzzy's death is inspired by Grammy Helen's death, and by the murder-suicide that killed my 5 friends but left me alive. I took those two events and combined them together, to create the "BoomFuzzy's death" event which forever haunts Quaraun's mind in every single volume of the series.

You see, I can't get out Grammy Helen died out of my head. And that's why the books. Mountains and mountains of books that I can't stop bringing home. I read them all. I try to put new things in my head, so the horrible things won't keep replaying in my brain.

That's the difference between a DVD and a memory. A DVD you can shut off when you don't want to see it. But you can't shut the memories off, so you have to find something to push them back, so you can't see them, and for me that's books. I become so focused on the books, either reading books, sorting books, or writing books, that the memories go away, for a little while at least.

So when people see me collecting all these books and when they laugh about it or tease me about it or get angry about it...they don't understand: I'm not collection books. I never wanted a world record. I'm not try to get more world records. I don't care about world records. I don't even fully understand what a world record is, when you get right down to it. That's not why I have the books. I have Autism...I can remember in vivid detail, in full colour, EVERY event in my life, all the way back to a fishing trip, that my relatives say happened when I was 2 years old. Every day, every event, every conversation, of my entire life, is in my head and I forget none of it.

People without Autism, they forget things. I don't. I wish I could. But i can't. Books are the only thing that I can focus on, so much, that my brain stops replaying the memories and lets me have a few minutes of peace.

You people who don't have Autism. You don't know what it's like.

And it's worse for me then it is for others with Autism, because I grew up with those people and their stupid psychotic alien death cult. I have memories NO ONE should ever have to have. Death. Murder. Suicide. Bodies laying there for days. No body doing anything about it. A normal person can't deal with memories like that and here I am with memories like that: me - with Autism, a disorder that doesn't allow my brain to forget anything.

It's more then collecting. I don't just collect books.

I sort them, and when I get them all sorted and in alphabetical order - I knock the stack down and start throwing them all over the place, so that I'll have a reason to recount them and resort them all over again. And i don't know why I do that.

I am compelled to dump, shelves of books on the floor, JUST so I will have an excuse to organize and sort the books. You see, the obsession isn't the actual COLLECTING of the books, but rather, the COUNTING and SORTING of the books.

Whenever people watch me doing this they joke and call me Count Von Count. And the fact that I'm often wearing a 6 yard burnoose (cape) doesn't help either.

You want to know what I'm told is even weirder? The fact that while I am counting things, this song is playing in my head, on memory replay, the entire time I am counting:

That's why the collection has to get to bigger every day.  Not to have more books, but to have a reason to have to resort them.

You see, when I get a new book, I can't just find it's proper place and put it there. I have to take EVERY book off the shelf, shuffle them them like sort of of giant deck of cards and then spend hours, days, weeks, sifting through the stack looking for each title to put them back in alphabetical order.

It's almost like having a giant jigsaw puzzle, and I have to solve it, but once I've solved it, the fun is gone, because the fun is in the puzzle, so I have to take the puzzle apart, so that I can have fun putting it back together again.

I collect jigsaw puzzles too. I will take 10 boxes of 500 to 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzles, and dumped them in a big pile, mix them all up and then, put the puzzles together.

I mix multiple puzzles together like that, because it's the only way I can make them challenging enough, so that it takes me more than an hour or two to put them together. 

They had a puzzle at the library once. The old guys, spent a week working on it and they only had bits of the edges done. I would watch them. One day, they said they had to give up, it was too hard. It was 1,500 peice puzzle of every lighthouse in America. They said they were going to put it away. I asked them if I could try it. They laughed and said, they had spent 7 days and hadn't been able to do it not even with all of them. I just sat down and started putting it together. They called all their family and friends to come watch.  I completed the puzzle in under 3 hours.

People started trying to find jigsaw puzzled that were too hard for me. They haven't found one yet. That's why they started mixing multiple puzzles together. It makes it harder, but I still finish in the equivalent of under 5 hours per puzzle in the mix.

There is a trick to it: I have to see the final picture. They've tried giving me just the puzzle pieces without the picture of the end result and I couldn't finish them in under a week that way.

But if I see the finished picture first, I can put the pieces together usually in only under 3 hours.

Smaller puzzles, under 500 pieces, only take me under an hour most cases. Puzzles under 100 peices, I  can complete in 2 or 3 minutes usually.

I lay out all the puzzle pieces on the ground, face up. I put all the edges to one side. Then I sort then by color groups, whatever the major colour is on each piece. All the reds in one stack, all the light blues in another stack, the dark blues here, the greens there, etc. I look at the cover. I look at the pieces. I look at the cover. I look at the pieces. I put the cover down. I put the edge together, then I do each corner, then fill in the middle.

My books are like a giant jigsaw puzzle for me. Sometimes I sort them by colors of the covers. Sometimes I stack them so the spine colors create pictures. Once I start sorting the books I can't stop until I have finished. Nothing, no one can pull me away. It's like nothing else exists. I can no longer see or hear anyone or anything but the books. It's a very difficult sensation to explain.

But you see, that's why Quaraun does this thing he does with the bottles. He can't stop. He has to count them. He has to take them out and sort them and count them and add to the collection. His Autism compels him too to do it, but he doesn't know why. He can't explain it, but he simply can not do anything else, until he has done this first.

There are scene in these books, where the story/plot simply stops and Quaraun just starts doing something: brushing his hair for 3 hours and the other characters can't stop him, or unpacking the bottles and lining them up and counting them and sorting them, and he's no longer acknowledging the other characters.

Quaraun can't control this, and the other characters don't understand it, and readers who don't know Autism, are going "What the fuck just happened? Why isn't the story moving forward? Why are we stopping while he does this for no reason?" But Quaraun IS the story. 

That's the thing you have to understand. Chasing Liches, that's NOT the story. That's just something Quaraun is doing. And he's having trouble doing it, because if a Lich shows up and it's time for him to count bottles, believe me, he's gonna be counting bottles while the other characters are getting slaughtered by Liches, because Quaraun has Autism, and this ain't one of those stories, where the character "has Autism" ONLY when it's convenient for the plot, and then acts normal the rest of the time. This guy ACTUALLY has Autism, and he is NOT going to be saving the day for anyone, because, his Autism is not gonna let him. 

You also got to remember, in the Twighlight Manor series, Quaraun is a villain. He's a serial killer, a cannibal, a rapist, he has a torture chamber, he's beyond sadistic when it comes to torturing people before eating them, he skins people alive, and he built the Twighlight Manor. He is the father of King Vielder, Melaca, and Dr. Vangoneese. He is the Autistic Necromancer who is pushed beyond what he can take, and set out on a flying pirate ship to kill everyone in the galaxy, simply because he one day realized he could. He is the megalomaniac that wiped out the entire races of three separate planets.  In the Twighlight Manor series, he killed not millions, but billions of people. He is the evilest character of the Twighlight Manor Universe. 

The Quaraun series, shows him before he got that way. In the Quaraun series, you are seeing him before he became a villain. You are seeing him on his path to becoming a villain. You find how he became the villain he was in the Twighlight Manor series.

Quaraun is NOT a hero. He starts out kind and innocent, but he does get mean and eventually evil, and he is a serial killer. He will go on to kill pretty much everybody he encounters, because, well, he IS Roderic's grandfather, and he does eventually build the Twighlight Manor. And THAT is why the earlier stories in the series focus on his Autism, quite a lot.

The early stories focus heavily on the fact that he is going through hell and a lot of people are bullying him and treating him like shit and he's trying to ignore the bullies, he's trying to block out the pain, so counting things and sorting things and, eventually, he's gonna snap, and becomes the Emperor of the Triple Planets, and pretty much annihilates Planet Flame, Planet Crystonia, and Planet Diona. If you know the TM story, you know those three planets were brought to their knees by a wizard who absolutely went psychotic and built a flesh eating mansion and started feeding entire populations of people to it. This is the story of HOW the Twighlight Manor gets built and why the freaking house eats people.

I am able to write Quaraun and his frustration with people bullying him, because I've lived with being bullied my whole life. I know what it's like to try to ignore the hurt, to try to bury the pain under tens of thousands of books.

I know what it is like to have no friends who are willing to be your friend in public, because they don't want people to know they know you. I know what it is like, to have friend who join the bullies in beating you up, because they are too scared that if the bullies find out they are your friends, the bullies will beat them up too.

I know what it is like to want to go to the movies with all your friends and be told, you can't go, because you're too retarded to be see in public with them.

I know what it is like to be kidnapped, you and your friends, to be held hostage, to watch your friends one by one be tortured - their arms and legs cut off while they were still alive. I know what it is like to be the only one left alive, and know that I'm next to die, and then the police arrive.  There were 6 of us.

John had his head turned all the way around. His face was facing back, behind him, totally the wrong direction.

Ann had her leg cut off and when it was pull out, it pulled her intestines out at the same time and she had eaten corn for breakfast and it was spilling out half digested all over the floor. L.B. ate part of Ann's leg in front of us.

I didn't die because Tajid did. When Tajid died, I was supposed to be next, he got between me and L.B. and tried to protect me, so she took him next instead of me, and snapped his spine in two. It took him 3 days to die, in absolute agony, paralyzed, he couldn't even scream, blood pouring out of his mouth.  His eyes turned black. It was horrible. He was dead for 5 days before the police got there. It was a heatwave in August, temperatures went over 100F and his skin turned a clear green and then swelled up and exploded, maggots eat his eyes in only a few hours. It was only a small room, like a big cloest. The smell was horrible. You can't even begin to imagine the smell of a body dead 5 days in a summer heatwave in a room that small.

Three of us were still alive when the police arrived. One died that night. The other  the next day. I was 14 years old when that happened. All 5 of my friends died that week. I was the only survivor.  I stopped talking during the 6 month long court trail. I didn't talk again for 15 years. 

That's why I know how to write kidnapping, hostage, torture,  cannibal, and death scenes with such vivid clarity and accuracy. I survived a murder-suicide that killed 5 of my friends.

That's why in the Quaraun series, BoomFuzzy (Unicorn) kidnaps and then murders several people in a horrible ritual and then kills himself, and Quaraun witnesses this, and he lives with this horrible sense of guilt and feeling that he could have done something to stop it, but because of his Autism he didn't and lives with that everyday. I live with that everyday. Quaraun loves BoomFuzzy so much and he tries to live remembering BoomFuzzy as he was, as Quaraun thought he was, but he has those final days of BoomFuzzy's life (the murder-suicide) stuck in his head and he can't move past it.

Quaraun is trying to deal with this, and at the same time, there all these people in his life, who don't know his past, they don't know he's the survivor of a horrible murder-suicide, they don't know that only a few years after the murder-suicide a second event occurred which killed his family and his caretakers and blew up his home and left him homeless and now living in the forest in a tent, alone, with no one. They don't know this. He doesn't tell them, and they bully him and bully him and tease him. They pick on him for the way he dresses, the way he acts, the way he talks...

Just like I survived a murder-suicide and a few years later a grease fryer bomb blew up my house and left me living under a tarp alone with no caretakers any more, and the only people who will talk to me are the people on forums who can't see me and don't know I'm what they call "retarded", and they don't know about the murder-suicide or the bomb, but eventually they find out I have Autism and they start teasing me and bullying me... I can write Quaraun's pain and frustration because it is my VERY REAL pain and frustration that I feel every day.

Quaraun is an Autistic wizard, who can't mentally or emotionally deal with or cope with the things life throws his way, and when he finally cracks, he's gonna go megalomanic psychotic and wipe out the whole solar system and feed everybody to his flesh eating sentient house, because that's what Roderic's grandfather did and that's who this is.

So that's why you are seeing the Autism honed in on so much, and why you are seeing, because someone with Autism, really can't cope with stress. I know. I have Autism. I know. I go bonker when I'm stressed out. Big time.

I mean, if you're not familiar with Autism, you'd look at Quaraun doing the things he does and, think "This guy's freaking nuts! Why is he doing these things? It makes no sense. How does this go with the rest of the story?"

Thing is, if you did think that, then you've come into this series with the wrong expectation, because it's not an action adventure, plot based story. It's a slice of life literary story that is following the everyday life of an Autistic adult that is struggling to survive on his own without any caretakers to help him. And THAT is the point of the story, not the Lich hunting, not anything else. So if you are waiting for him to "do something" like fighting Lich's, you got a long wait, because that ain't happening, that ain't what this series is about.

The whole point of the series, is Quaraun and how he, with his Autism, deals with life.

Initially, Unicorn also teases him and instead of Insane, calls him Quaraun the Idiot, claiming idiot to be more accurate then insane. Unicorn stops teasing Quaraun as much, when one day Quaraun breaks down in tears after Unicorn calls him Quaraun the Stupid. When Unicorn asks why the Elf is crying, Quaraun explains to Unicorn how badly people's mean spirited names hurt.

Unicorn has more understanding for Quaraun then the other characters do. He realizes that there is some sort of a mental issue that is tripping Quaraun up and that it bothers Quaraun quite a bit that he can't control it.

There are many times where Unicorn is deliberately telling Quaraun stuff - for example, Unicorn, is in fact The Elf Eater of Pepper Valley, a Lich, the very Lich that Quaraun is hunting down. Unicorn comes right out and tells him this. Unicorn realizes very fast that quaraun ain't exactly working with a full deck and and makes a game out of doing everything he can to convince Quaraun that really shouldn't be friends with him, because he's supposed to be trying to kill him. Unicorn believes Quaraun is too stupid to realize that he's a Lich.

On the other hand, Quaraun, isn't actually as stupid as he appears. He does know that Unicorn is a Lich. The problem is, Quaraun is not an evil person and he doesn't really want to kill the Liches, he just doesn't know what else to do with his life, because he doesn't know how to do anything. He knows he's not good at anything. He knows he can't survive in normal society. He knows he will never fit in anywhere because no one is willing to accept a retarded Elf. So now with a Lich in tow, he continues to walk from one side of the country to another, looking for a Lich to kill, knowing full well the Lich is traveling with him. 

In The Vampire Leprechaun of Fire Mountain, FarDarrig warns Unicorn, BeaLuna, and Bullgaar that Quaraun is a serial killer and has been for several years murdering everyone who bullied him. They however, do not understand FarDarrig due to his poor grasp of English and falsely assume that FarDarrig was threatening to kill them, when in fact he was trying to protect them from Quaraun. Unicorn continues to tease Quaraun in a lesser manner, until Quaraun finally has had enough and attempts to kill Unicorn, BeaLuna, and Bullgaar in The Obsidian Idol of The Elf Eater of Pepper Valley. 

Unicorn stops teasing Quaraun after he recovers his injuries, however BeaLuna and Bullgaar heighten their bullying, and when Unicorn starts to defend Quaraun against them, they turn on Unicorn, calling him stupid as well. When Unicorn dies in Into the Swamp of Death, BeaLuna and Bullgaar agree that they were glad to get rid of him, at which point Quaraun murders both BeaLuna and Bullgaar.

"It's always the quiet ones." Yeah. It is. And there's a reason for that. It's because the "quiet ones" have Autism, and while they don't talk much if at all, and don't smile, and they don't show emotion, and they can stand there for days while you beat the crap out of them and they don't even flinch...they do have feelings. They are hurting. While they are silent outside, inside they ARE screaming, and eventually, they reach a breaking point, and you don't want to be around them when that happens, but an Autistic person, who does finally show emotion,  is gonna show them all at once and probably with a lot of force an violence, that no one around them expected to see.  I mean there is a reason why things like school shootings are done by Autistic students who never before displayed any sing of violence at all. They don't. They won't. They hold it in. And when they've had - they've HAD IT. And they will kill you very violently, because they have many years of being bullied all front and center in their brain. It may have happened years ago, but they never forget, and it replays in their brain every day.

That's why when Quaraun has had enough of people bullying him, he cuts them up and eats them. He just can't take the harassment anymore and just wants it to stop, so he stops it, and then continues walking across the world, no guilt, no remorse, no regret, because now he can live in peace and quiet without the annoying, whining, bitching, teasing, name calling, antagonistic people hurting him anymore.

I've been called retarded, stupid, an idiot, or a dolt pretty much most of my life. Things characters say to Quaraun, they are things people have said to me. I let Quaraun do to his bullies, what I can't legally do to mine. 

This series was written from the point of view of a severely Autistic Elf who has been driven to depression and suicide, by the endless bullying and teasing and harassment and name calling and belittling he gets from everyone he meets, to show readers, what it is like to be a person with Autism, who lives their entire lives friendless and alone because everyone thinks they are too retarded and too stupid to be included or are too retarded and too stupid to have feelings. I wrote this series as a diversion from suicide, which is why suicide is a big theme throughout the series. Basically, I wrote this series as a way to find a reason to not kill myself.

So, yeah, you are seeing Quaraun's world from his point of view and he IS retarded, he IS stupid, he IS kind of an idiot, and because of his mental deficiencies, he DOESN'T have the mental ability to rationally sort through the things going on in his life, and he IS aware of that.

Because the series is set in a quasi-Medieval time period the term "Autism" or "Special needs" is never used, and the historically accurate term "retarded" and "idiot" are used. "Idiot" WAS in fact the medically correct term for someone with Autism right up until 1978, when medical guides first started recommending the term "idiot" be discontinued and replaced with the word "Autism" instead, so, in the series, "idiot" is used instead of "Autism" to describe Quaraun.

