EelKat Wendy C Allen as Quaraun the Insane

(Update: July 8, 2017) As This Article Has Now Crossed 50,000 Words and Will Take You Up To 8 Hours To Read... I am Now Dividing It Up Into A Series of Smaller Pages
This Page You Are Reading Now, Is Part 1

If you have not read the any other pages of this series yet...

• #1: I have Autism. Not Aspergers. Not Autism Spectrum Disorder. But ACTUAL Autism, which is vastly different from either Aspergers or Autism Spectrum Disorder.

• #2: I am an author, who writes an Autistic character who's Autism is based off of my own Autism symptoms, and whose life is loosely based off actual events from my own life.

• #3: I am writing this article series because another writer requested it, because they were seeking to write an Autistic (not Asperger) character, but could not find much information online about ACTUAL Autism aka Kanner's Syndrome.

If you've never read the Quaraun series, some things you should probably be aware of when reading the novel excerpts found on this page:

• #1: The Quaraun series is listed as the following genres: Yaoi, Bizarro, Dark Fantasy, Sword & Sorcery, High Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Psychological Horror

• #2: Quaraun is not Human. He is an Elf and as such, is physically able to live though things/not be harmed by things that would normally kill a Human.

• #3: Quaraun is a polyamorous bi-sexual transvestite, with 4 wives and 2 male lovers. (If you are uncertain the difference between a transgender person, a transsexual, and a transvestite, then please read this page to find out what each word means.)

• #4: Quaraun is a fictional character. Yes, I know is seems ridiculous that I have to say this, however... some people are not able to tell the difference between fact and fiction, reality and fantasy, the author and a fictional character, and as such, gay-haters beat me up (a straight female) accusing me of being a gay transsexual man, after reading one of the novels from the Quaraun series.

• #5: While the Autism components of his character are portrayed accurately, he also suffers from a FICTIONAL, illness as well, which was created based off of a combination of Naegleria fowleri, Kuru, & Mad Cow Disease, 3 very rare real world illnesses that cause insanity. In the books this FICTIONAL illness is called "Thullid Infestation" and is what Quaraun is referencing when he says such things as "There's a Jelly Fish in my head" or "A Jelly Fish ate my brain". (Yes, one's brain being eating by a tiny jelly bodied parasite is a real thing that can actually happen to you, Google "Naegleria fowleri" to find out more about it.)

I get very annoyed by writers who use mental illness as a plot devise...

I get very annoyed by writers who use mental illness as a plot devise, especially when it becomes clear that they know nothing of the illness they are writing about, have clearly never lived with it, have no clues the every day challenges a person faces by living with it, and obviously did little to no research into it, basing everything the character does off something they saw in a movie and assumed the movie must have got it right.

In case you are wondering, this is me:

That picture is from PortCon 2017.

A friend was there and he saw me... came over and said:

"I thought you were gonna be in costume, what you doing wearing your every day clothes?"

Yes. I do dress like this every day.

Here, these are also me, NOT at PortCon, just doing my every day things around town...

I am OtherKin. ElvenKin to be specific. Since February 4, 1987, I have lived every day of my life as a male transvestite Elf. 

Why?

Because I have Autism and OCD and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder, and this is who I am... all day, every day, for decades.

My mental illnesses don't go away, for the connivance of plot points in my life. They do not show up only when I need them, to use to advance the story of my life. They are there 24 hours a day. 7 days a week. 12 months a year. Every years, since the day I was born.

Of course, one of the problems I have to live with is the fact that people don't know Autism is not a mental illness.

Yeah. Did you know that?

A mental illness is something you are NOT born with. Autism is something you are born with.

We'll get into that in a minute though.

Why do authors think, they can have characters act normal until all a sudden a plot changes and requires them to "act crazy" and so suddenly they are acting crazy, then plot device is over and they act normal again? Mental illness ain't like that, you can't turn it on and off whenever the plot needs it.

I am a female who lives as male who lives as a female. It confuses people quite a lot, but it is what it is.

I do not claim to be normal. I do not try to be normal. I am what I am. And because of what I am, I am faced with daily bullying, teasing, and bigotry.

Everywhere I turn there's a new book misusing yet another mental illness. I hate how characters act normal until all a sudden a plot changes requires them to "act crazy" so suddenly they are acting crazy, then the plot device over and they act normal again.

Mental illness ain't like that, you can't turn it on and off whenever the plot needs it. 

Writers rarely get it right. And would like to see that changed.

People always ask me about my main character, from current series "Quaraun the Insane" asking, what is wrong with him? What mental illness does he have? How did you research it? How do you know what to write?

My answer?

I write what I know.

Quaraun acts like me, talks like me, dresses like me, and the bullies in the books? They do to Quaraun, what real life bullies have done to me.

Quaraun was crippled by bullies and now walks on a cane after months paralyzed and months relearning to walk, because I was crippled by bullies and now walk on a cane after months paralyzed and months relearning to walk.

Quaraun has Autism and OCD and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder, because I have Autism and OCD and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder.

I write Quaraun as he is, because this is who I am... all day, every day, for decades.

I write what I know.

If you want to know how to write a mental illness, go to the source. Find someone who has the illness you want to write, Interview them. Talk to them. Spend several days living with them. Find out what their every day life is life. Don't write stereotypes - write the truth.

Because people have asked me to write up a "how to" on how to write a "clinically insane character like Quaraun", I have written this page, to tell you how it is, I write him.

What is wrong with Quaraun? (On Writing A Clinically Insane Character Accurately, While Avoiding The Psychopath Stereotype)

There is for some odd reason, which completely baffles me, a common misconception that Quaraun is "insane" because he is a transvestite. I am uncertain as to why many readers come to this conclusion, but I must say it speaks volumes for their own views and perceptions of transgender people if a reader looks at a transgender character and thinks:

• transgender = insane

If you think transgender = insane, it tells me, that you have a warped perception of transgender people and need to do some re-evaluating of the bigoted way in which you view those around you.

No.

Quaraun's insanity has nothing to do with his being a transvestite.

If you had ever paid attention to any of the other 100+ novels I wrote before the Quaraun series you would have noticed that pretty much everything I write features a transvestite main character and of all of them, only Quaraun suffers from serious mental disorders.

So, what is Quaraun?

So, what is Quaraun?

• #1: Quaraun has Autism. ACTUAL Autism, which is also known as "idiot savant" and is in no way, shape, or form related to Asperger's which while have some over lapping symptoms has some marked glaring differences as well. Keeping in mind that Autism (proper name: Kanner's Syndrome) is very RARE, effecting only 1 in every 10,000 children, while Asperger's is very common effecting 1 in 3 children, and Autism Spectrum Disorder is also very common at a rate of 1 in 64 children.
• 
  
• #2: Quaraun has SchizoEffective Personality Disorder, which is similar to, but is not Schizophrenia.
• 
  
• #3: Quaraun has a demonic, alien jelly fish from outer space living inside his brain, after she burrowed a hole in his skull to get there. Quaraun is slowly going insane, in a madness similar to mad cow disease, caused by the holes the tiny parasitic jellyfish is eating in his brain tissue. (This is based off a very real creature, the Naegleria fowleri, also known as the "brain-eating amoeba" that can in fact swim up your nose, attach itself to your brain, and slowly cause insanity by eating your brain tissue.)

(Side note... because it has been asked that I write a page that details more information on what specifically it it like to be savant, I am writing a "Part 3" to this page [Part 2 is here]. Part 3 will go into more detail about my very early childhood and how it was it was discovered I was savant. I'll add the link HERE once that page is finished ~ note added July 4, 2017)

Speech is very difficult for me. My verbal words are desperately slurred and stuttered and go from either way too fast or way too slow. Most times I know what I want to say, but the words that come out of my mouth are mixed up and in the wrong order so sound like nonsense. Folks often consider me "dumb" due to my being near-mute and desperate lack of getting words out in the correct order. I write 7k words a day just as part of my daily non-verbal speech. That is how I am able to pound out 15k words every day.

It is very frustrating when I want to talk to someone and they pat me on the head and say something like: "It's okay, here have a candy. Poor thing she can't understand us at all."