Part of what destresses Quaraun so much, throughout the series, IS the fact that he doesn't understand a lot of things other characters do and say and it frustrates him that he doesn't have the ability to understand them. He wants to understand the things going on around him, he wants to be accepted by others, he wants to be normal, but he knows he never will be and it depresses him because he knows no one is ever going to be willing to accept him as an equal.

In the past, before the series starts, Quaraun lost his temper and accidently killed Gibedon the Great, the most powerful Necromancer of all time. People assume he therefore must also be a Necromancer, they ASSUME that only a more powerful Necromancer could have killed Gibedon.

Every character in the series is eventually faced with realizing Quaraun isn't what people think he is. Rumours  have spread throughout the realms saying that he is this fearsome, all powerful Necromancer. Every town he goes in people run in terror, but after a while people start asking why. Why is everyone afraid of him? 

People start to look at him and ask, "THIS, is the great Quaraun the Insane? THIS is the guy who killed Gibedon?  Seriously? THIS IS THE GUY? What the fuck? He's stupid! And he's wearing a dress and he's passed out on the floor. Somebody pulled out a sword and he fainted. What the frick?"

A large theme of the series, is in fact: Never assume, for it makes an ASS out of U and ME.

People meet Quaraun, and because he's famous and they only know him from rumours, they have all these false assumptions about who he is and the type of person they expect him to be, and then they actually meet him face to face and he's basically a retarded, sissy who's scared of his own shadow, and that really throws people off, because they really did not expect that.

The idea for this came from the fact that, I am very famous.  Not for my books, but for being the little girl who about 40 years ago, took on Proctor & Gamble head to head, to  shut down the animal test labs. I spent a lot of my childhood on front pages of newspapers and on TV because I wrote A LOT of letters to a LOT of people, and founded what became known as The Proctor & Gamble Boycott. I'm also famous because of Stephen King who has used me as the basis for the Autistic characters in Rose Red and Chinga, and my car (The Goldeneagle a 1964 Dodge 330 police car, and billed since the 1960s as The World's Most Haunted Car) was the  inspiration for Christine, Trucks, Maximum Overdrive, and others,  and Thinner was filmed in our yard and the Gypsy witch was supposed to be me...we are Scottish Gypsies and I am the clan's matriach and holy woman.

People know I have Autism, but it's not until they meet me face to face, that it hits them: "OMG! She's retarded!"

Pretty much everybody on the internet knows me or has heard of me. My website gets tens of thousands of hits a week. Thousands of people come here to Old Orchard Beach every year, to get a glimpse of "Stephen King's Gypsies" as a lot of tourists call us.  I've meet close to 7,000 of my online fans (readers of my books), face to face in person.

It doesn't matter who it is: fans of my books, PETA members wanting to meet the P&G Boycott founder, King's fans wanting to meet anyone that had anything to do with his work, reporters wanting to know what crazy protest or boycott I'm gonna pull next (I'm a "professional protester" - P&G was just the biggest one) - it doesn't matter who they are or why they came to meet me, every meeting is always the same:

"YOU'RE EelKat? You can't be EelKat...you're, you're, you're retarded! How can YOU be EelKat?"

They can't stop puzzling over how someone as disabled as me could write.

People read my posts online, my articles on Squidoo, my books, my stories, my forum posts, and they think I must be a normal person just like them...and then they meet me in person and realize, I'm a woman in my 40's who required 24 hour adult supervision. I need help to eat and brush my hair and bathe and use the toilet.  I don't talk, I don't make eye contact, and my caretakers will be quick to tell you not to touch me because that'll send me into a hysterical screaming fit that could take hours to stop.

If anything upsets me, I'm on the floor rocking back and forth with my hands on my head screaming "No, no, no, no, no, no, no,...." for hours.

If you do get me talking, which is difficult, most everything you say to me is going to result in me simply saying "I don't know" regardless of what you said.

I am what the average person calls "retarded" in the true medical sense of the word. But people read what I write and they think because I can type coherently, I must be a normal person. 

No where do you find people so taken back, then you do at book signings. 

It is very difficult for me to set up to do a book signing, I'll get to the store and be 'doing my thing' while I'm attempting to set up, and the store owners will respond with...

"Good gawd what in the heck are you doing in here. Nobody but the authors are supposed to be in here." 

I hand them my business card and continue setting up, while they sputter on in horrified shock at the sudden realization they have invited "a retarded" author to the book signing. 

"You wrote that? But, but, but...you're retarded, how did you write that? You couldn't of written that...you're...you're, you're a retard! Retards can't write. You can't even talk straight. Hey what's the joke? who brought this retard in here? Where's EelKat? She's gonna be late, we need her to start setting up for the book signing. Come on, somebody get this retard out of here. Where's the author... Wait... Seriously, you're the author? Omg! How is that possible? You're a freaking retard, what did somebody ghost write this for you?" 

And then they puzzle over me some more.

And than come the readers to have their books signed...

THE SINGLE MOST COMMON reaction readers have to meeting me is: "You wrote that? But, but, but...you're retarded, how did you write that? You couldn't of written that... you... you're... you... couldn't of... you're, you're a retard! Retards can't write. Seriously, whats the joke, where's the real author? 

Me: "I am the real author"

Them: "You're the author? Of THIS? How is that possible? You're so retarded." 

Me: "No, I have Autism"

Them: "Hey really? Cool, I know someone who has a kid with Autism too! You don't look like you have Autism though, you're face ain't all funny. I've seen those kids with Autism, they all got big heads and they are missing that bone in their nose." 

Me: "No, that's not Autism, that's Downs Syndrome."

Them: "Oh, yeah, right, that's what my buddy's kid has. Downs Syndrome. I always get those two mixed up. But it's all the same you know. Autism, Downs Syndrome, they's all retards, same diff." 

Me: "No, they are not the same at all. Autism, Downs Syndrome, and Retarded are three completely different disorders, not a one of them anything like the other two." 

Them: "Sure they are, just a bunch of brainless stupid kids. It's all the same."

Me: "My IQ is 217. I was taken out of school at age 8 because I was too far ahead of the rest of the school and too young for be put in a high school class. I did high school classes at home, started them at age 9. I graduated from college the first time, at age 16 with a degree in costume making and fashion design. At the time I was writing plays for local theatres and intended to become a costume designer. I started writing at age 3. I published my first 16 page story when I was 4 years old. I published my first Erotica novel at age 12. I own 300,000 books, I've read every one of them and and quote them because I have a photographic memory, I can pull up every event in my life and recite it word for word - entire conversations of everyone in the room." 

Them: "Oh so your one of them genius kids. What do they call then? Aspergers? That's not REAL Autism." 

Me: "No. I have Autism. I require 24 hour adult supervision. I need help to eat my meals, brush my hair, take a bath, and use the toilet. I can not talk, thus why I am writing this to you on paper, instead of using my mouth to speak verbally. I am unable to function on a normal level, I can not do basic things you do every day without thinking about them. I can brush my hair on my own, but once I've picked up the brush it can take me as long as an hour or more to remember what the brush is and how to use it. It's what people mean when they say I am 'slow'.

I can not cross the street on my own because it takes me so long. I get half-way across and forget what I'm doing so turn and go back. The problem is I will turn again to finish crossing before getting back. I end up standing in the middle of the road walking in circles until something thinks to get out of their car and guide me out of the road.  I often go down the driveway to get the mail, and forget what I was doing by the time I reach the road, so just keep on walking until I can remember why it is I started walking.

The problem is when I start walking, my mind can't focus on multiple things at once, so I simply keep walking - I am frequently found by my caretakers as many as 13 miles away, with no idea where I am. It takes a great amount of mental effort for me to tell my feet to walk, so much so that there is no room to tell my feet they were supposed to stop at the mailbox. I frequently get lost -several times a week- because of this."

Watch this video...I do this...This is why I'm not allowed to cross the street on my own.

Do note, however, that I can't do math. While Rainman's skill was math mine is writing. I do with writing, what he does with numbers. Which brings up the next question people often ask at book signings:

THEM: "Then how do you get any writing done?"

ME: "Writing is a problem. Once I start, I don't stop. The longest I have gone writing steady non-stop, without breaks, sleep or food, was 5 days. It's how I write 500,000 words in 30 days for NaNoWriMo. My typing speed starts out at 37 words a minute, but after a few hours it picks up to 91 words a minute being my top clocked speed, that's 5,000 words and hour. During NaNoWriMo I write in 3 day sessions.  72 hours on, 8 hours off. I average 30,000 words a day that way. As I have said before, I am very extremely mega good as some things. Writing is one of them. Sewing and embroidery is another. I can focus on one thing and learn every aspect of it and essentially become become among the best there is at it, but that one thing, is also the ONLY thing I can do.  People look at the few things I am good at and they forget at what cost I am good at those things. I literally can not do anything else. " 

Them: "WOW, that's fascinating. So how'd you'd get it, I thought that was a childhood illness, like chicken pox or something. Aren't you like 30 or 40 aren't you kind of old to have Autism? " 

Me: "Autism is not an illness, you can't 'get it', you are born with it and it doesn't 'go away' just because the kid grew up. It's a chemical imbalance of the brain, that is affected by over stimulation and allergies to food, fabric, plants, animals, soap, light, sound, smells, etc.  

In a controlled environment free of contaminants, food, and allergies, free of any sounds and with only soft light, I am able to talk, walk, and act just as normal as anyone else; but introduce just one of those things into that room and I lose the ability to talk, walk, think, brush my hair, eat food, or even move because my brain shuts off and seizes my body up in reaction to the allergies.

I have night terrors caused by gastrointestinal problems caused by being allergic to blankets, sleeping bags, pillows, pretty much everything. I have not slept on a bed since I was 8 years old, I can't sleep on beds, I'm allergic to mattresses. I am on a raw foods diet, I can only eat fresh fruits and vegetables, because I'm allergic to everything else. If I eat something I am allergic to, or if touch a fabric I am allergic to, or enter a room where someone is smoking or wearing perfume, or go outside in the daytime when the sun is out (I'm "allergic" to sunlight too, that's not the right word but it's easier then trying to explain), or if you turn the radio on a play a frequency that 'reprograms my brain waves'...any one of these things causes me to go into what doctors call 'a fit' where I start shaking uncontrollably, than pass out on the floor and can not speak or move and it could be days before I could see or hear anything again." 

THEM: "Wow, you know I'm just so amazed. I've never met an adult with Autism before. I had no idea. But I gotta ask, I'm always hearing how autism is just another word for artistic, does having Autism, make you extra creative or artistic?"

ME:  " I got several books out from the library about Autism. Unfortunately they are all just a bunch of speculation and observations written by doctors and parents who ask more questions than they answer.

One of the things I read most often is parents noting that their Autistic child is attracted to crayons, colors, and drawing. So much so that when they pick up a crayon and start drawing, they completely shut out the entire world, unable to see or hear anything that is going on around them. I can testify to the fact that this is true. I can not explain it, but drawing is a must. It's like eating or sleeping or breathing - I can't survive without it.

Autistics tend to grow up to be very quiet, but very creative adults. Many of the world's greatest scientists had Autism. Many of the world's greatest painters had Autism. Several famous authors and novelists have Autism. These are the three careers most commonly chosen by Autistics. Oddly, two of those three are what I did become: an artist and a writer.

Why do Autistics become scientists, artists, and writers? I'm not sure if there is a reason, but I can tell you my personal theory on the matter. Autistics don't do well in jobs requiring a lot of contact with people, nor do they do well in places filled with loud noises. High traffic, lots of moving objects, phones ringing, lights flashing, people talking . . . all of these things are like stabbing an Autistic's brain with thousands of pins and needles. 

Noise is frustrating. 

Noise hurts. 

Noise makes me want to take a book and throw it at whatever or whoever is making the god awful offended noise. (Throwing things "for no reason" is another thing we Autistics do a lot, only we DO have a reason: NOISE HURTS! 

It causes searing headaches and make my ears ring and is no different than had you just hit me in the head with a hammer. I am often accused of being "overly sensitive", well, maybe I am, but even soft noises sound like cannons blasting through my ears and I can't take the pain it causes, so I avoid noise, things that make noise, and places where loud noise is, at all costs.

Well, for me at least, art, writing, researching, and building things are all huge attractions because I can go off by myself, in the garden or at the library or on the beach, some place relaxing and quiet, and I can read and write and draw and study without having to worry about loud noises or sudden movements or people bombarding me with questions. Being an artist, writer, or scientist are "safe" jobs because you can focus on your work without worrying about some loud noise hurting your ears.

THEM: "But you go out by yourself. How do people respond to you in public when you don't have a caretaker to tell them why you do these things?"

ME: "I have a service dog these past 2 years which makes my ability to go out by myself, much better then in the past. I have Autism which makes it very difficult for me to have one on one interaction with people. I don't talk, I don't make eye contact, I can't understand your jokes so don't laugh at them, and trying to hug me (or even get with in 2 feet of me) could result in my responding with a completely freaked out panic attack. I often do not understand what people say, because I take their words at face value and then later find out that they meant something totally different than what they had said, which results in a very broad gap in my communication abilities, esp when I say something and people assume I must have meant something other than what I said due to the fact that they would have meant something different.

A typical face to face conversation with me would sound like this:

They say: "When pigs fly!"

I'll say: "But it's scientifically impossible for pigs to fly and we were not talking about pigs, why are you talking about pigs, what do pigs have to do with it?"

They say: "No, that means I won't do it."

I say: "Than why didn't you just say you wouldn't do it, why did you start talking about farming and start talking about it in such a silly and illogical manner, when you know for a fact that pigs can't fly, and what does you not wanting to do something have to do with pig farming anyways. I don't understand why you changed the subject to pig farming."

That will usually, end the conversation as I walk off talking to myself trying to figure out if it is possible to create flying pigs, and will not hear another word you or anyone else says, until I have solved this problem of flying pigs. I will probably than spend the rest of the week searching the library and Google for books and web sites on pig farming and try to find out if there have been any studies made in attempt to create flying pigs. I'll probably end up on Squidoo reading lenses about pigs and flying and make a lens about each if unable to find one already made.

People do not respond to me well at all. I irk them on so many levels. I think rather than asking how people respond to me, perhaps you should be asking how I respond to you?

Keep in mind, I'm not an American. I am a Scottish Gypsy. I grew up with very minimal contact with Americans and their society.

I think the way the American woman act, shocks me the most. American woman are so rude, mean, cold-hearted, loud-mouthed, and disrepesctful. They talk back to their men, run off in public without a related male chaperone, wear skimpy trashy clothes, shake their ass and boobs around falling out of their clothes. They smoke. They drink. The slap their kids around - if they have kids at all. They are always screaming and yelling and pushing people around, being all stuck-up, entitled, bossy, and bitchy. American women are just so mean spirited. I don't understand them at all. They are very, very scary people to be around. I don't even like being in the same room with them. They always act they they are ready to hit someone.

Just two days ago I was in Biddeford, a town, two towns away from us, and there was a man walking down the sidewalk and behind him, there was this woman running down the hill. He didn't see or hear her coming up, so he was taken by surprise when she whacked him in the back of the head with her purse (a big, giant sized purse) and then start screaming at him calling him "a fucking, jackass bastard from hell". He started running towards a nearby parking lot, and she ran after him screaming "I'm gonna kill you, you mother fucker from hell". 

I was walking my dog, there's a dog park just around the corner where I take her a few times a week. We stopped to watch this crazy couple. The guy was trying to block the blows as she was just punching him over and over and over again, screaming and yelling. After about 7 or 8 minutes of that, she started yelling about why she was mad.

Turns out they are girlfriend and boyfriend and he had walked to her apartment to visit her. She didn't answer the door because she was on the phone. He thought she wasn't home so walked back to his apartment. She saw him leave and went crazy, and ran after him. She was mad because he, in her words "should have known" she was on the phone and waited for her to get done. He said he had waited for more then 5 minutes and had knocked and rang the bell repeatedly, and left because he assumed she had gone out with her friends.

Why was she mad? I still don't know. Why was her first response to act violently? Well that's simple: Because that's what American women do.

If you're are not familiar with Autism, think of it as taking Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Agoraphobia, Hypersensitivity, a dozen different food allergies, a dozen different skin allergies, a dozen different environmental allergies, extra sensitive hearing and taste, several dozen phobias, post traumatic stress disorder, and Schizophrenia and then mixing them all together.

Imagine one person who has all of those things at the same time and THAT is what Autism is like for the person who has to live with it.

Or just think Albert Einstein, he had Asperger's, as did most every other famous scientist and many authors. We over analyze everything, can not rest until we find out the reason why things happen, than are compelled to write down our findings in very long winded manners, and usually will spend weeks on end without any contact with a single living being because we become so obsessed with finding the answer, that we lose all track of time and somehow our brains shut out the fact that there are other people in the world whom we, while in the obsessed state, can neither see nor hear and are completely unaware of their existence.

It is important to note that while both Asperger's and Savant are types of Autism with some similarities, they are different. An Aspie rarely requires caretakers and adult supervision, while a Savant usually can't function on their own and is institutionalized. They are both types of high-functioning Autism, but you can see how much difference there is in the range of the term "high-functioning". Not everyone who is high functioning, is able to live among "normal" society.

I think the term "high-functioning" confuses a lot of people because they think it means, we are able to live among mainstream society, and that's not the case. Only a small fraction of high-functioning Autistics are high-functioning enough to live among normal people the way Einstein did or the way Sheldon does on the show. That sort of thing is VERY rare.