Quaraun speaks in the same quasi-non-verbal muddled up speech I do. Quaraun's dialogue is a blundered mess because my verbally spoken dialogue is an embarrassingly blundered mess.

Quaraun can not count or do math, because I can not count or do math.

Quaraun requires caretakers, because I require caretakers.

Quaraun is very shy and self conscious and terrified of how others will respond to his lack of ability to speak verbally in any real coherent manner, because I am very shy and self conscious and terrified of how others will respond to my lack of ability to speak verbally in any real coherent manner.

Quaraun wears long flowing, bright colored, gaudy, heavily beaded and embroidered silk robes, because I wear long flowing, bright colored, gaudy, heavily beaded and embroidered silk robes.

The nightmare world of hate mongers, bigots, and vicious violent bullies who cripple and maim him, that Quaraun lives in every story, is the nightmare world of hate mongers, bigots, and vicious violent bullies who cripple and maim me, that I live in, every day.

Quaraun has near-mutism Autism, because I have near-mutism Autism.

Quaraun suffers night terrors, panic attacks and other things caused by PTSD, because I suffer night terrors, panic attacks and other things caused by PTSD.

Are you starting to see a pattern here?

I write what I know. And I know Autism, Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder, PTSD, and Agoraphobia very well. I don't do any research into anything to write about Quaraun, I just write the world the way I see it. I can't write a "normal" character because I don't know what it is like to be a "normal" person.

The world as the reader sees it through Quaraun's eyes...that is the world as seen through my eyes. Quaraun is an accurate portrayal of someone with Autism, Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder, PTSD, and Agoraphobia, because he is written by someone with Autism, Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder, PTSD, and Agoraphobia. I know how Quaraun would react to things, because it is how I do react to things.

Writers who write accurately, write accurately because they write what they know. I'm not trying to write about something I am not familiar with. I don't go out of my way to TRY to make Quaraun seem like a person Autism, Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder, PTSD, and Agoraphobia. I'm not trying to write about a disorder.  I simply write the world the way I see the world and use him as the representative of that POV.

Writing an Autistic Character Accurately

Something people rarely consider is that in the 1400s, the disease now called Autism, was at the time called "insanity". For more then 700 centuries, when a person said "he's insane" what they meant was "he has autism".

Autism continued to be used interchangeable with the word "insanity" into the 1950s.

Quaraun lives in the 1400s. When people call him "insane" they are referring the the fact that he has autism, which was not yet called autism. It is historically accurate for characters in the 1400s to classify an autistic person as insane as this was the correct terminology.

Also interestingly, the disease we now call Asperger's, used to be refereed to as "childhood schizophrenia".

Both Insanity (Autism) and Childhood Schizophrenia (Asperger's) were treated with locking the person in cast iron restraints (called Faerie iron) and burning them with hot irons to "drive the Faerie Changling out of them". In more resent history Insanity (Autism) and Childhood Schizophrenia (Asperger's) were treated with the lobotomy.

Another interesting fact is what people call "the autism boom" claiming that there are more children born with autism in recent years. Actually, there are FEWER children born with autism, since the 1970s. Though there is a reason you see autistics and Asperger's people more often in recent years. From the 1600's until the 1980s Autistics and Asperger's were institutionalized in mental institutes, often without their parents consent or permission. In 1987 laws were passed making it illegal for mental institutes to take Autistic and Asperger children away from their families, and thus throughout the 1990s onward you see a "boom" of autistic and asperger children in public, simply because they are no longer locked away from public eye.

In any case, Quaraun is called by other people "Quaraun the Insane" because he has Autism, and in the 1400s the terms "autism", "autistic", or "special needs" did not exist, and it was a medical and historically correct diagnose for an autistic person to be diagnoses as "insane" if they had autism.

What is Autism?
How Are Autism, Aspergers,
and Self-Diagnosed Asperger's Different?

I get very annoyed by writers who use mental illness as a plot devise, especially when it becomes clear that they know nothing of the illness they are writing about, have clearly never lived with it, have no clues the every day challenges a person faces by living with it, and obviously did little to no research into it, basing everything the character does off something they saw in a movie and assumed the movie must have got it right.

....

On this page we are going to look at what happens, when a character with a mental illness, becomes very, very, very famous...

His name is Sheldon Cooper and he has Asperger's. And in the show Big Bang Theory, his Aspergers is portrayed correctly... to some extent...

however his Aspergers is FICTIONAL.... it's not real... and yet...

1 in 3 children,

now have this

FICTIONAL

made up form of Asperger's

in what may be the largest and most bizarre heard mentality phenomena to ever hit America

...

Since the arrival of the Big Bang Theory, 9 years ago, something very strange happened in the real world medical community...

...a brand new mental health illness arrived almost over night and hit pediatricians everywere by storm...

The name of the strange new illness?

"Self Diagnosed Asperger's" which is vastly different from actual, real Aspergers.

Self Diagnosed Aspergers is a bizarre illness that has a few of the symptoms of Autism, a few symptoms of Asperger's, and shit ton load of one illness... the real illness, that it really is... it's based entirly off a fictional character (Sheldon Cooper) and one author's fictional translation of what Aspergers is in the world of The Big Bang Theory.

Self-Diagnosed Aspergers is NOT the same as Asperger's Syndrome, as you soon shall see. It is a very unique illness... and imaginary illness, invented by fans of Sheldon Cooper, and spread like wildfire across America, infecting a whooping 1 in 3 children.

Let's now take a look at this bizarre phenomena, known in the medical world as "The Mysterious Autism boom"...

Some interesting facts:

• Autism (Kanner's Syndrome) is very RARE, effecting only 1 in every 10,000 children

• Self diagnosed Asperger's is very COMMON with 1 in 3 children self-diagnosed

• ACTUAL Asperger's is rarer then people think however as only 1 in 400 children who actually have a doctor's diagnose

• More then 40% of teens with self-diagnosed Aspergers,when asked why they decided to self diagnose themselves as having Asperger's admitted to only diagnosing themselves as Aspies in order to be more like their hero Sheldon Cooper, 
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• and could not list what the actual symptoms of Asperger's were, as they ONLY knew the "symptoms" as show on the TV show and had never researched to find out what Asperger's really was.

 (children aged 12 to 18 who self-diagnosed themselves with a serious crippling mental illness, that doctors take 12 years of Abnormal Psychology college classes to learn how to recognize) 

• More then 60% of parents who self-diagnosed  their children as having Aspergers, admitted to being fans of Sheldon Cooper and said they hoped that by "self diagnosing" their children as Aspies, it would make them aspire to be more like Sheldon Cooper and become famous noble prize winning physicists.
• 
  
• and could not list what the actual symptoms of Asperger's were, as they ONLY knew the "symptoms" as show on the TV show and had never researched to find out what Asperger's really was.

(very young parents, themselves only children aged 16 to 24 - who self-diagnosed their children with a serious crippling mental illness, that doctors take 12 years of Abnormal Psychology college classes to learn how to recognize- without knowing what it actually was, simply because they were a fan of a fictional character who had a MADE UP FICTIONAL version of a seriously debilitating disease.)

There is one thing more frightening then the trend of children self-diagnosing themselves with serious mental illnesses...

and that's the fact that they are ALSO making up "new" symptoms, and using these FAKE "Aspie symptoms" as excuses to commit horrific crimes: including dissecting their sibling's pets, building bombs to blow up their neighbors houses, and stealing guns for school shootings...

Did you know that EVERY case of a school shooting in the United States was done by a child who had self diagnosed as an Aspie?

But did you also know that someone with ACTUAL Aspergers, lacks the part of the brain that triggers anger and violence? And like Autistics, REAL Aspies, are completely and totally docile, non-violent, and it is almost impossible to get either Autistics or Aspies angry and are NOT CAPABLE of committing the horrific violent hate crimes that are being done by self diagnosed Aspies?

Self-diagnosed Asperger's ranks uncommon the most dangerous, most violent, and most sociopathic illness in history, and yet, self-diagnosed Asperger's is a fictional illness that did not exist prior to the invention of the fictional character Sheldon Cooper from the fictional TV show Big Bang Theory.