Also keep in mind that MOST doctors are going to tell you that Asperger's IS NOT a type of Autism at all, but rather a separate disability entirely.`

Also, fewer then 70% of ALL people FALSELY CLAIMING to have Asperger's have an ACTUAL doctor's diagnosis of Asperger's. There is a sad trend the past few year of people "self diagnosing" themselves as Asperger's simply because they have OCD, are smart, and read comics. Unfortunately, this is a side effect of the popularity of the TV show The Big Bang Theory. People think it's "cool" to be like Sheldon and call themselves Aspies to be cool. 

The problem is, Sheldon IS a very accurate representation of Aspergers. And he IS socially crippled by it. People forget this. They see the comics and the high IQ and say "Hey, that's me!" But they forget: SHELDON CAN'T DRIVE A CAR.

Let me ask you something:

If YOU claim to have Asperger's: Do you drive a car.

If you said, yes, you don't not have Asperger's. Do you know why? Because there is no state in America, where it is LEGAL to give a driver's license to a person who has Autism.

Autism is one of the illnesses that bars you from driving. The law will NOT give you a license. They will NOT allow you to drive.

It is not a case of "I don't like to drive, I must have Aspergers" it is not "I'm scared to drive, I must have Aspergers."

It is a case of: If you have Asperger's the Department of Motor Vehicles will DENY you the right the drive a car.

THAT is why Sheldon, doesn't drive a car.

NEWSFLASH: I am the FIRST and ONLY Autistic person in America to hold a driver's license.

It was a very big deal. That's why I'm a frequent guest at Autism Awareness events. That's why my car goes these shows, with me driving. This is a VERY big deal. Because I have Autism, and I drive a car. And I am the ONLY Autistic person in the country who has a legal driver's license.

Think about THAT, next time you see a person, who drives a car AND claims to have Aspergers or any other form of Autism.

Because of the TV show The Big Bang Theory, having Autism, has become "cool" and A LOT of people, WHO DO NOT HAVE IT are claiming that that they do.

Next time you see someone proudly bragging "I have Asperger's" ask to see their driver's license. If they have one, you know they are lying about having Autism.

For those who don't know March 6th is "Blackout Day" on Tumblr, a day when black people post selfies ad everyone reblogs them. I flood my Tumblr feed with reblogs of all my beautiful black friend, as I have way more black friends then I do white friends.

Shortly after I started reblogging #blackout posts, someone asked me:

Why are you participating in #Blackout? Aren’t you white?

No, actually, I’m not.

I may look “white” to non-whites, but to most whites, I’m worse then black because I’m mixed blood. :( 

My grandmother was half- Native American (Kickapoo tribe) and half black (unknown origin, she was an escaped slave who was taken in by an Indian tribe), and she married a Gypsy.

I am red, brown, and black, and my entire life has been met with bullying and intolerance, because I’m a mix of the 3 things whites hate most of all, made worse by the fact that I also have Autism and am a transvestite. 

In spite of what I look like to people who have darker skin then me, to most white folk, I am the absolute epitome of the scum of the Earth.

I expect to be treated like shit by white people because, basically I always have been and it's a rare occasion when white people accept me as an equal.

I was one day however surprised by a black woman who once confronted me, in a very white person manner. Because my skin is very pale, she mistook me for being white.

I think one of the strangest encounters I ever had with an American woman, happened in Southern Maine Community College in 2012. First I'll explain a tradition of Gypsies...we don't touch anything in public bathroom. We keep a roll of toilet paper in our purse. We wrap use some tissues off the roll to not touch the door, the stall door, the toilet seat, to flush the toilet,...we won't even use the toilet paper provided in the stall to wipe with, only using the roll we brought with us...afterwards, we will not touch the faucet either, again using our own tissues we brought with us to turn the water on and off, and using our own tissues to dry our hands.

So, I'm in the bathroom, using my self provide roll of tissues to not touch anything as usual. And as usual, I make no eye contact with anyone, always keeping eyes averted to the floor, as is the way of our women, so I never see anyone above the feet and knees. I never look at faces. It is our custom. 

I come out of the bathroom stall, go the the nearest sink not being used, use tissues to turn on the water. Wash my hands (which is very detailed, not a quick 5 second wash like Americans do - takes me several minutes to wash my hands). Use more tissues to turn the faucet off. Use more tissues to dry my hands. With new tissues I clean and dry the sink and counter. Then wrap all the tissues in more tissues and weave my way around the women in the room, to put the tissues in the trash can. I still have not taken my eyes from the floor, so I have no clue who is in the room with me, no do I know the race or skin color of any woman in the room, as all I can see is their feet, because I walk, head ducked down, always looking at the floor, as all Scottish Gypsy women do.

Also pointing out, I was wearing very traditional, very non-American clothes, a huge "tribal belly dance style" yellow shirt over many layers of petticoats, and a red "apron-like" over dress covered in yellow and gold embroidery. Over that an embroidered shawl, and a cotton veil over my head. It is a very Persian outfit. The entire outfit just screams Hindu/Indian/Pakistani, and could easily be identified as Muslim. The reason I'm often mistaken for being Muslim, is because of the many layers, the head wraps and head scarf and veiling, and all the embroidery and bling sewn on my outfits. Of course, I order most of my clothes from designers in Pakistan, and the style dress I usually wear, if not wearing kimono, is the abayas/jilbab/ which is in fact the same outfit worn by muslim women.

Don't know what a Jilbab is? It looks like this:

http://www.aabcollection.com/shop/category/abayas_jilbabs/83

Few people ever identify me as either white or American as I look and dress like neither, and my accent is not American either. Most people in college, their first reaction to meeting me was to ask "What country are you from, I've never seen anyone dress like you and don't recognizes that accent." They are always shocked to learn that I not only was born and raised in America, but I am a 15th generation Native Mainer (this is the Native Maine accent, by the way...which is NOTHING like the accent you hear faked in movies and TV.) 

So here I am, a non-white woman, dressed in a traditional Scottish Gypsy outfit that most people mistake as Muslim, wiping down everything with a roll of toilet paper that I had just pulled out of my purse, an indication that I do this all the time, otherwise why have the roll in my purse? I'm cleaning up the counter because we Gypsies always clean up after ourselves and never leave a mess behind anywhere (cleanliness is godliness), when...

As I am putting the tissues in the trash can, I am grabbed from behind, by a powerful fist, on my shoulder, spun around and shoved back against the big mirror tiled wall. This is the first time I look up to see a huge black woman, about 6 inches taller then me and a good 100lbs heavier, wearing skin-tight skinny jeans, a tank top, and her hair dyed a bright neon day glow orange, spiked into a flame shaped point on the top, that looking like her head was on fire. And she is screaming at me at the top of her lungs.

"You mother fucking white bitch think yo to good fo me huh?" she shrieks hysterically. "You think you can make me yo slave bitch? I ain't no slave to no white trash bitch face like you, you mother fucker white bitch. You all high and mighty can touch no sick a sister touch, huh? You white trash bitch you ain't got no power over me. I can use any mother fucking damned bathroom I please. The war is over, I am free. I ain't no slave to you mother fucking white bitch. The war is over bitch. I got rights. I can use this bathroom same as any you white folks."

I asked her what she was talking about. Not being a white American, and having never gone to American schools, thus not knowing American history, I didn't know the references she was referring too, when she was saying "war" and "slave", which I now realize she was talking about the American Civil War.

The funny thing was, I'm not white. I can barely speak American English legibly, which instantly identifies me as not even American, and I'm not dressed in anything even remotely close to looking American at all. I tell her, I'm neither white nor American and that I don't understand what she's talking about.

She says: "Don't you lie to me you mother fucking white bitch, I know white folk when I see them and I ain't yo slave no mo, you can't no treat me like yo slave you hear me bitch?"

I said to her, "My people were brought to America as slaves by the white people, we are still fighting for our rights."

She said: "No white folk never had no white slave you mother fucking lying white bitch."

I said: "We Gypsies are not white, and we don't yet have rights granted to us by the white people, like you do."

She starts scream: "Yo all Gypsy trash! We no want no Gypsy trash round over here!"

Then she left, still screaming at the top of her lungs as she stormed out of the bathroom, left the Campus Center and screamed her way all the way to Jewett Hall.

I think one of the most ironic things about this incident, is that one line of my family is black. My grandmother's, great-grandmother was an escaped slave who was taken in by the Kickapoos, and she passed down the Voodoo tradition, which is why I am today a Voodoo priestess, rank of Medsen Fey, Marij Loa to Damballah Weddo. I am left to wonder, this rude black woman, who mistook me for white, simply because my skin was not as dark as hers...how well does she know her ancestors? Her native culture? Her native religion? Does she reverence her ancestors and the loa they worshiped? I do. I have a very deep respect for the loa as they are part of my ancestors. I wonder, for all her screaming about slavery, does she even know where she came from, or is she just a typical American ranting about slavery to sound cool? 

So, it's not just white American woman who act rude, mean, cold-hearted, loud-mouthed, and disrespectful with their screaming yelling and being hysterical. That black woman was acting pretty darned white. That woman, though she was black and not white, acted a lot whiter then she was probably willing to admit. She dressed like a white American, screamed like a white American, made false accusations like a white American, was in my face like a white America, was rude like a white American, was mean like a white American, was disrespectful like a white American...I don't care what color her skin was, she'd been living in white American culture so long that there was no longer a drop of black in her. She was just a rude, crude white American in an African American's skin. 

This event surprised me, because typically only white people ever act like that. It dismayed me to see a beautiful woman of colour, stressed and harassed by white people to the point that she felt the need to lash out and any lighter skinned person regardless of if they were actually a white race or not.

That's why we Gypsies keep ourselves separate from Americans, because if we lived with them too long, the way that black woman in the bathroom had done, we'd have turned into white Americans just like she did, and we don't want that. We don't like the mean spirited, loud-mouthed, slutty, half naked, rudeness of the mainstream white American culture. 

Americans lack a concept of reverence in their culture, which is alarming and baffling for us Gypsies as we put reverence up there with family in importance.  

Reverence: speak softly and carry a big machete. Be as quiet as mouse. Speak only when necessary and choose your words wisely. Never speak out in anger. If you are angry, hold your tongue and look at the ceiling or stars or clouds whatever is over your head at the time. Think. Breath. Relax. Never let the sun rest on your anger. Never run when you can walk. There is no need to hurry. Take time to chew your food, any meal you finish in under an hour was not a meal, it was a race. Take time to smell the roses and sprinkle them with glitter. Bless the trees and kiss the leaves. Move gently through time, enjoy life. Slow and steady wins the race.

So you see, I run into problems every not just from being Autistic, but also for being Gypsy.

Scottish Gypsies are rarely seen in American society, as most live in off-grid communities or compounds and homesteads. Because of their farm lifestyle they can live off the land for decades with no need to ever set foot in white man's society. They will find a field that is hidden deep in the heart of a secluded forest, that can only be reached by dirt roads which no white man dares drive on. As such, we Scottish Gypsies often live in an area for decades before white men are even aware of their existence. 

If a Scottish Gypsy comes down out of their self contained community, it is usually only once every month or so, to stockpile/buy any supplies they can not grow or make on their own. Usually, you would find a large group of Gypsies come down out of the farm all at once in the Spring just after the snow melts, and go to a small "outback" feed store (around here it's Agway) to buy all the seeds, fertilizers, etc needed to plant their crops, and any tools that need replacing (broken spades, hoes, etc). They will buy lots of feed corn, oats, millet, and sunflowers for their horses, goats, ducks, and chickens. If they use pest control for japanese beetles, flies, etc, these will be bought as well. If there is a WalMart nearby they will also stockpile/buy hundreds of pounds of dog and cat food, and any items needed they can't make, such as tooth brushes & paste, bandages, first aid kits, batteries for smoke alarms, fire extinguishers, feminine napkins/pads for the woman, baby diapers, Excedrin, Advil, Aspirin, Tylenol/etc, sewing machines, needles, threads, fabric, pots, pans, dishes, etc.

So you see one really big huge shopping trip where 30 or 40 people with as many cars and trucks, gather at the store and pretty much buy absolutely everything on the store shelves, then disappear back up into the forest and not be seen again until they make a second such shopping trip in the late fall, just before winter, to buy everything they need to make it through Maine's long, cold, frigid winters.

For most people in white America, that's the only time they will ever see a Gypsy face to face, and usually, Gypsies will not speak during these shopping trips. Gypsies rarely speak to each other and they speak less often then that to white folks. Gypsies will never make eye contact with white men. (Making eye contact with anyone is seen as a challenge to fight). Women, will never speak and never look up, never laugh, never smile, and they will stay very close to their men, walking behind them, never in the front.

A Gypsy woman never takes the lead, always automatically falling in line behind her man, who falls in line behind the men above him. Gypsies very much have a "pecking order", like a flock of chickens or a pack of wolves, where each member of the clan knows their place and position. Men in lead (the Chief or Patriarch or King) will deal with the white men, often being the only one to speak and being the one who carries the money, will also be the one who gets in line and pays the cashier, while the rest stand at the end of the checkout line, waiting to carry the mountain load of supplies out to the cars and trucks.

In many cases, even the chief/patriarch/king will never say a word to the white men. White folks when they see the Gypsies in town buying supplies, will often (not knowing we are Gypsies) come up to them and attempt to ask them a million and one questions, usually starting with: "Are you Amish? Is there an Amish community around here?" or "Are you Mennonites? Is there an Mennonite community around here?" Our very old fashioned dress with many women in 'prairie dresses and sun bonnets' or long old style skirts with veils over their heads, our not making eye contact and remaining silent, and our coming into town in 'large herds', some of which includes horse drawn wagons, has led many locals to believe that there is a Mennonite community hidden somewhere in the woods of Maine.

It is not unusual for white folks to gather in clumps and start following us around the store, whispering to each other, and a few of the bolder ones coming up to us and asking every question they can think of to ask about who we are, why there are so many of us in the store at once, why are we dressed so strange, why won't we smile or talk or look at them, and if we live around here. If anyone does speak to the white folks to answer their questions, it'll be the clan's High Priestess, (and that would be me) who is the only Gypsy really authorized to or trained in how to speak with the white men. The High Priestess acts as the mediator and go-between between the Gypsies and the white folks. White folks are often confused when they ask one Gypsy a question, and a few moments later they'll be approached a different one (in our clan, me) who answers them. 

Usually the Gypsies will act as though they are deaf, mute, and blind and not acknowledge the existence of any white person other then the one behind the cash register. White folks often see this as rude, and there have been frequent instances of white folks grabbing a Gypsy and shoving them or punching them, while yelling at them. The Gypsy, rather then acknowledge the rude, violent white bastard will simply go back to whatever he/she was doing without saying a word or even acknowledging that the vile white creature touched them and invaded their personal space. 

Whites often become hysterical and start screaming and yelling and throwing things and overall making complete idiots of themselves. These loud, rude, violent outbursts seem to be attempts to get Gypsies to speak, but they do nothing but terrify most Gypsies and reinforce the belief that white men are dangerous and violently psychotic raving madmen, and must be avoided at all costs. Gypsies are highly religious people who shun violence, physical confrontations, and live by a code of meekness (thus why they do not speak in public). The average white men, though they may attend church services on Sunday, is lewd, crude, and barbaric and in no way at all practices their religion, if indeed they even have one at all.

Matters are made worse, if the white man pushing the Gypsy around, is in addition to screaming, also smoking or clutching a beer can in his vile perverted fists. This is a sign that not only is the white men dangerous, but he is also satanic and possibly demon possessed. Confrontations with sinners like this, can result in Gypsies quickly dropping everything and fleeing in terror. It is for this reason that they do not leave the farm without the High Priestess (me) as it is her job to protect the clan from evil spirits. When white men attack the clan, which happens pretty much every time we leave the farm, it is my job to stand between the white men and the clan, and bind the evil spirit that possesses the evil white man. I will then cast a protection spell on the clan and a hot-footing spell on the white man, which the white men say is me 'casting a curse" on them, because I told them to leave us be or die the death of a thousand hungars.  (Stephen King, used this ritual as his inspiration for the movie Thinner, thus the name "Thinner".)

The so called "Gypsy Curse" is white men's misunderstanding of what is going on. Gypsies do not believe in curses, nor do they cast them. The white man attacked the clan and the clan becomes terrified of bodily harm, but will not fight back due to a belief in nonviolence and turning the other cheek, and so they look to their High Priestess to protect them from the white devil that is attacking them. She in turn stands between the clan and the attacker and casts protection spells to keep the evil white demon at bay and allow the clan to continue shopping in peace. White men, who rarely encounter Gypsies, falsely interpret this action as the casting of a "death spell" or "curse". They falsely assume the spell was cast on them, when in fact the spell was cast on the clan to protect them from the raging psycho crazy white lunatic that is harassing them for no reason at all, other then the fact that they look different and act different then he does.

I think one of the things that I have noticed about our store trip, that really surprises Americans and throws them for a loop is our skill at tandem driving. Yes, I did say tandem driving, which is like synchronized swimming only, with cars, on a road.  Our wild looking cars and our skill at synchronized driving as why King wanted to make sure to feature us driving our cars, in the movie Thinner and was thus the reason why he requested the driving scene of the film be filmed on location at the Exit 5.

But...tandom driving...

Think about it for a second, how do you think 10, 20, or 40 family members are able to arrive at WalMart all at once and do 3 or 4 months worth of shopping for a family of 368 people in a single shopping trip? Do you know how much food that is? A small grocery store doesn't have enough food on it's shelves, for a single shopping trip. Do you know WalMart has to shut down a single check-out when we arrive, because they have to have one line with 10 to 40 shopping carts for a single order, which each shopping cart carrying $200 to $500 worth of food in it. And we pay cash. We do not have cards. It's a big order and WalMart isn't well equipped for it. No store is.

WalMart, suffers many problems from our annual shopping trips: 

#1: that they rarely have enough items in stock: we clean out entire aisles of food - keep in mind we are doing a one time sweep to buy 4 months worth of food to feed 368 people. REMEMBER: There are 368 people in my family.

#2: a single cashier can't ring up our order - takes to long - takes their entire shift. So our order gets cut down into smaller orders depending on how many cashiers it takes to ring it up.

#3: We never buy without coupons and we have $200 to $800 in coupons every shopping trip. (Do you know how many coupons it takes to total that much?)

But then you got to remember, now that we've bought all that food, we have to put it somewhere so we can transport it back home. That's where the tandem driving comes in.

Keep in mind some important factors here:

#1: The Gypsies of Old Orchard Beach are carneval Gypsies - don't forget what our town is famous for: it's great big amusement parks, rides, concessions, and trinket shops which line every inch of the 7 miles of beach front.

#2: We are in pretty much every parade, festival, and fair in the state - we are famous for our wild collection of show cars, which is, after all the very reason Stephen King picked our clan specifically for the filming of the "Gypsies arrival in town" scene of the movie The Thinner.

#3: Many of our men are Shriners. Yep, those professional clowns who drive the mini go-kart cars in the Shriner's Circus and in the parades.

We are carnies, remember. Food trucks, rhinestoned cars, the world’s most haunted car...yeah...we are a freaking sideshow circus, so we stand out.

In other words - we are professional drivers, and we are trained in synchronized, tandem trick driving of clown cars for parades and circuses. Which means you really don't want to try to road rage at us, because, you Honey, are just a twit with a driver's license while we, are professional clown car drivers who can really drive you batty if you want to start tooting your horn at us.

Remember, this ain't 1 or 2 cars driving together here: I own 9 cars just me, and I only have a few cars. Most folks in the clan who have a car, have at least a dozen or more cars. Everybody in the clan has a thing they do. We are like a grandfather's clock. Each one of us a cog with a purpose that keeps the clockworks running. This means not everybody has a car. Most do not own cars. A person in charge of road trips, will be the one who owns the cars and organizes the driving. I'm one of those people.

If you've ever been to the area and you see my Dazzling Razzberry on the road. Pay particular attention to the cars just ahead, just behind, and to the sides of it. Watch them drive. In most cases, The Razzberry is not the lead car, and will be behind a black Saturn, a blue Honda, a white Buick, and/or a silver Sable. If you watch the cars, you'll pick up on it fast, that there is a lead car in a convoy behind it. Every move the ead car makes, there will be anywhere from 3 to 30 cars right behind it mirroring it's moves, stroke for stroke. Every car moves in a smooth fluid line, as though connected by a chain, like they are all one car.

Ever seen the Shriners drive? If one mini-car makes a turn, every car in the line makes that identical turn, resulting in a perfectly synchronized snake wave of the cars as they drive in the parade. 

This is done by "dancer's ques" Everybody knows ahead of time, which car they are supposed to be behind. They focus on that car only. hen the lead car moves, driver of car #2 matches them move for move. Driver of car #3 mimics car #2, while car #4 repeats the moves of car #3, and so on down the line.

Gypsies have a sense of place and order. A pecking order so to speak. Each person knows their place in the clan. No one tries to push their weight around to knock another out of rank. The Patriarch rules the clan. Each family unit has it's own Patriarch, so a clan will have as many as 30 Patriarches. But then the clan as a whole has a Chief Patriarch (or Gypsy King) who all the lesser family unit Patriarches answer to.

Each Patriarch has a rank. Somewhat similar to the Army, with it's Generals, Colonels, Majors, Captains, etc. Higher ranking Patriarchs have more clout in the clan then lesser ranking ones, with the lesser ones having to answer to the higher ones.

Each Patriarch has "trusted men" who do his bidding, somewhat like the American President's secret service men. These will be sons, son-in-laws, nephews, or grandsons.

The wives of the patriarchs, (called the Matriarch - the wife of the chieh/king, being the queen) rank under all the men over 12 years of age, but they rank higher then all the other women. Only one women in the clan, has any rank over the men, and that's the High Priestess or Holy Woman, (who is nearly always, also the Queen) whose word can only be overturned by the King himself and that usually requires a calling up of the Gypsy Court, which she's a member of and can vote down. Basically the clan Holy woman is the equivalent of the American President, her word is law and she can make or overturn any law. 

When the clan has to deal with American government officials (town managers, etc) the Patriarch will never say anything to the Americans without the Holy Woman present. If he does, that is seen by the clan as mutiny and high treason, and will result in an immediate demand for a calling up on the Gypsy Court to vote on the clan's "no confidence" in the Patriarch.

This just happened in October 2014, when the clan's patriarch went behind the clan's back into meetings with the Old Orchard beach Town Council without the clan Holy Woman accompanying him to said meetings. He kept the meetings secret from the entire clan, and when the clan found out a Gypsy court was called in and for the first time in our 500 years in this town, the clan outed it's Chief/King and voted a new chief into rule. What one clan member knows, all clan members know and anyone who keeps secrets or engages in secret meetings with an enemy (and white men ESPECIALLY Americans are ALWAYS the enemy), is seen as having committed a grave sin against the family.

What the Patriarch did, going behind the clan's back into secret meetings with the Old Orchard Beach Town Manager in 2014, has cost him his rank, his standing, and his family. He has been shunned, stripped of his rank, disowned by nearly every clansmen, and now looked upon with shame and disgust. 

No one crosses a Gypsy without punishment. No one. Not even a member of the clan. Everyone has their place. Everyone has their jobs. When everyone does what is expected of him, things run smoothly, but when just one person, steps out of line, the whole thing falls apart. Every member is important. From the highest rank to the lowest rank, every member is needed for the flow of life to function properly.

This order comes into play in every aspect of our lives, including the driving. Watch the cars around the Razzberry next time you see it on the road: the black Saturn belongs to the Clan's Chief Patriarch. If he's in the party going to the store, it'll always be the lead car. If he's not present, the lead car will be one of the other patriarchs cars. My car will be the 2nd or 3rd car, with other cars after mine.

It is because of this synchronized tandem driving, that you also never see us zipping about speeding, passing, tooting, screaming out the window or doing any of those other idiotic and unsafe driving practice you see Americans doing. But boy oh boy, do Americans hate the posted speed limits and oh, boy do they always wish they hadn't tried to pass us. 

Think you can pass the back car and squeeze in between us? Think again. You are not passing us, and believe me, you don't want to be the jerk who passes one of our cars, because we'll box you in, a car squeezed tight on all 4 sides of you and you ain't going no where until we gets to where we are going. You're stuck for the duration of the trip, and if you ain't going where we are, you could be a long ways off course before any car in our convoy opens up a space for you to get out and go on your own to where you wanted to be. If you had been driving safely at the posted speed limit, you would not have been able to pass our fleet. We stay exactly 5 miles below the posted speed limit. Yes, and that does mean since most roads in Maine are 35MPH, we are driving 30 MPH. And in Old Orchard where the roads are all 25MPH, yep, we are driving 20 and Americans are tooting and screaming and flipping fingers and driving down the wrong side of the road or on the sidewalk for however many cars long our convoy is that day...oh boy are Americans full of road rage.

The funniest one was a few weeks ago in January 2015, a woman kept speeding up onto our bumper and tooting and flipping the finger. We slowed down by 5 MPH and waved to her. She tried passing, couldn't because a car coming the other way, repeated tooting, screaming, bumping her bumper on the bumper of the white Buik, we slowed by another 5 MPH and waved. She flashed two birdie - look ma, she's driving with no hands! We all gave her a thumbs up and slowed down again. On a 25 MPH road, (Saco avenue from the Police Station to the Town Hall - and yes, she was doing this in front of the OOBPD station) we were now inching along at a ripe old 10MPH. When we reached the three-way intersection at the Town Hall at the top of Maine street (where the Pier and Ferris wheel are) she flies by us down the wrong side of the road about 75 MPH, goes right on through the intersection into oncoming traffic, and ends up on the front lawn of the Historical Society next to the bank, then speeds off down the Cascade Rd, middle finger out the window all the way, car screaming toooooooooooooooooooooooot as it drives on, with several dozen thumbs up out the windows of our cars as she passed us. 

Why do we give road rages the thumbs up? Hey, if you want to drive down the wrong side of the road  at higher then the posted speed limit and kill yourself in a head on collision, more power to ya, it's one less Americans psychopath on the road endangering the lives of others. So, yes, we give you the thumbs up to say "Go ahead, kill yourself faster, we don't care."

Yeah, going out in public, my Autism is far less of a problem then my culture.

I am not Muslim, but I come from a culture that also wears long dresses and veiling (because we are Gypsies, originating from Persia; unlike the Romani who originate in India) and am often mistaken for Muslim when out in public, because of the way I dress.

I remember after 9/11, it became next to impossible for me to go out in public for a while, because people would call me "a terrorist" because I was wearing long dresses and a veil. It was very distressing and got so bad that I stopped wearing the veiling in public, just to avoid being attacked by people.

It is only the past couple of years I have started wearing the veils again and am often hesitant about doing so, for fear of falling under attack. Even though I was born and raised in America, I do not speak English well, both due to my having Autism and due to my accent, and this makes people think, I must be from another country, and re enforces their thought that I must be a terrorist if I am wearing a veil.

It is very sad when people jump to conclusions and don't bother to know the facts. 

One of the biggest problems we have in public is American men have no clue the concept of personal space and they won’t stop touch our women and calling us “exotic beauties” and saying stupid trashy stuff like “come here sugar, give me a kiss.”

And American women are just as bad, flashing their boobs and booty at every man they see and touching everyone, men and women.

What the hell is it with Americans the constant need to touch everything and everyone, and get up nose to nose to you when they talk to you. God god! Americans are so freaking rude, it’s just unbelievable. And we are supposed to want to spend time with you? Good god! Why? All we ever want to do is get as far away from you as we can, you’re freaking freaks of nature. We can’t understand the things you do or the way you act at all, you just freak us out with how utterly rude and inconsiderate and hostile you are. 

Every time we come out of a store, there’s always a couple of American thugs and hoodlums screaming and yelling and punching each other out. You people are so violent. Americans are loud and brash. Always flapping their mouths off. Always screaming. Always making a scene. Always gettin emotional and starting fights and loud mouthing off at each other. And so disrespectful of each other and mean to each other. Nobody helps anybody, all Americans ever want to do is fight, fight, fight, and flap their loud moths off at each other. God you people are so loud.

It is because so many white men act like this when they encounter Gypsies, that is precisely why so few Gypsies dare to have contact with white men. White men are far too high strung, hot-tempered, and constantly looking for fights, for the Gypsy mind to be able to understand how such a violent race as succeeded in not going extinct by murdering each other centuries ago.

And OMG! Don't even get me started on the way Americans smell. Good god the stench! AGH! Do you people ever step back and smell yourselves? Oh my god, you smell like freaking shit with all that horrible tobacco, beer, and coffee wafting off your breath. How can you even breath? OMG! You can smell an Americans from 500 feet away. OMG! The tobacco stench is unbearable, and that horrible cat-piss smell of beer. Good god, how do any of you attract mates when you smell like cat piss and smog? I mean, you want us to be friends with you, but you stink so bad we don't even want to get in a nose whiff distance of you so how do you expect to make friends with us when all we can think of is how much we want to vomit from the sickening stench of you. Americans just smell horrible.

But all that brings up the question of, how to non-Gypsies make friends with Gypsies? Well, they don't that often, that's the thing. As a general rule the only non-Gypsy people who encounter Gypsies often enough to become friends with them, are church goers who attend the same church as the Gypsies, providing the Gypsies attend a church in a white community, which often, they don't.

While Gypsies are highly religious and every aspect of their life is run by their extremism in religion, not many Gypsies actually belong to a religion or attend a church. Most know how to read, enough to read the Bible and all Gypsies own a Bible (or a few dozen Bibles as is often the case) and will simple read the Bible every day and do their own prayer and worship with their family and as each family is usually bigger then most white man's church congregations, that does make it somewhat pointless to attend church for "socialization" as many white folks suggest we Gypsies should do.

Gypsy beliefs tend to be a mix of Mormonism, Calvinism, Seventh Day Adventism, Native American Spiritualism, and Faerie Faith (which many white folks innaccurately  classify a witchcraft, or even more inaccurately as a type of Wicca). Because there are no Faerie Faith or Native American "churches", and because the nearest Seventh Day Adventist and Calvinist churches are more then an hour drive by car, most Gypsies attend LDS/Mormon churches, due to the fact that most towns in Maine have one, making them the easiest for Gypsy families to reach on a weekly basis. Gypsies however, will attend whatever church building is nearest to them regardless of denomination, so you will see Gypsies in Catholic churches, Baptist churches, Pentecostal churches, Salvation Army churches, or whatever other church is in walking distance from the clan's location.

Gypsies who are walking distance from a church building, will attend every single meeting: morning, noon, night, weekend, week days, prayer services, song services, worship services, bake sales, church suppers, firesides, get togethers. Whatever the church is doing, the Gypsy clan will be there. Because Gypsy woman love to cook for large crowds, they will often do the cooking for church suppers, bake sales, and picnics. Gypsy woman are quick to volunteer to clean up after the events as well. Most Gypsy women find cleaning to be highly meditative and relish in cleaning the church building from top to bottom. 

An important thing to note here, is that if white folks offend a Gypsy, the entire clan will simply "disappear" never to return to that church building/congregation again. White people, not knowing Gypsy ways, often offend Gypsies and then when the Gypsies stop attending church, the white men seek them out and start invading the clan's farm with endless missionaries and church leaders coming to the farm to accuse them of apostasy and unrighteousness, which father offends them. 

How do white folks offend a Gypsy into leaving the church meetings? Separation of family and refusing to allow a woman to cook for the congregation or clean the house of the lord. 

For a Gypsy to go somewhere, separate, without his/her family, is seen as a slight against them. White Mormons, especially have trouble understanding this. while many Gypsies are Mormons, few attend Priesthood or Relief Society  or Primary meetings on Sundays because of the segregation of family members. Gypsies are very close knit families and will not go out of the sight of their clan. Where one clansman goes, they all go together. No one is separated from the group, no one gets left behind. Gypsy culture sees it as the work of Satan, for a man and his wife to attend separate classes or for a child to not be allowed in the classroom with the parents. 

To force a Gypsy to sit alone (and terrified because they are surrounded by alien cultured white people) separate from their family, is not just an offence, it can be seen as an outright attack on the clan, who see this as a white men's divide and conquer tactic. Gypsies are armed (most carry knives, swords, daggers, and/or machetes on them at all times) and they will fight violently to protect their family if they feel their lives are in danger. 

There are some things to consider here:

White men have more then ten decades of history in stealing Gypsy (and Native American) babies from their mothers and selling them to white families to be raised as white children. (Dozens of Gypsy children are still taken by white police and social workers every year.)

White men have more then ten decades of history in stealing Gypsy (and Native American) girls and women from their husbands and fathers and selling them to white families to be slaves abused, beaten, and raped by white slave masters. (Gypsy women are still being abducted and raped by white men with multiple cases just this year - 2014- alone.)

White men have more then ten decades of history in stealing Gypsy (and Native American) men and boys from their families and hanging them in trees, then beating them to death, before tieing their corpses to horses and dragging their bodies through the streets (the last known case of this in America happened in 1957).

Our clan from the 1890s to the 1960s sent it's children to white America's public schools. In that time more then half of the clan's children did not come home from school. They simply vanished without a trace and when parents tried to find out what happened, they were simply told Human Services took the child into foster care, sent them out of state to live with a foster family "somewhere, where you'll never find them" and the clan never saw the children again. Our clan alone has lost more then 100 children, stolen from us via the trickery of being "required" to send them to school, and thus why our clan especially, holds tight to never letting our children out of our sight: not for school, nor for church meetings on Sundays.

Our clan, has had several dozen of it's woman raped IN CHURCH by white priests, who lead the girl away from the family unit, tricked her into going to a room alone with him. A 12 year old girl in the clan was attacked and raped by a white High priest of the LDS/Mormon Cape Elizabeth Ward and the clan made an example of him. He never raped anybody again now did he?

Do you know why our women all carry machetes and what we do to rapists and pedophiles? We cut their balls off and nail them to our front door. It's not uncommon in Gypsy culture to see ballsacs hanging on a door where you'd expect to see a door knocker.

I have no tolerance for crime. I have Autism - I like peace and quiet and non-disruption of that peace. And I enforce the law. Laws were made to be obeyed. I was Matriarch for less than a month before the Clan realized that.

White men often find Scottish Gypsies barbaric, uncivilized, and feral. Of course, cannibalism was still practised as recent as 1937. And the Quaraun character FarDarrig with his leather coat made out of the faces of Humans he had eaten: that is an ACTUAL Gypsy tradition: eating white men and making coats out of their faces. The full tradition, is no longer practiced, but traditionally a rapist would have been slowly skinned alive and the victim would have worn his skin as a trophy. A pedoophile would have been chopped up and his entrails hung on a cross at the nearest crossroads (intersection), but like I said, the law for this practice was done away with in 1937, the only reason I don't bring it back is because the American government won't let me, and so we just castrate them now and keep their scrotum as a trophy.