Here are two very important numbers to look at:

#1: 80% of all self-diagnosed Aspies will commit violent crimes, more then half of those crimes will be murder.

#2: 80% of all self-diagnosed Aspies have mis-diagnosed themselves and do not have Asperger's at all.

Did you see it?

No?

Let's repeat it and see if you see it the next time around?

• #1: 80% of all self-diagnosed Aspies will commit violent crimes, more then half of those crimes will be murder.
• #2: 80% of all self-diagnosed Aspies have mis-diagnosed themselves and do not have Asperger's at all.

Still missing it? Let's show you it a third time, see if you see it yet...

#1: 80% of all self-diagnosed Aspies will commit violent crimes, more then half of those crimes will be murder.

#2: 80% of all self-diagnosed Aspies have mis-diagnosed themselves and do not have Asperger's at all.

Funny how the amount of Asperger's patents who commit violent crimes is the EXACT SAME amount who are also not actual Aspies, isn't it.

You know there's a reason for that right?

The list below, is a list complied, by interviewing, children who had self diagnosed themselves with Asperger's... or the very young (14 to 24) teen parents whom had self diagnosed their children. When asked what are the symptoms of Asperger's and how do they compare with Autism... these are the answers they gave...

THE LIST HAS BEEN MOVED TO IT'S OWN PAGE (see reason below)

This section got waaaaay too long, resulting in the page was having difficulty loading for people with slow connections, so, I cut this section out of this page and made it into it's own page, right HERE.

So when you have finished reading this page, it now has a Part 2: On Writing Autistic Characters Accurately: Autism, Asperger's, And The Danger of The Self-Diagnosis

If You Are Going To Write An Autistic Character...
Then Write An Autistic Character,
NOT Someone With Self-Diagnosed Aspergers
Self-Diagnosed Aspergers Is NOT Autism
It is Aspergers either.
It is a FICTIONAL disease, created by fans of Sheldon Cooper.
Know The Difference.

Of course, one of the problems I have to live with is the fact that people don't know Autism is not just a mental illness.

Yeah. Did you know that?

A mental illness is something you are NOT born with. Autism is something you are born with.

A mental illness is something you GET, just like chicken pox or any other disease. Because you are born with a genetic disorder disorder, disorders are not thing you can catch or spread to other people.

You don't get Autism from mercury or vaccines... you can only GET Autism from your parents having a messed up gene pool.

A mental illness is something you can CURE, because metal illness it is a disease, just like cancer. Autism is a genetic disorder that you inherit from your parents. If you have Autism, it's because one of your parents carried the gene.

Autism is a birth defect... just like being born with only one arm, their is no way to grow the missing parts of your brain. Just like there is no medication to make you regrow and thus cure that missing limb, there is no medication that can regrow the brain cells I was never born with.

On the other hand Aspergers IS a mental illness. You are NOT born with Aspergers. You do not GET Aspergers until late childhood or early teens or even as an adult.

The biggest difference between Autism and Aspergers is the onset and the cause.

Both Autism and Asperger's are listed in medical books as a "Psychosis".

Autism you are born with. It is a birth defect of your brain, that is triggered by stress.

Asperger's is a stress induced mental illness, that children and teens get.

Autism is a lifelong chronic illness that never goes away and has no cure or treatments.

Asperger's can be lessened and in some cases cured, by changes in diet, changes in daily habits, etc. Asperger's has treatments.

Aspergers has many of the same symptoms as Autism, because parts of the brain become damaged in a person with Aspergers, they are the same parts of the brain that people with Autism are not born with.

The goal of this page is not to look at the detail of what is Autism vs what is Aspergers, but rather instead, to look at how to write an Autistic character in your novel and have them act and behavive accuratly to how an autistic person realy acts in real life.

If you are seeking details on the hows and whys and differences between Autism and Aspergers, I have provided a list of more then 100 websites of organizations, foundations, and other medical type places, where you can find actual medical facts and statistics about Autism and Aspergers, the causes, variations, types, etc.

The focus of this page is instead too look at what are the typical personal habits of typical people who have Autism (but not the typical habits of people who have Aspergers, as Aspergers is markedly different from Autism in many dramatic ways.)

To do this we are going to compare my real every day life (I have Autism) with the fictional every day life of my main character Quaraun (who also has Autism) whos character and habits are based off my own daily habits.

Again, please remember that Quaraun has Autism NOT Asperger's.

It is very annoying for me both as an author and a person who has autism, to constantly be faced with asperger's people running up to me and "I have autism too, YAY! Isn't it great?"

I'm sorry, no, it's not great to be allergic to pretty much everything, to suffer bowel disorders and bladder disorders, to never know what anyone is talking about, or to be 50 years old and still require adult supervision.

Yes, all of those things are symptoms of autism.

No, none of those things are symptoms of asperger's.

ACTUAL Autism, which is also known as "idiot savant" and is in no way, shape, or form related to Asperger's. I'm sorry, but it's not. Go read a medical journal, you know one actually written by a doctor, as opposed to a newsletter written by a vaccine hating conspiracy theorist.

Like me Quaraun has an actual medical diagnosis of clinical autism, not some tootie fruitie, I wanna be special so I'll call myself an aspie self-diagnosis.

There are more then 50 diseases, illnesses, and disorders, which are similar to Autism.

It is not unusual for Autism (Kanner's Syndrome aka Actual Autism) to be confused with 50+ other illnesses (see list below) due to their having overlapping symptoms.

Keeping in mind that:

• Autism (Kanner's Syndrome) is very RARE, effecting only 1 in every 10,000 children

• Asperger's is very COMMON with 1 in 3 children self-diagnosed

• Asperger's is rarer then people think however as only 1 in 400 children who actually have a doctor's diagnose

• 1 in every 68 children have Autism Spectrum Disorder

• 80% of children with self-diagnosed Aspergers have misdiagnosed themselves or been misdiagnosed by parents in denial

• 30% of all parents of children diagnosed with Schizophrenia, will attempt to hide the doctor's actual diagnosis, by telling their family, friends, and the child himself, that the child has Asperger's because Asperger's is more socially acceptable then Schizophrenia

• 80% of ADULTS with self-diagnosed Aspergers have misdiagnosed themselves and instead have Narcissistic Personality Disorder

• More then 40% of teens with self-diagnosed Aspergers, admit to only diagnosing themselves as Aspies in order to be more like their hero Sheldon Cooper, and could not list what the actual symptoms of Asperger's were.

Keep in mind that MOST of what you find posted on the internet as "Symptoms of Asperger's" is written by self-diagnosed Aspies, and is VASTLY different from what the ACTUAL, clinical symptoms are.

How does Quaraun compare to those facts about Autism?

As this page has gotten too long already and has already had to be cut into multiple pages, I'm going to answer that question on a new page, which I will link here once it is completed.

Moving on...

Remember:

Autism is very rare, only 1 in 10,000 children ACTUALLY have it.

Getting a diagnosis of Autism is next to impossible.

Parents who push their doctors to look for Autism in their child, are rarely aware that they are asking their doctor to look for sex abuse done by a parent.

Aspergers is fairly uncommon, only 1 in 400 children ACTUALLY have it.

Yet 1 in ever 3 children is self diagnosed (by themselves or a parent) as being an "Aspie".

Autism Spectrum Disorder in far more common with 1 in 64 children having it. (This means, 1 in every 64 children, have one of the illnesses o the list below)

There are more then 60 illnesses, which are commonly miss-self-diagnosed as Aspergers:

Can You List all Of The Autism Spectrum Disorders?

Most People Can Only List 5 of Them

There Are More Then 60 Disorders "On The Autism Spectrum" Including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Schizophrenia, Threadworm Infestation, and having had a Stroke.

Did you know that?

Autism Is A Rare Illness

Only 1 in 10,000 ACTUALY Have Autism

Yet 1 in 3 People Self Diagnose Themselves As "Aspergers Type of Autism"

Only Problem Is Aspergers Is Not A Type Of Autism

Aspergers Is One Of More Then 60 Illnesses Known As "The Autism Spectrum Disorders"

An ASD Is An Illness That Is NOT Autism, But Displays Autistic-Like Symptoms

80% of All People Claiming To Be "Autistic Aspies" Actually Have One of The Illnesses on This List Instead:

Here Are The Autism Spectrum Disorders
(Illnesses commonly misdiagnosed as Autism & which 80% of self diagnosed Aspies ACTUALLY have)

• Abnormal Fear Structure
• Alzheimer Disease
  
• Angelman Syndrome
• Anxiety disorders
• Aphasia
• Asperger syndrome
  
• Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, or AD/HD
• Auditory Processing Disorder
  
• Avoidant Personality Disorder
• Bipolar disorder
  
• Bi-Polar Affective Disorder
• Candida Albicans.
• Carnitine Deficiency
• Celiac's Disease
• Childhood Disintegrative Disorder
• Chromosome 15 inverted duplication
• Chromosome 17 trisomy mosaicism
• Chromosome 18, Monosomy 18p
• Chromosome 18p minus syndrome
• Chromosome 19 ring syndrome
• Chromosome 1q21.1 Deletion Syndrome
• Chromosome 2, monosomy 2q37
• Chromosome 20, deletion 20p
• Chromosome 20p deletion syndrome
• Cocaine use during pregnancy
• Cocktail Party Speech Syndrome
• Concentration Disorder
  
• Congenital Rubella Syndrome
• Cornelia de Lange Syndrome
• DAS "Developmental Apraxia of Speech"
• Deafness
• Defiant Disorder
• Del(1) (pter-p35)
• Deletion 20p
• Developmental Verbal Dyspraxia (apraxia)
  
• Down’s Syndrome
• Epilepsy
  
• Fetal Alcohol Effect
• Fragile X Syndrome
• Galactosemia
• Heckenlively syndrome
  
• Heller's Disease
• Hyperlexia
• Hypomelanosis of Ito
• Intellectual Disability
• Intermittent Explosive Disorder
• Irlen Syndrome/Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome (SSS)
• Klinefelter Syndromes
• Lactic Acidosis
• Landau-Kleffner Syndrome
• Lead poisoning 
  
• Lesch-Nyhan Syndrome
• Manic Depression
• Mental retardation
  
• Mesenteric adenitis
  
• Microdeletion 3q29
  
• Migraine
  
• Mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI)
  
• Monosomy 20p
  
• Mucopolysaccharidoses (MPS)
• Narcissistic Personality Disorder
• Neurofibromatosis
• Nonverbal learning disorder
  
• Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (NPH)
  
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
• Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD)
• PDD-NOS "Pervasive Development Disorder/Not Otherwise Specified"
• Phenylketonuria
• Porphyria 
• Post-concussive brain injury
  
• Prosopagnosia
• PTEN Hamartoma Tumor Syndrome
  
• Reactive Attachment Disorder
• Receptive Developmental Dysphasia
• Rett Syndrome
• Schizo Effective Personality Disorder
• Schizoid Personality Disorder
• Schizotypal Personality Disorder
  
• Schizophrenia
• Selective mutism
• Semantic Pragmatic Disorder or SPD
• Sensory processing disorder
  
• Sleep Disorder
• Smith-Magenis Syndrome
• Social anxiety disorder
  
• Spacial Planning Disorder
• Static Encephalopathy
• Stereotypic movement disorder
  
• Stroke -- Undiagnosed
  
• Tardive Dyskinesia
• Threadworm infestation
  
• Tourette’s Syndrome
• Tuberous Sclerosis
• Turner's syndrome
• Unspecified Neurodevelopmental Disorder
• WAGR Syndrome
  
• William’s Syndrome
• Wilms tumor
  
• Wilsons Disease

Some of the illnesses on that list are extremely life threatening if left untreated.

Most parents who self-diagnose their child, do so with out ever looking at ANY alternative. Many of these mothers are later diagnosed with Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy.

More then 60% of mothers who self diagnose their children have Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy and the child turns out to have NO disorder AT ALL and is just a normal healthy child who is victim to a Hypochondriac mother, who gains attention from other mothers by pretending her child has the same illness as the mother she is trying to compete with.

The saddest part is that self-diagnosed Aspergers rose 6,000% the same month the TV show Big Bang Theory became "the most popular show on television", with 40% of children between the ages of 12 and 18, admitting they only claimed to have Aspergers "to be more like Sheldon Cooper" and 60% of all parents who self diagnosed their children stating they hoped that by "convincing" their child they had Aspergers, they would "aspire to be more like Sheldon Cooper"... The horrible reality is Autism always has been and still is very rare, with only 1 in 10,000 children actually having it (also the correct medical name for Autism is Kanner's Syndromn and if you child has REAL Autism, the doctor NEVER says "your child has Autism" but rather says "your child has Kanner's Syndrom").

In spite of the fact that Autism (Kanners Syndrome) is a very rare BIRTH DEFECT caused by mutated genes, and effects only 1 in every 10,000 people, as many as 1 in 3 people currently claim to have Autism.

These facts make me feel sad for all the REAL Autistics and their parents, because the fact remains there are a lot of fakers out there and they don't realize how hard they make it for those of us with real Kanner's Syndrome, a very rare, and very crippling birth defect that is in no way, shape or form, related to Aspergers or Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The best way to compare the difference between Autism and Asperger's and self-diagnosed Aspergers is to very directly ask the person, what their thoughts are on having an high IQ.

Ask a person with "self diagnosed" Asperger's: "What do you think of people with high IQs?"

The self diagnosed Aspie will tell you their IQ verses what they suspect your IQ to be, call you a brainless ingrate a few dozen times, call you retarded and stupid, belittle you as much as they can, and go on and on and on about all the reasons why they are the greatest person to walk the face of the earth because their IQ is higher then your IQ, in fact their IQ is higher then EVERY ONE'S IQ and better darned sure worship their entailed ass, because they know where you live and you just watch, one day you'll wake up dead because you refused to acknowledge the glory of their amazingly huge over the top IQ.

Then...

Ask a person with ACTUAL Aspergers... "What do you think of people with high IQs?"

A person with Asperger's will immediately jump into a mile long, motor mouthed, monologue on the history of IQs. They will use words you never heard of before and will only be able to find in the darkest reaches of obscure thesauruses, possible ones written in Klingon....they may forget you only speak English and start reciting Shakespeare to you in the Klingon language, without realizing they've changed topics. They will tell you how an IQ is determined. They will tell you all the various types of IQ tests there are out there, including which ones they have taken. Two or three hours later, they are still talking and you've fallen asleep. By the time they stop talking, 4 or 5 hours later... the topic will have changed multiple times, most likely to have included comparing the differences between Captain Kirk, Captain Picard, with a side rant of Captain Jack Sparrow vs Captain Jack Harkness, along with all the reasons why FireFly should not have been canceled, ending off with a comparison of Johnny Depp and Gene Wilder and why each was the perfect Wonka in his own way. They will have never actually answered your question, because they are just so excited that some one wants to talk to them and so will have shared as much of their knowledge of their favorite obsessions with you as they possibly could because there's no telling how many weeks or months it may be before anyone talks to them again.

NOW...

Ask a person with Autism: "What do you think of people with high IQs?" 

and you'll get THIS:

To know Autism better, it is best to look at real life people who actually have it.