Sex outside of marriage is very serious thing in Gypsy culture, and so you can understand who worse a thing rape is, and with pedophiles being seen as the vilest scum of all. We put family first. Sex creates families. Sex is what brings a couple together. Sex is what creates children. To abuse sex is the worse crime you can commit in Gypsy culture.

Fornication, rape, child molestation, adultery, until very recently all these things were punishable by death. The clan would eat for such a crime. Abusing sex is worst then murder.

With pedophiles being the worst of all. They are not only abusing the sacredness of sex, they are hurting children to do it. We still castrate pedophiles. The only reason we don't still eat them is because America law doesn't allow it anymore.

You got to understand that there are no weddings or marriage papers or rings or wedding dresses in Gypsy culture. Those are American things and our clan has not assimilated into American culture. We live by the same traditions we did 500 years ago. Sex is sacred. That's something you see in the Quaraun books as well: Unicorn is outed by his clan because he has had multiple sex partners, and Quaraun who initially intended to kill him, after being raped by Unicorn, almost immediately began to see himself as Unicorn's "wife" and found himself unable to kill Unicorn because it conflicted with his traditions. This is VERY much Gypsy tradition.

In Gypsy culture as soon as a man has sex with a woman (or a man) that woman (or man) is IMMEDIATELY his wife and bound to obey him without question.

This is why rape comes with such huge punishments. Rape is the act of forced sex with someone you have no intention of taking care of and providing for. 

HOWEVER: once and man has sex with someone, the act of sex is seen as a "gift giving" ceremony, in which he gives ownership of his balls to the person he had sex with.

In Gypsy culture a woman owns her man’s testicles, and any man ho rapes a woman has given them to her and she has every right to take them, whether he’s still attached to them or not. So if a man rapes a woman, and then refuses to keep her as his wife, she has the right to take his balls, and she will nail them to her front door, as a warning to other men.

It’s why I carry a serrated doubled edged machete. See...I have Autism. I don’t joke. And I don’t make idil threats. If I say I am going to do something, I will do it. It only took them one time crossing me on this, for them to know I was serious and did enforce the law. Men are rather attached to their balls they don’t like losing them. 

Most white men in Southern Maine now live in mortal terror of our clan and it's machett carrying women. He never raped another child and the clan has never again sent any of it's women to Young Women's or Relief Society, nor Priesthood, nor Primary meetings, in any Mormon church anywhere.

Few Gypsies feel safe when surrounded by white men, as history has taught us that white men are nothing but predators looking for someone to attack and victimize. It is the way of the white men to control, terrorizes, and abuse all in their path. When white men can not find a colored person to abuse, they turn on their own white women and children and beat them until they can find a colored person to beat. White men are violent and untrustworthy. Raping, killing, and stealing is the white man's way.

And you're asking me how people respond to me because of my Autism? Sugar Pie. Most people can't even get past my race to see the Autism. This is American after all, home of the colour blind white men and their endless desire to hate everything and every one that is not a cloned carbon copy of themselves.

Ahhh...but see now you're still standing in line waiting to get a book signed and now you are wishing you hadn't gotten me talking, because when I do talk, I tend to have a lot to say, and I say it in Scottish english, with a Maine accent, and at a speed that causes most folks to ask if I've been an auctioneer.

They get their book signed and than they leave, puzzled and amazed that the retarded Autistic, Gypsy author was even able to lift a pen, let alone write a book.

This is what I go through at every book signing, often multiple times at each book signing.

EVERYBODY "knows" someone who has a kid with Autism, but NO BODY has a clue what Autism is, what it means to live with Autism, or that kids with Autism grow up to become adults with Autism, and also because I am just so sick and tired of every single person calling me "retarded" (I HATE that word) and worse because I am so sick and tired of how shocked and stunned and taken back EVERY ONE is, when they realize that someone with Autism has the ability to do ANYTHING.

Do you have any idea how frustrating and depressing it is, for the first words out of everyone's mouth to be "You couldn't have written that, you're retarded, retards can't write books." I wish that word would go away. It's a hurtful word and unfortunately someone like me, gets it thrown my way a lot.

On the other hand, the power of a diverse book, can be seen too in my book signing interactions with readers...

Since the 1970s my primary character, (from The Twighlight Manor series) has been Roderic, he is me. I write him, as though he was me. He has the same type of Autism I have, everything that I do, he does. And yet, in the books, it never says what is "wrong" with him. Never called him "special needs" or anything like that either. The stories (200+ of them) are set in the 1600s, and so Roderic is Roderic without ever telling the readers why he is the way he is. Only a person who actually knows Autism, knows what is wrong with my Roderic, and that results in the "other" types of reactions I get at book signings:

Them: "Ohmygawd! I just have to tell you how much I love Roderic! You have no idea what it means to me and my family to see an Autistic adult portrayed accurately in a book, and not be a side kick. He's the freaking main character and the Autism isn't the point of the story, you don't even mention that he has Autism at all, but all those little querks of his, those tics and allergies and the way he sits down on the floor and refuses to talk and starts drawing on the walls, I know he has Autism, my son does the same things. I have so much respect for your work, I wish more authors used Autistic characters like you do. How do you know so much about Autism, does someone in your family have it?"

Me: No response. I just smile and nod.

Them: ...gushes on for several more minutes about their son's Autism, than asks... "So who in your family has it, what's it like for you raising kids with Autism?"

I write on a piece of paper: "I do not have any kids."

Them: "But you said..."

I write: "No, I never said a word. I don't talk. I have Autism."

Them: "You? You're the one with Autism? But, how do you write? We don't even know if my son can think. The doctor's told us Autistic never do anything, never get careers, or jobs, or families, or drive cars..."

Stops her, and points to the rhinestoned car in the parking lot. The one that says "EelKat's Autism Awareness Car" painted on the side with marbles. 

Them: "Yes I know The Autism Awareness Car is here, that's why we came actually, we heard the Razzberry was here, I wanted to get my son's picture in front of it. I actually didn't know you were going to be here too. We came to see the car..."

Me: hands her my business card, which on one side has a picture of me and my car and says "EelKat Wendy Christine Allen Wildes builder of The Dazzling Razzberry aka The Autism Awareness Car, is the first person with Autism to receive a driver's license. It took 20 years of training from the time of getting her permit at age 15 until she received her license at age 37.  She is the author of more than 200 books featuring Autistic characters. I built this car 2 years after getting my driver's license that it may be a beacon of hope to parents like you. Never give up hope on your Autistic child. If I can do this, there is hope that someday your child can too."

They hug me, we all get our picture taken together in front of the car, and than they leave in tears, overjoyed in the knowledge that there is hope for their child...all because I dare to write about characters who are just like me. 

So, I get very different reactions from different people depending on how much they know about Autism.

Unfortunately, books and movies and TV shows are full of stereotypes about Autism, and most only people only know what they THINK they know about Autism, from books, movies, and TV shows written by people who have no clue what Autism is or a how a real ACTUALLY Autistic person acts.

There are more then 40 different TYPES of Autism.  They vary from "high functioning", Autistics who are able to talk, and walk, and take care of themselves, most of them are called Aspeis short for Aspergers, and the most accurate media representation of this type of Autism is Sheldon of Big Bang Theory. There are the lower ranges ones that are paralyzed and catatonic and live their entire lives on full life supports.  Those are the extremes on both ends. In the middle you have everything from the hyper ones that spend most of their lives climbing trees and water towers to the ones that never move at all and it's a good day if they blink or smile.

I am what is called Savant Autism.

"Savant Autism" is someone who has low functioning Autism and requires 24 hour care, BUT, they display one or two extremely high functioning skills.

Have you ever seen the movie Rainman? Watch the movie Rainman. It IS the most accurate media representation of  Savant Autism, and it will make you realize why my getting a driver's license at age 37 was such a BIG deal in the medical community. Someone with my type of Autism, shouldn't be able to drive. It took my caretaker 17 years to teach me to drive. I got my permit when I was 15 and was given my license at 37. watch Rainman, and you'll see WHY it's a really big deal. 

Rainman, is severely Autistic, he has low functioning Autism,  he can barely string full sentences together, he can't feed himself,  everything in his life has to be the same every day or he has a massive meltdown, BUT, he can do math with an amazing skill level that astounded everyone around him. 

That is the type of Autism I have. And that's what confuses people online. Because my skill? It's not math or numbers, like with Rainman: I can write.

I am severely Autistic, I have low functioning Autism,  I can barely string full sentences together, I can't feed himself,  everything in my life has to be the same every day or I haves a massive meltdown, BUT, I can write with an amazing skill level that astounded everyone around me.

And that's why at book signing, people are really taken back by meeting me, because they knew I had Autism, but though, that because I could write, I had Asperger's like Sheldon or Einstein, not Savant Autism, like Rainman.  It stuns them, because they could tolerate someone like Sheldon who could pass for "normal but  eccentric", but me, I can't pass for normal, and it bothers them a lot and first words out of everyone's mouth is ALWAYS: "Oh my god, you're retarded!"

Grammy Eva, my beloved Kickapoo grandmother was my closest and dearest friend. She is the one who inspired my life.

One of my earliest memories was of a road trip to Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. I was 6, maybe 7 at the time. I was sitting in the backseat of a 1964 Dodge 330 4-door sedan, a former Old Orchard Beach police car, now painted metallic orange. On either side of me sat an old lady. The older one, at five foot one, was only inches taller than I was, had short curly hair, was known for her wild temper, spiteful ways, starting fist fights, putting curses on everyone in sight, spoke with a Scottish accent so thick you could barely discern she was speaking English, and in the 1960s had embraced the passion of wearing purple polyester. Which she wore over her neon yellow Mcleod of Lewis tartans. 

The other, twenty years younger than the first, with hair not quite as grey, stood five foot eight, had very dark tan skin, kept her hair tied in two long pigtail braids, and having just arrived back home from (yet another) trip to Hawaii, was dressed in a long bright ruffled muumuu with hot fuschia butterflies so huge, that only two fit across it (I still have this dress and wear it frequently, it was the dress I designed Quaraun's wardrobe from). Neither had ever driven a car; both remembered the days long before cars existed.  

Gypsies are known for their colors. And these women knew how to stand out in a crowd.

“Nobody ever takes me anywhere,” complained one.

“Oh, I know it, isn’t it terrible, nobody ever takes me anywhere either,” answered the other.

They spent the next several miles discussing how they each did nothing all day but sit home alone, never got out of the house, and had overall dull, boring lives.

The conversation was ironic, considering neither had any idea where they were, seeing as some 100 miles or so back, we had taken a wrong turn and were now wandering aimlessly on the unmapped dirt roads which weave their way around the New Hampshire White Mountains.

Their conversation went on in endless babble, until the Scottish woman pulled out a ham sandwich and offered it to the Kickapoo woman, a Seventh Day Adventist and Huna practitioner, and therefore a strict vegetarian and animal rights activist.

Seconds later an all out food fight ensued with pieces of ham sandwiches being thrown from one side of the car to the other. One slice of deli meat stuck to the window like a window cling and the little white dog tried to pull it off.

It was always eventful sitting between my two rainbow coloured neon clad grandmothers on a long road trip, because you never knew whether you should wear yellow to match the mustard, red to match the ketchup,  or white to match the mayo.

I was quite used to this by now, as we took a road trip every weekend and airborne slices of tomato, flying lettuce, and hamburger patties sliding down the windshield, was just the way it was. My parents had long ago given up on asking their parents to sit down and behave.

Until that moment you would have thought the two women best of friends. However, nothing could have been further from the truth.

The two women hated one another. They were each matriarch of rival Gypsy clans, spent many years feuding, and had only been sitting peacefully together in the red shag backseat of a giant 19' long orange car, because one’s son had married the other’s daughter and any chance to spend time with their grandbaby was worth having to put up with one another’s company for a few hours.

To the untrained eye, the ham sandwich had been an innocent mistake; however, anyone who knew Helen Ricker-Allen knew all too well that she did not normally eat ham, and had gone out of her way to buy ham, specifically for this event, knowing full well that meat of all kinds, but most especially pig, was off Eva’s menu.

The screaming and yelling died down when we reached the top of Mt. Washington, but the slices of ham were firmly stuck to the windows and ceiling for the rest of the trip.

My memories of Grammy Helen are few, many of them involving hospital visits, though most are of her screaming and waving knives as she chased someone down the road. Was she a crazy woman or was it just for show? I do not know. I was too young to know.

She had a big long butcher knife, long as he arm, almost as long as her machete. She kept it stabbed in the wall by the door, and whenever any one knocked, she opened the door with that knife held high over her head, ready to stab your eye out. That was how Grammy Helen greeted everyone. It was her way.

If she didn't like you, she'd chase you down the road, with an entire butcher block full of knives, pulling the knives out of the block and throwing them at you as she ran.

People around town called her “Helen the Hellion.” Seems like she was always screaming, always waving knives in the air, throwing ham sandwiches, and always running down the road, whenever she wasn’t reading bird books or tending to her massive flower garden.

Every inch of her land was packed full of flowers. You should have seen the birds and butterflies. Bird feeders were everywhere. She knew every plant and every bird, all their names, all their spirits, and all the Faeries. If she could see what the vandals had done to her beautiful gardens, she'd be hunting them down and gouging their eyes out with butcher knives.

I was just 8 years old when she died of cancer. I remember her funeral. She wore a blue velvet gown. Some Atwaters showed up and started a fight. I don’t remember why. Grammy Helen was the oldest of my grandparents. She remembered horse drawn carriages and both World Wars.

When Grammy Helen died, I inherited her land, her grandmother’s 200 year old rosebush, her Liberace records, her 1971 MTD 3-Wheel MudBug (yes, she was an 82 year old woman with an ATV), her comic books (which set a recordfor containing the largest and most complete run of Disney comic books), the family Bible/Grimoire (a giant and ancient Medieval volume weighing close to 40 lbs and passed down through our family for centuries), and her title: Queen of the Gypsies, Hedgewitch, Witch Doctor, Fortune Teller, and caster of spells. Grammy Helen was a Scottish Gypsy, part Christian, part Pagan (Welsh Færie Faith aka Traditional Witchcraft and Scottish Hoodoo aka European Voodoo) and all Witch. She called herself a Methodist, yet was a practicing Witch. Not a fru-fru Wiccan witch wannabe, like what you see today, but the real deal black magic, curses, hexes and everything. Witchcraft wasn’t a religion back then, not like it is today.  Today Witchcraft is is fad, a thing to do; back then it was a way of life, a career, a job; it paid the bills.

My other grandmother was also a Witch, but a very different kind of Witch. She was known as “The Weather Witch of Biddeford,” a title she was given from her habit of predicting with alarming accuracy, minute by minute, day by day weather forecasts, from reading the smoke from the towering mill-stacks. Only two of the tall brick smoke stacks still stand, and only one is still in use.

However, she was not content to let people know how she did it; rather, she found it to be far more fun, to “get back at people” with it. By this she meant, say a woman in the grocery store accidentally ran into her with a shopping cart, she’d turn on the woman and say something along the lines of: “You apologize for that right now or I’ll make it rain this afternoon.” It was going to rain whether the woman apologized or not, but we were Gypsies and people expected to be cursed by us, so Grammy Eva had fun with it.

Her name was Eva Viola LittleJohn/Dyer. She was an Indian, who disliked and refused to use the term “Native American.” Some records say she was Kickapoo, others say Micmac. Orphaned at age 3, no one really knew much about her family, other then she was a “red skinned savage”, and the child of a unmarried flapper of the 1920s. Her mother’s favorite book was Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and she was named after the character “Little Eva”.  

Eva's mother was a prostitute and a colored woman, who in 1921 did the unthinkable and attempted to be a single unwed mother, raising a child on her own. She had two other children as well. Records are unclear as to how exactly she died, just that she did, leaving 3 small children alone. Due to being a prostitute, each of her children had a different father and it was unknown who they were.  The older girl had lighter skin, could be passed off as white, and was quickly adopted, but her beauty was her downfall and as a teenager she was raped and beaten, her head bashed in with a baseball bat.

Miraculously she lived, but remained for the rest of her life with one side of her skull, pulverized and flattened, looking as though half of her head had been cut clean off, barely recognizable as having once been human, and in a mental institute for the rest of her 80 long years. We found out what happened to her only weeks before she died, when Pineland Center shut down and sent its patients free to wander the streets. In what would be yet another long road trip we drove Grammy to see her sister. It was the first and only time the two sisters had seen each other since their mother had died.

Raised by the Shakers in the 1920s, Eva lived in abusive foster care, told she was worthless due to her race, seen as free labour to do the hardest dirtiest tasks of the Shaker Village at Sabbathday Lake, Maine. If you go to the village today, which is now a living history museum, look at the old photos on the wall, and notice the little girl, the scullery maid hard at work scrubbing clothes at the washboard - that’s her, that’s Little Eva, my grandmother, scrubbing till her fingers bleed, then locked in a closet each night without supper to punish her for being born “red as the devil”.

As a teenager, Eva ran away, hitch-hiked to Portland, Maine, joined the Seventh Day Adventist church, and married the getaway driver of Honey Fitz rum-running gang, who also claimed to be “the one true” king of all kings of the Gypsies, Scottish Traveller David Henry Atwater of Nova Scotia.

Their early years had been happy, but in his mid-30s David Henry went blind, as happened to many moonshiners, and became a bitter, angry, violent man, mad at life and every one who still had their sight. David originally blamed his blindness on his having had Scarlet Fever at the age of 12. In later years, he claimed his blindness had been caused by  having seen God in person, face to face. Folks who had known the young gangster, blamed his blindness on a swig of bad moonshine. Eva’s young adult years were spent in terror of an abusive husband, who took to locking her in dark closets, to punish her for not having gone blind as well. The horrors of her life with him in Canton, Maine were many.

Eva and Helen meet each other in the 1950s through David. Helen had been born and raised in Old Orchard, she was a Ricker after all, and the Rickers had founded the town. David and Eva had moved from Portland to Canton. While in Canton, David began to have visitations from God, angels, demons, spirits, and ghosts of varying degrees of strangeness. He decided after one such visitation, that God wanted him to move first to Saco, then to Old Orchard Beach, then back to Saco, then to Biddeford, then back to Old Orchard again. No one moved into Old Orchard without the Rickers knowing it. Normally Gypsy Clans get along one clan with another, but the Atwaters, lead by the infamous David Henry, were far from normal, and saw other Clans not as fellow comrades, but as mortal enemies to be cut down and eliminated. It was after all, God’s will, and they could prove it was God’s will, because David spoke on on one with God Himself.

In about 1811 the Ricker Clan of "The Garden By the Sea", Maine, married into the Googins, Lewis, and Allen Clans of Portland. George Ricker, declared himself  “ruler” (as well as mayor, road commissioner, and fire chief) of the land, which he named “The Orchard by the Sea”.

In 1821, it was renamed The Town on the Old Orchard Beach, and the Scottish Gypsies set out to do what they did best: set up a carnival, only this time a permanent one known as The Palace Playland. To celebrate the founding of his new Kingdom (town) he gave his wife Rose Ricker a rosebush, which, now, being at least 191 years old, is still alive and growing, standing at 13 feet tall.  Their daughter Helen Ricker went on to run the school board, the firefighters wives society, and founded nearly every women’s group active in Old Orchard between the 1920s through the 1980s. During that time she also maintained a hobby of collecting comic books, crocheting, obsessing over Liberace, gardening, bird watching, and casting spells and curses on everyone in sight.

The Rickers ran the town, which some nicknamed “The Dynasty of Old Orchard Beach,” on every level. Every town official, public works officer, school board member, police officer, fireman, and business owner was a Ricker, a Googins, an Allen, a Lewis, or a cousin of one of the above.

Tourists were the income and the original fairgrounds were massive, spanning for nearly 5 miles along the beachfront. The Ricker Dynasty came to a horrific end during the Burning of the White Way or the Second Great Fire of Old Orchard Beach in 1963 (the first was in 1907) which took out every ride, shop, and motel along the shore.

This event came on the heels of the arrival of a brutal, violent, scamming con artist, polygamist, extreme Fundamentalist Mormon crime family who called themselves The Royal Highland Atwater Clan, lead by none other than the soon to become infamous murder-suicide cult leader himself: David Henry Atwater.

When one thinks of Gypsies, most think of Cher’s “Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves” along side of news reports of terrorist crime families. For most Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers this image is far from the truth, but for the Atwater Clan, this was a perfect image of who they were.

The Atwaters brought with them honky tonks, bar rooms, drug dealers, prostitutes, pickpockets, petty thieves, fist fights, knife fights, and gunfights in the town square.  The fire, one of the largest in New England history, devastated the town. Five miles of homes and businesses were gone, quickly replaced by bar rooms and whore houses. 

In 1968, feed up with the Ricker Dynasty, appalled by the Atwater arrogance and lack of moral decency, and recovering from one of the largest fires in Maine history, the white American Old Orchard Beach townspeople gathered together in arms, and with the help of several shotgun armed State Police officers, and Marines drove the Romas, Gypsies ,and Travellers out of Old Orchard Beach at gunpoint.

Residents today, old enough to remember the march, are quick to retell the nightmare tale of “The day the Gypsies were run out of town”, with its parade of over 600 cars, trucks, vans, jeeps, buses, trailers, wagons, and motorhomes escorted by police officers from every department of York County.

This event, would go on to inspire Stephen King to write the book The Thinner and then film the movie of that book, on location at The Ricker Homestead, resulting in King's fans dubbing our clan "Stephen King's Gypsies" aka "The Gypsies of Old Orchard Beach".

And for those wanting to know: 458 was a mailbox on Saco Avenue, across the street from Macs Garage. In a final outburst of crazy, one of the woman, attacked the mailbox, with a big yellow car, and then drove off screaming at the top of her lungs "458!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Thus the entire event became known as "The Battle of 458"

The Atwaters were marched to the New Hampshire border, where they were met by New Hampshire state police who in turn marched them straight through to Vermont. The march continued, from state to state, until they arrived in Utah, the first state to not greet them at the border with an army of rifle toting patrolmen. The Atwaters settled in Ogden Utah, where they (except for the Bangor group) remain to this day.

Back in Old Orchard, the Rickers resigned their town offices, and most of the family units relocated to Portland. Only one family remained in Old Orchard Beach: the now elderly daughter of George Ricker, Helen Ricker-Allen and her son Kenneth Ricker-Allen with his wife, Eva’s daughter, my mother, and, me, their daughter Wendy. The Atwaters were gone, the Rickers had left office, but the drama was far from over. For Eva, the Atwater drama was just beginning.

It was on this police guided march out of Maine in the 1960s, when Eva gained her freedom. A revelation from God told David the joys of white supremacy and hatred of all blacks, red skins, and Jews.” He promptly divorced “the red skinned evil spirit”, took her 12 children, married another woman (who was found strangled to death a few years later, her murder remains unsolved), and left Eva, literally standing on a roadside in the middle of a desert in Utah. He abandoned her in the desert, hundreds of miles from the nearest town. Eva spent the next several months, walking back to her hometown, Biddeford, Maine, stopping in all 48 states along the way, discovered Jesus, took her first of several trips to the brand new state known as Hawaii, discovered Huna, took a trip to Alaska, started tracing her Native American roots, then flew to Japan and made her way East to West, through Australia, New Zealand, China, Russia, Germany, Holland, and dozens of others. Having discovered a love of traveling and walking the open road, she would continue to take a world walking tour every year, for the next twenty-odd years. To fill the void she now had without her husband and her children, Eva took up travel and researching her ancestory.

By the 1980s, Eva had been to all 50 states and 114 counties. Alaska was her favorite, and the place she would return to several times. I grew up surrounded by Grammy’s countless books, tour guides, postcards, maps, view masters, souvenirs, and trinkets of Alaska and Hawaii. Each time she left, she would return with more stories of bear and moose and mountains and glaciers. Alaska was her home away from home. I spent 17 years of my life, daily listening to Grammy tell of the glories and wonders that were Alaska. “If you never go anyplace else, you must at least see Alaska before you die,” she would always say.

While she had little education in childhood, as an adult, she got a degree in Graphology, the psychology of handwriting. From looking at a sample of someone’s handwriting she was able to tell them, the type of person they were, and how their personalities would affect their futures. She used this skill, like she did her meteorology skills, to wow people and scare them into thinking she was a powerful psychic witch. Education through travel and hands on cultural learning, was the schooling she loved best of all.

David, in the mean time, went on  to call himself first a prophet, then later the right hand of God, before making friends with a man called Applewhite and helping him form the UFO suicide cult known as Heaven’s Gate. David abandoned Heaven’s Gate shortly before the whole group offed themselves under the shadow of Comet Hale Bopp. He next crowned himself “the one true prophet of the Mormon Church,”  moved to Salt Lake City, and made attempts at convincing the Church leaders God wanted him running the church. David would go on to have leadership connections to five murder-suicide cults and two cult compounds. By the time of his death, in 2004,  he was close to claiming he was God made flesh, while wearing his bright pink 1920s style ganstar suits, and was ordering everyone he met to obey him or be cast into the “tar pits of hell”.  

I generally avoid telling folks I’m related to the Atwaters, because just to mention the name Atwater often results in the response: “You don’t mean that murder-suicide Gypsy-Mafia cult family do you?” Yeah. That would be them. My family, the cultists. You can choose your friends, unfortunately you can not choose the family you are born into. Such is life. At least I can say each of my grandparents had colorful personalities to match their colorful cloths.

In spite of the fact that David was clearly insane, and dressed head to toe in blinding pink, Eva never stopped loving him, and never gave up on the hope that one day he would come back to his senses, remember he had a wife and give up his mad chasing after God at the expense of everyone who loved him. Eva remained single the rest of her life, in spite of several proposals of marriage, including several from her transvestite best friend who had a passion for blue lace and southern belle crillolines. She remained firm in her belief that love was stronger than religion. She loved David. She knew David. In his heart still loved her, so she said. Eva waited for 30 long years, for him to come to the realization that in his search for God’s love and approval, and endless attempts to reach God via every comet to fly overhead, he had thrown away the true love he already had.

When I meet Eva, she was in her 60s and lived in a giant Victorian mansion in Biddeford, Maine, on Grame Street next door to the nearly as big, Congregational church. Eva was by that point being called Maine’s Crazy Cat Woman, famous throughout the Greater Portland Area for being decked out in outlandish flowing bright coloured South Pacific robes, with a grass skirt over the roads and long pink coat with giant miss-matched clown buttons sewn all over it, flying down the street on roller skates while pushing an 1800s baby pram, with cats (wearing sun bonnets), not babies, riding inside, with her trusty broomstick slung over her back, and singing "America the Beautiful".

That whar Grammy Eva, my Autistic, Kickapoo grandmother, who I lived part-time with for 17 years. I spent my days at her house in Biddeford, my nights in Old Orchard.

Her house was decorated for Halloween and Christmas, all year round, complete with jack-o-lanterns in every window, Christmas trees in every room, and more Santa Claus' then you could count. She’d greet you on the veranda with a black cat in one arm and a broom in the other. Her shrill laughter sent children running. She had spent years perfecting her "witch's cackle" to get it just right. Over her bed hung a sign which read: “Here’s Lives the Original Salem Witch”. No one dared go near the creepy old mansion. Locals were terrified of her, and called her a witch and she relished it.

Like Grammy Helen, who drove an 3-wheel ATV around town instead of a car, Grammy Eva road a 3-wheel bike. She road it from Biddeford to Old Orchard several times a week, from Biddeford to South Portland every Sunday To go to the Maine Mall, and from Biddeford to Portland every Saturday to go to church.

Grammy Eva was very dark skinned. She was Native American and so, it made sense that she had darker skin then her Canadian Traveller husband or her Scottish Gypsy son-in-laws family. But, her skin was darker then what most people would consider "Native American". One of her sons, looks like a pale black man, eyes, hair, face structure, everything about him. You meet him, you'd swear he was a black man. Grammy Eva also had frizzy-curly hair, as do I. And it stands out, because no one else in the family has hair, like either me or Grammy Eva. If I don't brush my hair for only a few days, it immediately forms dream. Not "caucasian dreads" but "African American dreads" It's really distinctive, because, to most people, I look white. In spite of my frizzy black hair, my big nose, my black eyes, my skin is nearly albino white (I have a skin condition, which causes this.) So most people, when they first see me, they assume I'm racially white, when in fact, I'm not, and I'm basically an albino with dark hair and dark eyes.

These features really stand out and identified me, Grammy Eva, and that particular son as being very obviously "mixed blood", as the Atwater's termed it. David, had accused her of being unfaithful, thus how one of the sons looked part black. 

Around 1983ish, while researching her family history, Grammy Eva discovered her grandmother had been a black slave, who escaped, came to New England, and married her Kickapoo grandfather. Grammy Eva made many attempts  to locate her black relatives. To this day, we never been able to find any living  black family members. We don't know if she was from Africa or not. The information that we've been able to find, indicated that she was NOT an African, but rather originated from the South Pacific. We know bits and pieces of her religion and beliefs, which is very much Haitian Vudo, HOWEVER, there are MANY aspects of her religious practices, which are ONLY found in the Sepik Valley of Papua New Guinea.

Near as we can tell, from the information we found, it appears that one of her parents came from Benin region of Africa (we base this on the version creation story of Damballa, which is very strong passed down in our family) and the other came from Sepik Valley region of Papua New Guinea.

Her robes, which are over 200 years old and I still wear them, appear to be Asante/Ashanti. The robe I am wearing in the pictures below dates to some time between 1640 and 1700. We don't know it's exact age. We don't know how she acquired it or the exact years she was alive. She was alive in the 1690s and early 1700s. We don't know when she was born or when she died, only the years she was alive.

While very little is known about my black great-grandmother, Eva did however, find out enough information about her  grandmother, to find out where she had lived, took a trip to visit the area and find out anything she could.

It turns out that while there is very little accurate information, the locals of the town she lived in, had a wealth of stories about her. Legends, tales... it was through them that Grammy Eva learned learned that she was from Haiti and had been a well respected Mambo, when she was alive. She practiced Vudo, Voodoo, and Hoodoo, and everybody in the town, had a grandmother who had remembered their parents telling stories about her.

Grammy made a dramatic change in her life at this point.  From the 1940s to the mid-1980s she was a devout Seventh-Day-Adventist. In 1973, she started drifting away from her religion when she discovered Huna in Hawaii. In the early 1980s when she discovered her grandmother was a black Mambo, she brought Vudo, Voodoo, and Hoodoo (3 separate practices) into our family, as Grammy Eva, dove into it full force and shocked the Atwaters with what they termed "evil Satanic black magic".

To this day, the Atwaters, (who lived in Utah, and, had no contact with her since 1968) maintain the belief that she never left the SDA church and that she did not take up Voodoo. They weren't here. They didn't live with her. I did. 

The problem is, they in their narrow mindedness, believe that Voodoo is evil. They know nothing about it, nor are they willing to learn.

The Voodoo religion as Grammy Eva learned it and taught it to me, believes in a mixture of spiritual and supernatural powers. They believe that plants, animals, and trees have souls. They also believe in fairies, witches, and forest monsters. There are a variety of beliefs involving ancestors, higher gods, or the Loa, and ‘Nzambi’ (spirits of the ancestors), and reverence to the Supreme Being Papa Damballa Weddo. 

Grammy Eva, was fascinated by Voodoo, it's beauty, it's love, it's kindness, it's respect for life, it's reverence of family, plants, and animals. She felt, that it was a religion of family and peace. 

Grammy Eva had a broken family, separated from her husband  who was fast becoming psychotic with ever increasing hatred for everyone and everything and every increasing violence and his habit of gathering up his army sized family to wage violent war on small towns. Grammy Eva, wanted her family reunited. She wanted the Ricker and Atwater clans too stop feuding and live in peace, side by side "like the lion and the lamb" she used to say (a reference from the Bible.)

She believed that Christianity was tearing the family apart, and as much as she loved Jesus, the division between religions was causing so much fighting, so much violence, so many deaths, that in the final years of her life, she turned her back on Christianity and embraced a religion that focused one one thing: family. The entire Voodoo religion is all about family: past, present, and future.

Grammy Eva tried to tell them about Voodoo and it's peaceful ways and looking to ancestors for guidance, but lashed out at her violently. A group of 8 of her own grandchildren, gathered together in Scarborough, Maine, and beat her up. She ran down the road, crying and bleeding, an elderly woman, with 8 angry violent teenagers, waving boards and sticks, running after her. She ran all the way to the Ricker farm, in Old Orchard Beach, with them on her tail. She hid in our house, while they attacked violently at the doors and windows, DEMANDING, we send her out so they could in their words "kill the old witch". Their father, her own son, cheering them on. They said they were Mormons and that being Mormons gave them the right to kill witches.

She never dared mention Voodoo around any of the Atwaters again. But she learned everything she could about Voodoo and she taught it all to me. And after she died, I didn't stop studying. I've spent the last 30 years studying Voodoo. I have Autism, I can't study something, unless I learn all there is to know about it.

Today I am a Voodoo Priestess rank of Medsen Fey, Marji Loa to Damballah Weddo. I am also a Hoodoo Rootworker and the "weather witch" known to the locals as "The Sea Witch of Old Orchard Beach". They claim, I can control the weather and the ocean. They blame blizzards and hurricanes on me.

Right now, folks in Maine are saying that I got so angry over Kboards, that I froze the country. I do not make that claim, but if they want to believe it, go ahead. Of course, 34 of the 37 people involved in the harassment are dead already - hit by lightening, every one of them. People say I did that too.

Former Town Manager Jim Thomas, called me a "poltergeist". He said it was in "everyone's best interests" to avoid getting me angry.  Thanks to Stephen King and the movie Thinner, and Americans not knowing what either Voodoo or Gypsies actually are, I am now the most feared Voodoo Priestess in America. Which is why I laugh at the people on Kboards, who didn't know who I was, when they attacked me.

If you've read the Quaraun books, you'll notice he does things throughout the series. Little chants, little rituals. Stopping to touch certain trees, pick certain flowers, quote certain "superstitions", etc. He's always stopping to gather roots and herbs. He's always mixing powders and oils. He stops to draw veevee on the ground in cornmeal or flour or salt, or just with his finger in the dirt. The spells he casts, the genie bottles, the demon boxes, the poppets and doll babies and gri=gri and mojo bags, and mirror boxes. The prayers, the curses, the chants, the scroll spells, the candle spells, the altar spells, the honey jar spells. Every ritual, every recipe, every chant, listed in this series are REAL spells.  They are a combination of Voodoo, Hoodoo, and Scottish Gypsy Magic.

The things Quaraun does as a magic user in this series, they are the real, authentic spells, rituals, etc that are an every day part of my practice. I am a Voodoo Priestess, a magic user, in real life.

So, not all of the quirks you see Quaraun doing are caused by Autism, some of them are cultural habits from his being a Gypsy and others are religious habits from him being a Houngan (a Voodoo Priest).