The World's Most Famous Autistic Person: Liberace:

Liberace was noted for:

• having a very low IQ
• as a child was not considered smart enough to attend school
• speech impediments
• difficulty talking
• the ability to play by ear any song on the piano he heard from the age of 3
• was born disabled but almost no one knew this as he hid his disabilities
• had bone and joint issues, causing him to frequently fall, resulting in him often falling on stage, then turning it into a comedy skit... most people thought it was an act, few people were aware of his disability
• multiple serious physical ailments which had him frequently hospitalized every few weeks of his entire life from childhood throughout his adult years
• his extremely cheerful docile demeanor, 
• his alarming inability to be made angry (even when his mother was kidnapped and held hostage by a gang of gay-haters)
• being the first man to wear pink on TV
• having 300 rhinestone suites
• having 200 capes
• having 36 dogs, 2 elephants, and dozens of other pets, all rescues
• buying dozens of abandoned buildings and rebuilding them into massive apartment housing complexes for the homeless, giving tens of thousands of homeless people places to live and jobs to provide for their families, without any background checks or judgement 
• giving 100s scholarships out each year to disadvantaged, homeless, minority, and coloured children
• being America's first billionaire (his income was $32,000 a day in 1952)
• being the wealthiest man in the world from 1968 to 1987
• in spite of being a billionaire, his estate had very little money at the time of his death, because in the months before he died it went into hyper donate to every one every where mode, but never telling anyone he did it and it was not discovered until his relatives fought his estate for billions after his death, only to find the money was gone
• starting more charity groups then any other celebrity to date
• being the first feather dancer in LasVegas (yes, he invented feather dancing; and yes the first LasVegas show girl was actually a man - this man)
• inventing synchronized water display systems
• inventing the art car (he built 64 of them)
• being the first openly gay celebrity
• being the first openly bi-sexual/polyamorous  celebrity (he had 5 girlfriends and 1 male lover whom he was rarely seen without)
• he never married because laws prevented him from marrying all 6 of his lovers
• was the first person in America to die from AIDS, his death inspired most of the AIDS cure research groups that now exist today

Liberace's kind loving, gentle, childlike nature, his very low IQ, his savant skills in music and cooking, his addictions to all things pink and glitter, his speech disorders (see the videos to hear it in the interviews), his love of animals, his obsessive hoarding problem (watch him trying to squeeze through massive mega hoarding piles of his collections in his house in the family and friends interview below) and his desire to help everyone he meet, are all ACTUAL SYMPTOMS of both Autism and Aspergers.

People who look at Liberace, his glitter, his bright colours, his eye poping pinks, his giddy childlike manner, and often say stuff like...

"But 1 in 3 children have Autism and you don't see 1 in 3 people acting like Liberace. Almost no one dresses or acts like him..."

Ah!

That's what THIS page is for. Go read Part 2: On Writing Autistic Characters Accurately: Autism, Asperger's, And The Danger of The Self-Diagnosis, which explains why it is, 1 in 3 children "have Autism" while only 1 in 10,000 people dress and act like Liberace.

The short answer is this:

• ACTUAL Autism (Kanner's Syndrome) is very RARE, effecting only 1 in every 10,000 children

• Self diagnosed Asperger's is very COMMON with 1 in 3 children self-diagnosed

• ACTUAL Asperger's is rarer then people think however as only 1 in 400 children who actually have a doctor's diagnose

• 1 in 64 children are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, which is different then all of the ones listed above

The fact of the matter is, Autism always has been and still is a very rare disorder and Asperger's is markedly different from Autism, and self-diagnosed Aspergers is different then either Autism or Aspergers.

When you meet someone with Autism... REAL Autism... you are gonna know it. You are not going to say to yourself:

"Hmmm maybe they might possibly have Autism"...

No, you a gonna say:

"OMG! What the freaking hell is wrong with that person, did you see how they were dressed? Did you hear how they talked? They are dancing around chasing butterflies like a 2 year old! What the freaking hell? They are so bizarre!"

If you can get a person with Autism to talk, you are gonna notice, they have a very distinctive voice. They all have it. Every single one of us. Don't know what is sounds like? Here... watch this video... an interview with Liberace... pay attention to his voice and how he talks in a "child like pitch" and uses "childlike" phrases and expressions while talking... (he is in his 60s in this interview)

That is what is known as "the autistic voice" also known by bigots as "the gay voice".

If you ever looked at my YouTube videos, you'll see the most common comment across the board is for people to ask: "What's wrong with her voice?"

I have Autism, and so, like every one else who has Autism, I have that very distinctive "autistic voice".

Aspies do not have it. It one of the ways Aspergers is different then Autism. Aspergers have what is known as the "monotone voice" also known as "the robotic voice" or "the emotionless voice".

It's one of the easiest ways to tell if a person has Autism or Aspergers or neither. Just get them to talk and listen to their voice.

Also Autistics tend to prance instead of walk and gallop instead of run. Watch an autistic walk - they don't stroll along like most people do, but rather have a hop, skip, jump, tippy toe a few steps, then hop, skip, jump again, then twirl around on their toe like a ballerina, hop, skip, jump again, take a few steps, and repeat. 

When told to walk slow, Autistics often hold their arms straight out, and do very tiny "ballerina toe steps" nearly walking in place. Which adults often describe as "twinkle toes".

Autistics walk as though their was music playing and they were prancing across a stage. This is how they walk, every day.

Autistic children, also like to climb, and can frequently be seen jumping up onto chairs or tables, and then spinning around in circles, often with a cape of some sort tied around their neck.

Aspergers on the other hand walk very slow and carefully, often toe to heel, one foot before the other in an awkward straight line, as if walking on a tight rope. It's very controlled, very robotic, and very stiff.

When Aspies run, they also have an interesting way of doing so, where they hold their arms down to their sides, very stiff, very straight, not moving at all, while they high goose step a march, pushing their knees so high, you wonder how they are not knocking their teeth out.

Like the Autistic voice and the Aspie voice, the Autistic walk and the Aspie walk are each very distinctive, and are again, hallmarks of each disorder, making it VERY easy to identify someone with REAL Autism or REAL Aspergers.

80% of self-diadnosed Aspies do not display either the Autistic voice or the Aspie voice, nor the Autistic walk or the Aspie walk, which can be used as proof in itself, that they have miss-self-diagnosed.

But, no, you are right... in spite of 1 in 3 children being self diagnosed as "Aspies" and claiming they therefore are "autistic"... you only see 1 in 10,000 who "talk childish", prance instead of walk, wear capes, pink, and glitter as every day fashion, and act like they are 2 years old no matter how old they are, because, in spite of the boom of "self diagnosed" Aspies and Autistics, there are still ONLY 1 in 10,000 children born with REAL Autism.

Autism vs Aspergers
Now that you know some of the differences...
Let's Look At How They are The Same...

A person can be diagnosed as having BOTH Autism AND Asperger's.

Both Autistics and Aspies:

• are slow to develop speech
• 
  
• would rather talk to adults than kids their own age
• 
  
• deficits in social-emotional reciprocity; ranging from abnormal social approach and failure of normal back and forth conversation through reduced sharing of interests, emotions, and affect and response to total lack of initiation of social interaction
• 
  
• are perceived by others are "strange", "weird", bizarre", or "insane"
• 
  
• many also have co-occurring conditions of mental illness (such as bipolar disorder), behavioral or mood disorder (such as clinical depression or tourette's syndrome), learning disability (such as dyscalcula), or intellectual disability (formerly called mental retardation.)
• 
  
• develop strange obsessions with unusual objects
• 
  
• most  have aversions to light touch, such as patting the back, stroking hair, or poking, and may reflexively lash out at someone or something making such contact
• 
  
• lack the ability to read facial expressions or interpret the emotions of others
• 
  
• many also have conditions like executive function disorder, sensory processing disorder (formerly called sensory integration disorder), prosopagnosia (face blindness), dyspraxia, synesthesia, anxiety disorders, and learning disabilities
• 
  
• are easily frightened, suffer high anxiety, and are prone to panic attacks
• 
  
• are frequently also diagnosed with OCD or OCPD
• 
  
• are often misdiagnosed or given simultaneous diagnoses with various conditions like attention deficit disorder (add), attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity (adhd), post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd), or intellectual disability
• 
  
• frequently wear capes and hats as part of their everyday wear
• 
  
• problems with gross and fine motor skills
• 
  
• are seen by others as "loners"
• 
  
• deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction; ranging from poorly integrated verbal and nonverbal communication, through abnormalities in eye contact and body language, or deficits in understanding and use of nonverbal communication, to total lack of facial expression or gestures
• 
  
• practice various stereotypy, stimming, and punding activies
• 
  
• identify as geeks and nerds
• 
  
• an easily come across as arrogant, rude, self-centered, or mean, and will rarely be aware of this unless informed directly
• 
  