Grammy Eva, gave up on the Atwaters, after they violently attacked her that day. That's when you saw the rise of the roller skating wild woman with her pink mumu, grass skirts, a pram full of cats, and broomstick on her back, while singing "America the Beautiful". 

What people did not see was that Grammy liked to put on a show, and the pumpkins, black cats, baby pram, and broomsticks were all the act of a carnival clown. Grammy’s early life, overshadowed with many years of neglect and abuse, had taught her to see the world through the eyes of compassion.

A closer look inside that baby pram, revealed more than cats enjoying a ride, but also food to hand out to the homeless.

The cats were more than just there for the ride, many of the homeless had lost pets when they lost their homes, and hugging cats is often desired more than food.

The roller skates got her on her daily “walks” from Biddeford to Portland faster.

The long flowing robes, hid the many coin purses, used to fill all the expired parking meters of downtown Portland.

And the broom? Eva stopped at every doorstep along the way, to sweep it clean.

The song? She had seen the world and it was beautiful, but here back home was so much suffering and sadness, people starving in the streets, with nothing to hope for. She made it her goal to sing to everyone she meet, to bring joy into their life (she had an amazing singing voice, she should have been in opera.)

She also carried packages of seeds and bulbs with her, and planted flowers, everywhere she went. Mostly violets and pansies. She loved violets and pansies.

She took this act to Middlebury, Vermont every year, and is the "Mystery Woman" who a national TV gardening show, devoted an entire episode to, in their hunt for anyone who knew the identity of the wild woman, who went across the state planting blue lupines in everyone's field while singing "America the Beautiful."

While her ways were bizarre, there was a method to her madness: “I was the mother to many, the friend to all, I’ve seen the world, I want to share the joy, and make you smile.” Making people smile, bringing a little joy into their otherwise dreary day, was why she did the things she did.

She is why, you see me posting the music videos, the animated GIFs, the cartoon group hug pictures, the dancing bananas, the crazy marquees, on forums all over the internet, since 1997, in her memory. It is in her memory, that I am the "crazy" clown I am, online. It is a act, I'm not as crazy as people think I am, though, I am not anything close to normal either.

But the fact remains, I learned from her, that you have two thing you can do in life. Only two:

You either make people happy.

Or you make people sad.

That is life. The meaning of life according to my Autistic grandmother was, that you are here on this planet to either help people or to hurt them. And it is your choice to do good or evil. 

I choose to make people happy.

It's why, prior to this page you reading right now, I've never responded to negativity. Not on forums. Not on blogs. Not on social networks. Not offline. No where never, until now.

EVERYTHING you do has consequences. Everything you do effects the people around you. What you do, is either going to to hurt or help, whither you know it or not, and it is your duty, to go out of your way to AVOID hurting people and TRY to help them instead.

It's WHY I for nearly 30 years, posted my articles online for free. I didn't charge people for them, because I was trying to help.

It is WHY for nearly 30 years, I posted my dancing bananas, and group hugs, and smillies, and GIFs, and marquees, and videos...to make you smile. To make you happy. To bring joy into your life.

Because of her actions and her spending so much time with the homeless, people often said of Grammy Eva “That’s that crazy homeless cat woman.” By the non-homeless, she was often criticized, had rocks thrown at her, more then once put in the hospital, and was several times beaten up by good upstanding citizens who “don’t want your kind around here - go get a job you filthy bum”.

She was not, as they had falsely judged, either jobless or homeless. They didn’t know she went home each night to one of the biggest sea captain mansions in Biddeford, that she had not 1, but rather had 3 jobs, working in the shoe mill, a nanny, and caring for elderly in nursing homes, or that when not putting on her clown act show to entertain the homeless of Portland, she looked just as normal as you or I.

Eva often remarked at how surprised she was by the difference in how people treated her, and that the exact same people did not recognize her as the same person, when all that had changed was the addition of a baby pram full of cats and a pair of roller skates.

“It’s pitiful, that they have such a lack of compassion and judge a person only by her clothes.” She would often say.

It was through this discovery, that she made a radical decision in the 1980s, to stand up for gay rights and the transgendered community of Portland, Maine. Portland has a huge transgendered community. Many of her dearest and closest friends were glamorous women, who were "women" only on the outside. Glitter. Silks. Sequins. Glam. Ruffles. Lace. Fur and ball gowns. Eva went from entertaining the homeless by day, to having glamorous girls nights out with her drag queen and transvestite friends. The more outcast you were from mainstream society, the more Eva would seek you out and just to say: “You’re beautiful and God loves you just the way you are.” Compassion for others motivated everything she did.

It is from Grammy Eva that I learned compassion for everyone, regardless age, race, culture, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, gender identity, religion, health, lifestyle, income, social status, or species.

Everyone deserves a second chance.

Everything has the right to live.

Through her combining Adventism with Huna, and Native American traditions, and later Voodoo, Grammy Eva taught me to love and respect life: humans, animals, plants, water, all of it.

Compassion for everything and everyone; to live and to let live. Her friendships with with everyone from the unbathed homeless in rags to the wealthy glamorous shemales in their sequined dresses, and everyone in between, taught me to look beyond outer appearances and see the person inside the clothes. Her religion and her traditions motivated her actions. “Jesus said to love everyone. Judge no one. See them as God sees them”, Eva would say, again and again. Every night she would put me to bed with the words: “Never let the sun set on your anger. Forgive your enemies. Pray for them that hurt you. I pray for your grandfather every night.”

Her death, would hone her life deeply into my brain. She died a horrible death, far worse then the neglectful death Grammy Helen had died.

The Atwaters, her own children, proved what cold hearted monster they truly were, the final year of her life. What they did to my beloved Grammy Eva was monstrous and because of my Autism, I was helpless to stop them. It is why, after her death, I took her clothes, her cats, and I continued her legacy of being the wild woman who roams the streets of Biddeford bringing joy to all I meet, by being a clown 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, for nearly the past 30 years.

It's why I built the Dazzling Razzberry, the wild rhinestoned car that is covered with power of positive thinking quotes, that brings joy to the hearts of everyone who sees it.

In the end, her faith, or rather her church and religion, let her down, and ultimately cost her, her life. A devout Seventh Day Adventist, most of her life, she lived the strict lifestyle, denouncing foods from animal products, eating only church owned soy products made by SDA owned companies Morning Star, Worthington, and Kellogg's, eating what she was told, when she was told, denouncing meat, pants, short hair, jewelry, and makeup as being the cause of all sickness and disease, avoiding doctors because doctors were a sin, all because her pastor told her to. When she got sick, she was told to praise the Lord, avoid Satan’s evil doctors, and ignore the pain.

1988 was a bad year. In 1988 Eva’s massive mansion on 3 Graeme St burned to the ground, her best friend Dr. Roberts died, and she was told the lump on her breast was cancer. David phoned from Utah to tell her he had burned her house down, via his psychic abilities. He also proudly took credit for killing her friend. He used mind games to terrify her, because he knew she believed in the powers of witchcraft. She did not tell him about the cancer. She told no one but me. Grammy moved into a run down apartment on Foss St. on the bad side of Biddeford, down by the Mill.  Gangs. Drug dealers. Thugs and bars. Eva now found herself in the heart of Biddeford’s Section-8 slum  district.

Grammy took to strange walking habits; picking up the black cat and walking aimlessly around town in the middle of the night.

The 17 years of weekly weekend pleasure drives across New England in the 1964 Dodge, suddenly turned into daily panic drives to look for Eva, pick her up, and calm her down by driving her to a new place each day. In a single year we put more then 100,000 miles on that car, just from driving to visit every single town in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

Nights were spent “following stars”. Look up in the sky, pick a star and drive wherever it leads us.

January 1989. The old Dodge stopped running. The transmission died and parts were nowhere to be found. Not unexpected, considering only 5,000 of these cars were built and only a handful are known to still exist today.  The weekly road trips came to sudden end. Eva’s good spirits died with the Dodge. Depression sunk over her, she became suicidal, and it became clear that she could not be left alone. Arrangements were made that I would stay with her during the day, and her illegitimate daughter by Dr Roberts would stay with her at night.

This semi-moving in with Grammy, living with her from 6AM to 9PM 6 days a week, for the next 4 years, gave me a new look into the world of the Atwater Clan. My eyes were opened the living hell that Eva’s life was and the monsters her children had grown up to become.

Every night, Eva called David, each of her 11 remaining children, and each of her 64 grandchildren, to say one simple phrase: “Goodnight, I love you.”

For four hours, every night, 76 phone calls went out to Utah, Wyoming, Nevada, Illinois, Vermont, Australia, Germany, Russia, and even to the ones now living in Bangor, Maine. Every night. Her phone bill was monumental. The responses to her phone calls were horrendous.

“Burn in hell you old bag!” said one daughter, who was supposed to be staying with her at night, and WASN'T.

“Nana Banana the big fat bafana. Can’t get to heaven...” sang the words of a toddler.

“Love? What do you know about love? You aren’t capable of lovin, you ain’t got the brains God gave an ape! Why don’t you drop dead you hideous non-Mormon hag!” sneered one son.

“I’m praying for you to die soon, so we do your baptism of the dead temple work, it’s the only way we’ll get you baptised a Mormon and save your soul from being cast out into eternal damnation of outer darkness,” said her (now dead) self proclaimed favorite son.

“All non-white, non-Mormons deserve to die,” roared Grandpa.

She begged and pleaded, between the insults, “I’m dying, please come visit me.”

“Yeah, good one,” came the response, again and again, repeated by each person, in every phone call, like broken record. “You? Dying! Ha! You’ll never die, you're too evil to go to Heaven, and you’re so wicked Satan don’t even want you in hell!”

“What have I done? What did I ever do to make you hate me?” she’d ask between the tears.

“You were unfaithful to the Lord thy God.”

“What did I do?”

“You are not a Mormon.”

Every night.

Seventy-six phone calls.

Seventy-six insults and several lectures on why all non Mormons, especial evil non-white ones like her, will go to hell.

I have to ask, how white do they think they are if their mom wasn’t white herself? She was a Kickapoo Indian with a black grandmother. And she was THEIR mother. Do you know what thhat makes them? Not white, that's for sure, but they are active members of white supremacists groups. I wonder how their group leaders would like to know that these devote white-supremacists, had a mother who was a black Native American?

Did they ever think of that, I wonder?

They claimed she was not Mormon enough to have her family, and yet, when she tried to attend church with them, they laughed at her, and told her she was not welcomed inside. THEY wouldn't let her in the damned building. I know. I was there. They wouldn't let me in either. No matter what she did, there was no pleasing them. She stopped going to both churches, hers and theirs. What was the point? No one loved her in either. She had attended both churches for more than 50 years.

After family, nothing mattered more to Eva then church.  She went to EVERY church. Saturday and Sunday both. She went to EVERY church supper in Biddeford. Do you know how many churches there are in Biddeford? More then 300. And she went to every damned one of them. I knew there was something seriously wrong the day she stopped attending church.

After 6 years of ignoring the pain, as her SDA pastor kept telling her to do, Eva went in secret to a doctor, and was told needed surgery. Her pastor found out and condemned her as a sinner for having seen the doctor, than forbade her to have the surgery. Three more years of pain and suffering passed before she fell on the ice, broke her hip, returned to the doctor and while there, had the breast cancer tumor removed. 

Every night Eva went to bed crying. Every night as I tucked her in, changed her diapers, brushed her hair, and brought her black cat to her, she would turn to me and ask, “Why do they hate me? I love my family. They threw me away. They abandoned me. They left me alone to die in the desert (Salt Lake). Why do they treat me so badly? What did I ever do to any of them? I’ve never even seen my grandchildren! Why do they hate me? I keep trying to tell them about the cancer, but they won’t listen, they won’t give me a chance to talk. I just want to see my children before I die.”

She had Autism, worse then I do. She wasn't high functioning. She counted count or tell you numbers at all. Her reading skills were barely on a kindergarten grade level. She could read and understand birthday and Christmas cards, so she instead of buying books to read, would go to the store every day, to buy cards to read. She collected them. She had thousands of them, hanging on every inch of every wall in her house.

She counted read, well enough to read Dr. Suess books and she had no ability to read anything as complex as a novel. She did however, understand that books contained stories and that I could read, and so she over the course of 17 years, bought me 12,000 books. She was a major player in my book collecting obsession I have today, which did go out of control shortly after she died.

After 748 days and 55,328 insults, Eva stopped calling her children husband,and grandchildren. She stopped walking. She stopped wandering. She stopped going for car drives. Stopped roller skating. Stopped going to Portland. Stopped helping the homeless. Stopped hanging out with her transvestite friends.

Eva became despondent. She stopped eating. She refused to get out of bed. She rarely spoke. She gave up. For weeks she cried uncontrollably, but then she stopped crying, and did nothing by lay there staring blankly at the ceiling, through the blurred eyes of despair. Couldn't even force feed her. She began trying to starve herself to death.

Grammy Eva was HUGE. At one point she was close to 300lbs. That's why she wore the muumuus. She couldn't fit in anything else. When she died she weighed around 120lbs. 

Her family was her life. Her hope of one day being reunited to her husband and children was the only thing she lived for. It had finally hit her, there was no reuniting her family. The man she loved hated and abandoned her because his church had commanded her. Her children abhorred her because their father demanded it. Her grandbabies despised her because their parents set the example of it.

It infuriated me. I don't talk often. You know, that if I am speak verbally, with my voice, I am either very, very happy, or I am, very, very, very angry.

One by one I confronted them. Grandpa, the Aunts, the Uncles, the Cousins, even the Patriarch of the Bangor compound, and his nauseating, death mongering, cat murdering children.

“Why? Why do you say these things to her?”

They denied it. Every one of them.

Do you know what they said to me?

“She’s lying to you. That’s what she does. Don’t believe her evil lies about us. She’s an evil woman. We never said those things. We’re Mormons, we wouldn’t talk like that. She’s just making stuff up to poison your mind with hate, that’s the sort of thing she does.  That’s the sort of thing non-Mormons do.”

They did not know Grammy Eva had a speaker phone.

They did not know I lived with Eva, feed her, bathed her, took care of her, dialed the phone for her, because she couldn't do it herself...EVERY DAY OF EVERY YEAR OF THE LAST SIX YEARS OF HER LIFE!

They did not know that Grammy had never told me what they had said. She didn’t need to say anything. I had heard every word, straight from their own lips as I sat by the phone and their vile, hate filled insults spewed out of that that speaker for everyone in the room to hear - EVEN her doctor heard them. Yeah, her doctor and nurses heard those phone calls too. She had a doctor coming to her house every day to help me take care of her. 

They didn't know I was the one who dialed the numbers because Grammy Eva was too weak to do it on her own.

I watched in silence as every night, for 4 years straight, she said into the phone, “I love you”, then got an earful, hung up the phone, tears streaming down her face, I dialed the next number, she said “I love you” again, and got another earful.

That was it. That was all she said. She didn't say their name, she didn't ask who it was, she didn't say hello. The ONLY words out of her mouth was:  "I love you."

The doctors who were taking care of her, said she could get better and live another 20 years, if they could just shake her out of this depression she was in.  People get better from breast cancer all the time. She was getting treatment, she was going into the hospital every week. She was getting better, until her beloved favorite son in Florida said to her: "I'm praying for you to die."

It hit her so hard, what he said.

That was the last phone call she made. She wouldn't go back to the hospital after that. She stopped eating after that. She would take her medicine after that.

Grammy Eva was outcast by her arrogant family because she refused to abandon what she believed to become a Mormon like them. They killed her. They killed her with their hate.

Ask me again, why I hate bullies. Why i hate mean people who drive good people to suicide.

Summer 1994. Once a talkative person who chattered non-stop about everything, a vast change now had come over Eva. She lay in silence, day after day. Staring at the ceiling, wouldn't say a word.

“My family hates me,” she’d say as I changed her diapers.

“Why did he take my babies away?” she’d ask as I changed the bedding and flipped the mattress.

“Why did he teach them to hate me?” she’d whimper as I cooked her meals, which she now refused to eat.

“I loved him you know,” she’d say as I waited for her to open her mouth so I could put the spoon in.

“That’s why I never remarried,” she said as I brushed her long hair for 3 hours every morning. “I never stopped loving him.”

November 22, 1994. Grammy was refusing to go to the hospital. Her skin was turning orange, the white of her eyes  over in a brilliant yellow, and she suddenly lost 60lbs in a matter of days. “Her liver has stopped working,” her doctor said one day. “She won’t make it to Thanksgiving. This silly game her family is playing has to end. It has to end now. She'll be dead in days if they don't stop. She wants to see her children before she dies. She deserves that much.”

That night, my dad called Eva’s favorite son, Merlin in Florida and gave him hell.  He called from Eva’s speaker phone. The doctor was still in the room. He got to hear for himself the vile spewing hatred her children spoke to and about her. The son picked up the phone and without stopping to hear who was on the other end of the line, went into a venomous hate filled rant of how evil Eva was. He had read the caller ID and thought he was talking to his mother. He was stunned to hear my dad’s voice on the line and the doctor’s voice in the background. He got an earful from my dad, which included every swear word under the sun and just exactly what my dad (a Ricker) thought of ALL the Atwater scum. Somewhere in my dad’s words however, it occurred to the son, that something was wrong, and he’d better leave Florida and get to Maine fast, if he ever wanted to see his mother alive again.