• are good with computers
• 
  
• tend to understand language literally and explicitly
• 
  
• have a tendacy to play video games more then is considered normal
• 
  
• many are also germaphobic and wash their hands dozens of times a day
• 
  
• when a routine is altered or disrupted, may have a meltdown, experience severe anxiety, and will have extreme difficulty adapting to the change
• 
  
• most also have gastrointestinal problems
• 
  
• tend to be very truthful or honest, sometimes even to the point of extreme bluntness
• 
  
• many have glucose and/or lactose intolerance
• 
  
• deficits in developing and maintaining relationships, appropriate to developmental level (beyond those with caregivers); ranging from difficulties adjusting behavior to suit different social contexts through difficulties in sharing imaginative play and in making friends to an apparent absence of interest in people
• 
  
• have a love for all things sci-fi, especially Star Trek and Star Wars and FireFly
• 
  
• idioms are difficult to understand
• 
  
• most will live their entire lives as virgins, never once engaging in sex
• 
  
• rely heavily on routine, sameness, or being able to expect something to be or occur a certain way
• 
  
• most find the idea of engaging in sex activities repulsive, but obsessively read/watch hentai (which they see as comedy, rather then erotic)
• 
  
• obsess over comic books and super heroes
• 
  
• resistance to a change in routine
• 
  
• watch a lot of anime
• 
  
• read a lot of manga
• 
  
• hyposensitivity to pain and touch
• 
  
• both have a high rate of never becoming valuable citizens within society: Autistics because they are too busy happily painting rainbows on pebbled and Aspies because they are too busy plotting global domination
• 
  
• stereotyped or repetitive speech, motor movements, or use of objects; (such as simple motor stereotypies, echolalia, repetitive use of objects, or idiosyncratic phrases)
• 
  
• most will never marry
• 
  
• have great difficulties with nonverbal communication such as facial expressions and body language, and have trouble understanding social subtleties and subtext
• 
  
• cite attending comic book and gaming conventions while CosPlaying their favorite characters, among their favorite past times
• 
  
• play RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons
• 
  
• play collectible card games like Magic the Gathering
• 
  
• enjoy board games
• 
  
• amass huge collections, tens of thousands of items - all identical
• 
  
• excessive adherence to routines, ritualized patterns of verbal or nonverbal behavior, or excessive resistance to change; (such as motoric ritual, insistence on same route or food, repetitive questioning or extreme distress at small changes)
• 
  
• read every book they can find
• 
  
• are prone to enjoy reading (and memorizing) unusual books, such as phone books, dictionaries, or all 100 volumes of a 100 volume encyclopedia set
• 
  
• highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus; (such as strong attachment to or preoccupation with unusual objects, excessively circumscribed or perseverative interests)
• 
  
• have photographic and/or idenic memories
• 
  
• are highly stressed by loud noises, bright lights, and quick movements
• 
  
• do not do well in large crowds
• 
  
• hyper or hypo reactivity to sensory input or unusual interest in sensory aspects of environment; (such as apparent indifference to pain/heat/cold, adverse response to specific sounds or textures, excessive smelling or touching of objects, fascination with lights or spinning objects)
• 
  
• are prone to developing odd phobias (such as fear of death by paper cut infections)
• 
  
• are prone to developing agoraphobia
• 
  
• poor eye contact
• 
  
• too much sensory overstimulation can lead to sensory overload -- a debilitating state in which the affected person is unable to process or respond to any sensory stimuli, including social interaction
• 
  
• live by a rigid set of ritualistic activities (such as eating the exact same food at the exact same time of certain days: Mac&cheese on Thursday at 4 and never at 4:05 and never on Friday) 
• 
  
• are comforted by tactile activities (playing with kinetic sand, squeezing squishie balls, hugging teddy bears) and will do so for hours to a time
• 
  
• most have a very strong sense of justice -- of right and wrong, and of fairness
• 
  
• are more likely to commit suicide before reaching the age of 45, then any other neuro disorder 

Autism is a life-long, chronic disorder
Yes - Adults Have Autism

A common thing I hear from readers is the phrase:

"But how can he have Autism, only kids get that!"

"But that's a childhood illness, he's a grown man, he can't be Autistic."

"Wait, how can an adult have Autism?"

It seems to baffle many readers of the series to see Quaraun, an adult with Autism.

While the series spans his entire life (750 years), the bulk of the series takes place in a small 50 year period, when he is around 450 years old, which is the equivalent of a 40 to 50 year old human man.

For some reason the average person is unaware of the fact that Autism does not go away once the child becomes an adult.

The problem seems to be based in:

"But I never see adults with Autism!"

No. You don't. That's because 73% of all Autistic children, grow up to be adults who living in nursing homes, group care homes...

Did you know that a Nursing Home is NOT the same thing as a Home For the Elderly, a Seniors' Home, or a Retirement Assisted Living Complex?

Contrary to what you are told in movies, a Nursing Home is a place for adults who can not function without 24 hour adult supervision and have no relative willing to care for them. Autism and Downs Syndrome are the two most common types of patients in a Nursing Home. Most of them being between the ages of 18 to 45. (Few Autistics live past 45 years of age.)

Do you know why most Autistics do not live past 45? Because most die from starvation, malnutrition, untreated injuries, untreated broken bones that became infected, suicide, or being beaten to death by bullies. 

Autistic adults are rarely able to cook for themselves, and without caregivers can go weeks on end without food.

Autistic adults are rarely aware they are sick, hurt, or injured, and if they do not have a caregiver to take them to the hospital, they do not think to go on their own. This is not an avoidance of doctors, but rather them absent minding forgetting that things like doctors exist.

Autistic adults have a high rate of "suicide by poison" which is presumed to be not actual suicide, but rather, mishaps such as them not being able to tell the difference between a white bottle of milk and a white bottle of Draino.

Autistic adults have a high rate of "suicide by overdose" which is presumed to be not actual suicide, but rather, mishaps such as them not being able to tell the difference between take 2 before bed and take 20 before bed, due to their not being able to count or comprehend differences in the amount of things.

And again Autistic adults have a high rate of "suicide by overdose" which is presumed to be not actual suicide, but rather, mishaps such as them not being able to tell time and instead of "take 1 pill every 8 hours" taking 8 pills every half hour.

Autistic adults have the highest rate of any illness of dying from injuries sustained by bullies. This is a combination of Autistic adults being 63% more likely to be bullied with excessive physical violence and 83% more likely to not seek medical help (see above).

73% of Autistic adults will never set foot out of a nursing home or be seen by the general public.

(And why do all these percentages end in 3?)

Pay close attention to Autistic children... have you ever noticed that between the ages of 18 to 24, they simply disappear? Vanish from the world as though they never existed? This is because 73% of all parents of Autism, mistakenly thought their child would hit 18 and BOOM the "childhood illness" would disappear.

Then 18 came and went and reality hit them... their child was going to continue to wear diapers for the next 50 year. Their child would never talk, never learn to eat on their own... after 18 years of waiting for that magical day when adulthood would set in and they could FINALLY have a break from raising an Autistic child - reality set in and they were faced with: OMG! Autism is NOT a childhood illness! It doesn't magically go away at adulthood!

And so, it was off to the nursing home with them. The parents finally got their freedom. The Autistic adult is left traumatized, feeling abandoned by his family, unloved, unwanted, and in more then half of all cases, will commit suicide with in the first 2 years of being sent to a nursing home, once the realization their family is never coming back for them sets in.

That is why you rarely see Autistic adults in public, and that is why Autism has the highest suicide rate of any mental illness. A symptom of Autism is an inability to accept change; becoming closely attached to their caretakers; and suicide if ever separated from said caregivers.

How to tell if an adult has Autism:

• Only 33% of Autistic adults are able to achieve at least partial independence; full Independence is rare.
  
• Impaired ability to initiate or sustain a conversation with others. Autistic adults find it very difficult to communicate. 
  
• 40% of adults with autism never speak/are 100% mute
  
• 70% of adults with autism rarely speak/are near mute
• About 10% of adults with autism have some form of savant skills-limited gifts such as memorizing lists, drawing, or musical ability.
  
• 50% of Autistic adults wander away from caregivers (not realizing they have done so, often following a floating dust speck or a beam of light, etc).
• 50% of Autistic adults can get "lost", even s only a few feet from their driveway.
• 50% of Autistic adults have no facial recognition and will not recognize a person they see today as being the same person they meet yesterday.
• 50% of Autistic adults have no familiar recognition and can not tell the difference between one car or another, one house or another, and often if get to the end of their driveway, can not tell which house is theirs to go back into it.
• Sleep problems occur in about 40% to 70% of adults with autism.
  
• Some adults with Autism never develop functional communication, while others may have speech, but not use it functionally. 
  
• Stereotyped, repetitive, or unusual use of language. Autistic adults find it very difficult to verbalize what they want to say. Adults with autism often repeat over and over a phrase they have heard previously (echolalia)
• Adults with Autism use the word "okay" to answer nearly everything anyone says to them, rather than answer with "yes", "no", or full sentences.
• It is difficult for Autistic adults to start and continue a conversation. 
  
• Autistic adults avoid eye contact completly. 
  
• Autistic adults do not comment on sociological-political issues, rarely vote, and are rarely aware of what is going on in the world at large.
  
• Difficulty understanding what other people mean to say. 
• An Autistic adult person will not understand that someone is using humor. They instead interpret the communication word by word and fail to catch the implied meaning.
  
• Jokes, slang terms, sarcasm, and irony are beyond the Autistic Adult's realm of understanding.
  
• Autistic adults take words literally. If you say a word they do not know, they will look up i's meaning in the dictionary and assume that it was you meant, while remaining clueless to any slang, hidden, double, or innuendo meanings you may have intended.
• Most people find interacting with Autistic adults frustrating and avoid communication with them.
  
• Autistic adults cannot keep track of time, have no grasp of time (minutes, hours, days are all the same to them). They can not read clocks or calendars.
  
• Restricted patterns of interest that are abnormal in intensity or focus.
• Preoccupation with certain objects or subjects.
  
• When doing something they enjoy, Autistic adults may continue to do it for hours, or days, on end without stopping to eat or sleep or pee, and may require another person to physically get them out of that state. 
  
• People find it difficult to deal with autistic adults, due to their none standard emotions (laughing at death, crying at a joke, etc). Autistic adults rarely know when to use which emotion and may use random emotions at random, to simply try to appear normal, but using said emotions at the wrong time only males them appear even less normal.
  
• Autistic adults have trouble participating in a two-way conversation and may appear to talk at people rather than with them
  
• Like children, adults with Autism may have a tendency to throw tantrums, however, their tantrums cannot be compared with that of a child, as children often do this for attention, while an Autistic is completely unaware there are others with them. An Autistic tantrum, more correctly called a "fit" or "meltdown", bares more similarities to an epileptic seizure then and actual temper tantrum. A true tantrum is a controlled tool to get something desired, whereas an Autistic meltdown is a uncontrolled response to over stimulation of lights, sounds, or crowds.
  
• Most of the autistic adults are hyper or hypo sensitive to light, sounds and crowds and have sensory processing issues and experience unusual reactions to certain noises, sights, smells or textures.
  
• Autistic adults suffer from fine or gross motor difficulty. 
  
• Adults with Autism often can not focus their eyes and are not able to participate in activities such as sports which require coordination with other people. 
  
• Adults with Autism engage themselves in repetitive activities.
  
• Impaired ability to make friends with peers. Autistic adults often find it difficult to make and maintain friends. 
  
• Autistic adults live in their own world, which is fully populated and exists in their head. They prefer activities, which require minimum interaction with other people, so that they can interact with the people living in their head instead.
  
• Autistic adults have an inflexible adherence to specific routines or rituals. Can only walk on certain roads at certain times, can only eat certain foods at certain places on certain days, etc.
  
• Some Autistic adults have a significant cognitive impairment, while others are gifted in one area. 
  
• Autistic children who displayed excessive lining up of toys or objects, will continue to do so as adults.
  
• Autistic adults do not often enjoy or seek out interaction with others, yet some do not get to socialize as much as they would like, but have not develops age appropriate skills to know how to interact with those around them.
  

It’s important to avoid stereotypes like, “All people with autism do . . . .” Remember, there are just as many individual differences among people with autism as there are among people without autism. 

Autism In The Quaraun Series

Quaraun has High Functioning Autism, meaning his IQ is higher then 75 and he is able to communicate with others in the form of full sentences instead of just 1 and 2 word phrases.

He does require adult supervision and people to take care of him. On his own Quaraun can barely survive and is not thriving. Quaraun is, quite literally, too stupid to live, and if he didn't have Unicorn (and later also GhoulSpawn) there looking out for him, he would not have reached old age.

When on his own, Quaraun frequently gets beaten up, bullied, and raped. There are often obvious signs and clues that these things are about to happen, which he does not see and does not pick up on.

He doesn't know how to cook or gather food in the wild, and the only reason he hasn't starved to death is because he's very wealthy and has figured out how to go to taverns to buy food.

Quaraun is a well paid, highly sought after wizard. Because his skills are very unique, people are willing to pay him alarming amounts of money, often not realizing he has no concept of money and would have done as they asked without pay.

Unfortunately he can not count and has no idea how much money he is giving a person or how much money things should cost, resulting in people often taking advantage of him, charging way more then they would charge someone else, and then even after he's paid them double that, they tell him it's not enough so he ends up paying them again.

If you paid attention, you notice multiple things:

#1: Quaraun NEVER talks to the merchant.

#2: Quaraun only speaks when Unicorn addresses him.

#3: When his mentioned the jelly fish, he is again dressing Unicorn, agreeing with Unicorn's previous statement, by repeating it reworded.

#4: At the mention of the word pink (by anyone, in this case the merchant) Quaraun starts babbling to himself about how much he likes pink, then leaves the group, dancing and laughing like a toddler. He does this in every novel, every time someone says the word pink.

#5: He is aware that he has done something wrong when he gives the merchant the wrong money, but he is never made aware of what he did wrong (by this point in the series, Unicorn has given up trying to explain money to Quaraun, though he did try earlier in the series.)

#6: While Quaraun understands people give him things if he gives them gold coins, his grasp of buying/selling, commerce, and economy beyond that is no-existent. 

People frequently laugh at Quaraun and tease him, but he doesn't understand why.

The way he dresses and looks, he often gets mistaken not only for a female, but for a prostitute, especially given the fact that he's often in taverns looking for food. This results in his often being attacked by drunk men and raped. The attacks made worse, with him often beaten very badly once they find out he's a man.

These attacks could be avoided either by his dressing differently or his not being in taverns, but he hasn't got enough intelligence to figure that out, not even when someone tells him point blank.

When upset, Quaraun sits on the floor with his arms over his head saying: "No, no, no, no, no, no,no,no,no,no,no,..."

For an Autistic adult to have a conversation on that level, is considered to be extremely high functioning.

Interestingly, most Autistics are able to write in full conversation, even though they lack the ability to carry out a verbal conversation with some one.

This is why very few people online are aware of the fact that I have Autism.

The fact of the matter is Autism is a very severe disability. And while Asperger's is a similar disability with a few of the same symptoms, it is not nearly as disabling and rarely limits a person from living a normal life.

Whereas 75% of all Autistic will spend their entire life in an assisted living group home, with 93% of those never learning to either talk or walk even into adulthood.

Quaraun uses a lot of short one and two word phrases when talking to people:

"Yes."

"No."

"Okay."

"I don't know."

"Maybe."

"Why?"

"How come?"

Getting Quaraun to speak to strangers in full sentences in nearly impossible. More then half of Quaraun's dialogue is limited to one of two phrases:

"Okay."

and

"No."

Both used regardless of if they are logical answer to the questions presented him or not.

If you pay attention to conversations in the Quaraun series, you will pick up on the fact that Quaraun is mostly non-verbal around strangers, and when speaking, no matter who he is speaking to, nearly always addresses Unicorn, rather then the person he is actually speaking to.

Quaraun has no difficulty speaking to people he trusts, thus his conversations are fluid when speaking to Unicorn or GhoulSpawn. However, when talking to strangers, his sentences become short and curt.

For example, if Unicorn asks him the question: "Are you okay?"