And then they came. Oh, like the rats that they were, they came out of the woodwork from all over the world. Every Atwater of the damned planet, the ALL the Scottish Travellers everywhere arrived in Biddeford, Maine, with their gangs and their thugs, their crimes and their prostitutes.  Gone from Maine since the police and Marines had marched them across the country in 1968 and now they were back in all their criminal glory.

Do you know what they did, while she was laying their dying? They stipped every last bit of copper pipes out of the apartment building she lived in! They went up and down Foss Street, High Street, Hill Street, Water Street, Bacon Street, Pearson's Lane, Sullivan Avenue, and they stole every single bike, striped every single car, and cut all the copper pipes out of all the apartment buildings, and they did it in a matter of hours. There are so damned many of them, they form a small army when they are together. Then they came in and took all her furniture and pawned it. They slashed her mattress, hoping she had stuffed it with money - she was still in the damned bed, lying there hooked up to an IV!

From all points of the globe, the Atwaters headed back to Maine. Droves of Atwaters scurried into Biddeford under the cover of darkness like the deviant rats which they were. They brought their friends and their in-laws. The Halls and the Danites, The Scottish Traveller Crime Family of Utah, Utah-(name removed)-Clan, even the Avenging Angels arrived in Maine. I meet for the first time some of the vilest criminals to ever walk the face of the Earth.  Men who were on the FBI's most wanted list. I have an uncle who is a hitman. I didn't know that before I meet him. My extended family. Every last one of them arrived.

HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of them. WAY more then the 368 I can name. I'd never seen anything like it. The entire Scottish Traveller Crime Family of America, all at once. I didn't even know I had this many relatives.  And it wasn't just Atwaters. They brought all their in-law, rival clans didn't know existed. It was a freaking gathering of the Gypsies on the largest scale Maine has ever seen. GOOD GOD! It was like an entire country had landed in Biddeford. 

The Hell's Angels came to Old Orchard Beach a few years before this.  They were NOTHING, compared to these people. They were like a gang. They call themselves a family, but this isn't a family, this was a gang of frigging thugs. And they were  my family! GOOD GOD! What kind of people am I related to? They were like wild rabid animals. There was nothing remotely human about them.  They set up camp up and down the streets. They thought nothing of pissing on people's cars, then smashing all the windows out of the cars. They thought it was FUN to destroy property. They made a game out of it to see who could smash the most car windows. Not kids. Not teenagers. These were grown men.

I don't remember the Travellers invasion of Old Orchard Beach in the 1960s, the one that required Marines to get them out of town, and resulted in a 5 mile stretch of homes and businesses burnt to the ground, but GOOD GOD, when they arrived in Biddeford, I could then, why to state police had, had to all in the Marines for help. OMG! There was so many of them, and they were all violent. It's no wonder the Scottish Gypsies got so upset when people confused them for the Scottish Travellers. 

And were so loud. They stayed up all friggin night long. They started bonfires in the driveways of people yards, so they could sit up all night, doing whatever it was, they did.

But there was a funeral to be had, and if there's one thing I've learned, there's nothing like the death of a Gypsy King or Gypsy Queen to bring every Gypsy running.

Some of them entered Eva’s house singing “At last the Wicked Old Witch is dead!” They filled Grammy’s house with loud blaring music, and stay up till the breaking of dawn, partying, drinking, and singing. It was a joyous time of celebration, for the woman they hated was at death’s door, and nothing made them happier. They brought with them chips and dips and punch, pork rinds, turkey, and a giant roost honeyed ham. They knew about Eva and ham. They laughed and sang in the living room, while she lay dying in the bedroom. They joked, they drank, they sang. Not one of them entered the bedroom to see her.

When the partying was over, they stripped down the house stealing moldings, curtains, shelves, door knobs, furniture, and light fixtures. (Most of which belonged to the landlord of Grammy's building.) They ripped the sink out of the kitchen, they cut the copper pipes out of the basement, they tore the walls open and pulled out the wires, laughing at how they could melt off the plastic to get at the copper inside.  Like the Grinch who stole Christmas, they left behind not a crumb. When the house had nothing left to steal or cut off of it, they left like rats fleeing a sinking ship.  

They stripped Grammy Eva's house clean - right down to cutting out the copper pipes. They took her furniture, her bedding, her clothes, they slashed open mattresses looking for money hidden inside. They even took the kitchen sink - they left her rented apartment stripped bare to nothing. They even took her bed, leaving her lying instead on a small metal cot, where she died the following morning.

Not all of them made it back to Utah. At least 3 of them ended up in jail while still here in Maine: one for attacking a homeless man with a machete, one for stealing shoes at the Maine Mall, and one for holding up the Kentucky Fried Chicken. Of the nearly 300 people who came and went out of Grammy's house that week, only 4 of them entered her bedroom to see her before she died. Her husband David himself, however, did not come. He remained one of the few who did not come to Maine that week.

Eva died on Thanksgiving morning only 3 days after the Atwaters had arrived. Several of the Atwaters were still here in Maine trashing the house when she died. Her children were visibly stunned and baffled, and vocally made their radical opinions known.

Several asked why she had not told them she was ill. For 6 years she begged them. Four years she told them she was dying, every night before bed. They never heard a word she had said, they were all too busy putting her down to listen to what she was saying to them.  

And then after the funeral, they opened her will. Her beloved favorite son, from Florida, expected to be given everything, he excepted himself to be named the next Gypsy King and his daughter the next Matriarch/Gypsy Queen. 

Her will floored them. Her will was a hand written letter:

 It read:

I want *(name removed) and her four children to have any thing they want. They are the only ones who took care of me for 6 years. And wendy takes my place, you obey her now, she is the new matriarch.

She disowned all of them and left everything to my mother, me, and my 3 brothers, and made me the new Gypsy Queen. 

She went out with the biggest damn FUCK YOU, any one ever gave the Clan. You see, I was already the Matriauch of the Ricker Clan and now I'm the Matriauch of the Atwater Clan too. She did what she and Grammy Helen said they would do: united the clans under one Queen.

Each of them commented on how quickly the cancer had spread, and how rare it was for someone to die from cancer “so fast” after only getting it “a few weeks ago”. David attributed her “speedy fall to cancer” to have been “proof she was possessed by an evil spirit”. The Atwaters nodded and murmured in agreement, “Yes, that must be it. God wanted to rid the earth of her evil spirit, that’s why he took her so young, and so fast.”

On David’s command, her children buried her in a cardboard box, in an unmarked grave, without a wake or a funeral in order to “get her evil spirit in the ground fast so we can forget about her vile, evil existence.”

I was utterly reviled on February 21, 2015, when one of her daughters, posted on FaceBook: "Today is my beloved mother's birthday, I am so glad she spend her last Christmas and Thanksgiving with me and my kids."

That lying bitch. She is the one who taught her children the "Nanna-banana" song and told her mother to burn in hell, calling her an old bag.  She's one who was taking dammed sink out of the kitchen, laughing and saying "I got the kitchen sink! Hahaha!"

I took care of Grammy Eva the last 6 years of her life and B. WASN'T THERE - NOT ONCE! Nor were her children.  How dare she lie about taken and being there for her, when she is one of the monsters that caused Grammy to stop eating and starve herself to death.

Ask me again, why I hate bullies who drive people to suicide? I've seen it happen to many damned times!

Two years after her death, the son whom had treated her the worst of all, whose children had the vilest of all things to say to the grandmother they’d never met, came to Maine to beg forgiveness. I do not understand his actions, or why he came to me of all people. I did not know him. He, like the rest of the snobbish Atwaters, had long maintained a vow of no contact with me due to my “being on evil Eva’s side and working against us”, as the Atwaters like to put it.

I am shunned and ignored by the Atwaters, due to my evil sin of having taken care of my dying grandmother for so many years. So when an Atwater suddenly seeks me out for anything other than to throw rocks at me, it’s an occasion for raised eyebrows. But here he was, an Uncle I hardly knew existed, telling me he had had a vision, his mother had visited him in a dream and she, to his surprise, loved him. I fail to understand why he was so surprised at this, but he was stunned, shocked, and flabbergasted by the discovery that his mother, wasn’t as he previously had thought, an evil bitch who hated his guts. He said he could not ask her for forgiveness, so he was asking me to forgive him in her place. He said to show he truly was sorry, he was buying a grave marker for his mother, which contained the phrase: “Have I told you lately that I love you?” to make up for a lifetime of having never once told his mother he loved her.

As stunned as I was by this visit, another such request of forgiveness would come 8 years later, by the most surprising Atwater of all. David Henry Atwater, Honey Fitze's gun toting, rum running, bootlegging, dog murdering gangster, one of the vilest monsters to ever grace our family tree, arrived in Maine, to beg forgiveness, again, from me, over the way he had treated Eva those last few years of her life. He said he had not believed she was sick. He thought she was faking. He said he never expected her to die. For some reason, while in Maine, he also got his American citizenship, at age 99 years old. He'd been living in America, an illegal alien, for more then 70 years and no one in the family knew he did not have citizenship before that year.

A year later, David Henry died, 10 years after Eva, at age 100 years and 14 days. Before he died, he wrote me a letter, saying he regretted the hell he had put her through, he regretted the hell he put me through, and since he could not ask for her forgiveness, he asked me for mine, knowing that it had been me who had taken care of his beloved Eva those last four dreadful years of her life. He said he regretted not coming back to Maine to visit her before she died. He regretted hanging up the phone, all those many times she had called pleading with him. He regretting leaving her standing alone in the desert all those years ago. He regretted taking from her the things she loved most in life: her husband and her children. He especially regretted having raised her children to hate her, and bemoaned the appalling actions they had taken against her on her deathbed. He closed the letter saying he wished he had never found the Mormon Church and had never set out on his quest to get closer to God, because it cost him the woman he loved. He said he still loved her and that he was booking a flight to Maine, planning to visit her grave. He did make the flight, but not alive.

David Henry Atwater, Chief Patriarch of The Royal Highland Clan, King of the Gypsies ... he actually apologized to me. Do you know that no one has ever apologized to me, before or since. NEVER. Not once. EVER. For ANYTHING.  HIM...of all people...he was a monster, but he apologized. That does mean a lot. This is the man who tossed me in the trunk of a car, when I was 14. I was supposed to die when the others did. I didn't. He never went to prison, because he only gave the orders, he wasn't the one who actually did the killing.  Though he is the one who killed Grammy's dog and force fed it to her. And in spite of all his talk of all the people he had eaten, there never was any evidence that cannibalism was being practiced later then 1937.

That monster, that evil, horrible man, actually felt remorse, guilt, and the need to ask for forgiveness. It really, really shocked me, because, until that point, I would never have thought this man capable of feeling anything at all.

In the letter he also asked if he could come live with us in Old Orchard Beach. I have Autism. I forget nothing. But I also don't hold a grudge and I do forgive someone who casts pride aside to ask for forgiveness.

He was found dead 3 days before the plane left. And is death? Or it was a doozy. The murder trial nearly tore the family apart. Oh, yeah. He was found by his nurse, who only checked on him once a week, BUT, had not been allowed in the house, by his son-in-law, for nearly 3 months. His nurse, went to the police and they broke into the house to search for him.

He was found tied up and at the bottom of the stairs of his basement, poisoned. Somebody, tied him up, stuffed him full of every pill they could find, and then kicked him down the stairs. Coroner estimated he was dead at least a week, before the nurse found him.

He lived with one of his daughters and her VERY violent, wife beating, child abusing husband (the man who said he couldn't visit Maine because "I don't want to breath the non Mormon air."

Grandpa was blind and "75 lbs underweight" at the time he died.  Official cause of death: "Starvation, augmented by drug overdose." He was already dead, before being pushed down the stairs. He lived 100 years and 14 days, only to be murdered.

You start to see where I got the idea for Unicorn's character, now, right? The really old man, blind, starving, can't stop talking about eating people, and gets poisoned.

Oh, and you'r gonna love this. You know how both of main characters: Roderic and Quaraun, and head to toe PINK. There is a reason for that. Grandpa's favorite color was pink. He dressed like a 1920s Chicago gangster, only his suits were BRIGHT PINK. Pink hat. Pink cane. Pink bowtie. Pink suit. Pink shirt. Pink, pink, pink, pink, pink, PINK! Grandpa LOOOOOOOVED pink.

Gypsies are known for their colorful clothes and Grandpa was no exception. The King of the Gypsies was screaming pink.

His body was shipped back on that same flight, in a gold plated pink metal flake coffin. David was buried along side of Eva’s cardboard box, one week after writing me that letter. David Henry finally realized what he had given up to gain the approval of God, but that realization had come 10 years too late. “Have I told you lately that I love you?”

Ironically, the child who survived is the one he left in charge of his grave.  I tend the graves of Grammy Helen, Grammy Eva, and Grandpa.

Like his son before him, David said he wished he had put love of family, before love of church. He wished he had put God aside, just long enough to say “I love you” to the woman who had devoted her life to loving him. His dying wish was for the family to do as Eva had wanted: forget about God and Church and religion and put family first. He said he regretted having learned too late, that nothing was more important then loving your family, a lesson he learned only after the death of his wife, when it was too late to spend time with her. All the time he'd spent wasted in church and temple, he said he wished instead that he had spent those hours with her. 

Weird death-bed repentance of a monster. Why did he say it to me? Because I'm the one who survive. The others were dead, he couldn't say it to them. Put family first. Wow! From the man who bragged of snapping baby necks because it was fun. 

It is because of the shameful way the Atwaters treated Grammy Eva those last few days of her life, and the shameless mockery the Utah-(name removed)-Clan acted at her home, partying on her deathbed, and at her funeral, that is why I shunned, banished, and disowned nearly every Atwater and the entire Utah-(name removed)-Clan. Of course, back then, I was still unaware of the horrible way the Utah-(name removed)-Clan was treating the children they held in their compound in Bangor. I'd have disowned them sooner had I known what they were doing up there.

Poor Eva, in later life deeply regretted ever having met the Atwaters, marrying one of them, and bringing them into the mix of our family tree. In the 1970s after fleeing the Atwaters and leaving them behind in Utah, she eventually tracked down her Kickapoo family. Sadly most of them have since been forced off their free lands and herded by white men into reservations in Kansas, which are little more then concentration camps, fenced in by the government, no one goes in, no one goes out, and no one is allowed to have American citizenship and are therefore treated as illegal aliens if they try to go to an off reservation hospital or school. The white men put Native Americans on dead land where the soil is used up and crops barly grow. It's terrible the life of a "reservation Indian".

I believe that if every author wrote accurately different, diverse, characters who were realistically accurate fictional representations of themselves all books would be much better for it. Race, gender, sexuality, illness, disability, interests, hobbies, talents...all of it. 

If you pay attention to all of my books, you start to notice a trend: my romance heroes are little guys under 5'5" because I like little guys (like my husband), my romance gals are bigger gals packing booty (like me), my human characters are non-white "Gypsy" races (because I am a non-white "Gypsy" race), my human characters live in RV parks in Maine (because I live in RV parks in Maine), my primary main character has Autism (because I have Autism), many of my female characters are Voodoo Priestess (because I am a Voodoo Priestess)...

Thus my books portray Voodoo, Autism, "Gypsy" races, trailer parks, etc accurately, because I am not a stereotype and I will not reduce my characters to stereotypes either. I am not comfortable writing characters that are not a reflection of my own life, thus I don't write to meet the market, I write for people like me, who have a hard time finding books that don't reduce us to stereotypes.

The Quaraun series is the prequel series to the Twighlight Manor series. In the TMSeries there has long been mention of the fact that Roderic inherited The Twighlight Manor from his grandfather, who built it. His grandfather was never named, but Roderic, who wears wild pink outfits, as said to have inherited his pink outfits from his grandfather as well. 

Roderic was long picked on by the other members of his family and, because of the way his father and two uncles treated him, their father disinherited all three of them and left everything: his empire, his kingdoms, his dragon's hoard of gold, and his 500 room haunted house The Twighlight Manor to his retarded grandson Roderic. The Twighlight Manor series never says WHO King Vielder's father was, or why he took the Flamite Empire away from his son and gave it to his younger son's retarded boy Roderic. The Quaraun series is the story which goes back before the Twighlight Manor was built an leads up to HOW Roderic came to own it.

Simply put Quaraun is Roderic's grandfather. Quaraun built the Twighlight Manor. And Quaraun spent his entire life being bullied because he was retarded, so when he saw his three sons bullying the grandchild which suffered from the same illness he did, he left everything to that child (Roderic).

I wrote Roderic as a Gypsy with Autism, because I am a Gypsy with Autism and I write what I know.

Like I did when writing the Roderic stories, the Quaraun stories are inspired largely by events in my own life, and like Roderic, Quaraun responds to life, the same way I do. Both Roderic and Quaraun have Autism and are written the way they are, because I have Autism and how they respond to their environment, is how I respond to mine.

And, so, there you have it. That is what is wrong with Quaraun. He is a Gypsy who has autism, so not only are you looking at a character who is "retarded" he also is from a culture, seen by most readers as "alien". I write Quaraun as a Gypsy with Autism, because I am a Gypsy with Autism and I write what I know.

This is my life. I am a Gypsy with Autism. That is who I am. That is the world I know.

You can not expect me to write about a non-Gypsy character and write them accurately, because I will only be able to write them from the perspective of how they are seen by us Gypsies.

You can not expect me to write about a non-Autistic character and write them accurately, because I will only be able to write them from the perspective of how they are seen by a person with Autism.

And thus I write, contrary to mainstream conventions, and write a character, who sees the world the same way I do.

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