His answer will be very long winded, explaining in detailed monologue, every last ache and pain he has felt for the past several hours. The answer will be several sentences long, spanning 100 or more words.

If, however, a stranger asks him the question: "Are you okay?"

It will instead read:

"I'm fine," Quaraun said quietly. He averted his eyes.

In this scene we see Quaraun separated from Unicorn and not sure what to do when a stranger attempts to talk to him. Again we see the Autism loud and clear:

#1: Quaraun is looking around trying to find Unicorn and not listening to what the stranger is saying to him.

#2: In spite of being obviously injured and in need of medical assistance, he is refusing help on any level at all, because this person trying to help him is not his caretaker.

#3: Normal speaking in a quite voice, barely above a whisper, Quaraun begins to raise his voice when he feels threatened.

#4: Even though the man is trying to help, Quaraun does not have the ability to translate other people's actions or expressions, and can not tell if the man is attacking him or not.

#5: Seen many times throughout the series, Quaraun starts stamping his foot on the ground, when he wants someone to back away, which is a typical action done by almost all Autistic people. This is a threatening move on his part that says "back off", however as normal people do not do this, few people understand what he is doing.

#6: Like most Autistics, Quaraun is hyper sensitive to touch. The instant the man takes hold of his arm, Quaraun immediately becomes defensive. Even a light touch causes pain, and he is now translating this stranger as someone trying to hurt him.

#7: Closing his eyes, his his final attempt to shut out the "attacker", in a vain hope that if he can no longer see the stranger, the stranger will leave him alone.

#8: However he realizes this never works and has become very tense now and is clenching his fists out of frustrating.

#9: When closing his eyes doesn't signal to the man he wants to be left alone, he breaks into "an autistic meltdown". He wants to be left alone. He wants the man to not hurt him. He's afraid the man is about to beat him up. He doesn't know how to tell the man these things, thus why he is screaming "No, no, no, no..." He's having a sensory overload. Too many things are going on inside his brain at once. He can't focus on every one of them. He feels like his emotions have turned on him and at viciously attacking him.

#10: The combination of fear and frustration have overwhelmed him, and he is now, no longer just trying to get the man to leave, but he also now trying to chase the emotions inside of him (fear and frustration) away as well, this why he starts hitting himself in the head, trying to literally beat the fear and frustration out of himself so it will leave him alone. People mistranslate this as him trying to hurt himself. He's not. He's trying to make the pain go away. His emotions are overpowering him and he wants it to stop. He wants the fear to go away, but he doesn't no how to chase it out of his mind. The fear is hurting him and he's trying to hurt it back to make it realize how much it is hurting him. He doesn't understand how his emotions work, he doesn't understand what emotions are, and he feels like his emotions are sentient beings attacking him and he's trying desperately to fight them off and make them go away.

#11: If this scene is allowed to continue with out one of his caretakers intervening, he will progress to pulling out a dagger and cutting his arms in a desperate attempt to cut the offending emotions out of his body, so that he can stop feeling the fear and frustration he is feeling. He is not actually trying to hurt himself, nor is he trying to commit suicide, though, those around him assume that is the case. Rather he understands that bleeding causes him to pass out, passing out causes his emotions to "reset", thus he can wake up "normal" with out the offending emotions "attacking" him.

Usually when confronted by someone, the narration will describe Quaraun doing such things as "taking several steps back", "twisting his fingers", and/or "quickly moving to hide behind Unicorn".

Because the story is told from Quaraun's perspective, you see scenes like this one frequently show up:

This type of scene repeats itself frequently, often a dozen or more times in each novel, with Quaraun often clueless as to instructions people give him, due to his lack of paying attention to anything any one says to him.

And because the story is told from his perspective and Quaraun never finds out what it was that was said, the reader never finds out what people say to Quaraun, as the narrator of the story, does not bring the reader up to speed.

The reader remains in Quaraun's head, seeing the world exactly as he sees it and often not seeing all of the important bits of information needed to know what to expect next.

Autism And Bullying:
That Little Detail Authors Forget To Put In Their Novels To Make Them Realistic

Because Autistics wear pink sparkly cloths, dance instead of walk, talk "childishly", sit on the ground drawing pictures in the sand, an over all act like children even into old age... they are seen by the average person as bizarre and insane.

Because an Autistic child rarely attends school (fewer then 30% have a functioning IQ high enough to pass entrance tests to qualify them for inclusion in standard classrooms) and because 73% of Autistic adults live in Nursing Homes, and because only 1 in every 10,000 people have Autism... this results in the fact that the average person, in their lifetime will never encounter an ACTUALLY Autistic person face to face.

Only 1 in every 17,000 people will ever meet a REAL ACTUALLY Autistic person in their lifetime.

This mean, in spite of the fact 1 in every 3 children are self-diagnosed as Autistic by parents with no clue what Autism actually is, you could drive through a dozen or more cities, visit every family in every city, and still, not cross paths with a single, solitary ACTUAL Autistic person.

The result is, when someone does encounter and ACTUALLY Autistic person, their first response, is to be repulsed, horrified, terrified, and viciously and violent attack and beat up the Autistic person with as much vigor and hatred possible.

While there are only 1 in every 10,000 Autistic and only 1 in every 17,000 people will ever encounter a real Autistic person, 1 in every 8 Autistic people will be murdered before reaching the age of 25, 1 on every 7 Autistic people will be bullied so badly that they commit suicide before age 30, and 1 in every 2 Autistic people will die by the age of 45

Lets do those numbers again...

• 1 in every 10,000 people are ACTUALLY Autistic 
• only 1 in every 17,000 people will ever encounter a real Autistic person
• 1 in every 8 Autistic people will be murdered before the age of 25
• 1 in every 7 Autistic people will commit suicide because of a bully
• 1 in every 2 Autistic people will die by the age of 45

I have Autism.

Have I ever been bullied?

Let's see...

October 18, 2006 a bomb blew up my house, and a Ku Klux Klan cross left behind in the rubble, because I am perceived to be a transgender person in "a family friendly town".

May 10, 2010, members of the Saco Ward LDS Church, arrived in my yard and cut my car in half.

One night, November 14, 2013, while loading my art supplies into my car, after a day of painting the ocean, someone snuck up behind me, smashing my back, with what I do not know... a 4 door white truck, drove away... but they left me left me paralyzed for 5 months. It took me 18 months to relearn to walk. I'm crippled for the rest of my life, because I am transgender in Old Orchard Beach, and therefor do not deserve to live.

April 10, 2015, my motorhome, also known as "The Transgender Awareness Tour Bus" was broken into, filled with thousands of gallons of raw sewage, the furniture smashed, my clothes ripped up, and my cats kidnapped.

May 15, 2015, my cats were returned dissected, their cut off and nailed to my door.

January 7, 2016 - the 4 door white truck, was used as a weapon to try to kill me, yet again. Slamming into my car, while screaming out the window "Kill or be killed, remember Saco Shaw's all transsexuals are alike", doing more 75MPH on a 25MPH road.

June 10, 2016, the 4 door white truck, repeated this.

June 26, 2016 - while loading groceries into my car at WalMart, a woman came up behind me, took a shopping cat, and began beating me with it, while screaming "Kill or be killed, remember Saco Shaw's all transsexuals are alike". She ruptured 3 discs in my spine. She and a red haired woman who called herself "Kendra Silvermander" jumped into a gold Volvo suv and drove away. I was paralyzed once again.

January 4, 2016, the town of Old Orchard Beach passed and ordinance making it illegal to be transgender, gay, black, or Muslin, and forced 140 families out of their homes - not rentals, not apartments, but home owners, who owed no mortgages or taxes. More then 500 pets were confiscated by the Old Orchard Beach police department, most of them later returned to their owners chopped up returned one head at a time, because it was now illegal for LGBTQA+ citizens to own pets, because only "family friendly" families can own pets in Old Orchard Beach... the land of each of these families began to be auctioned off, to one motel owner... the same motel owner, who drove a back hoe over my house, August 8, 2013....the same motel owner who drive the 4-door white pick-up truck and who's wife drives a gold Volvo SUV.

July 2016 the FBI arrived in Old Orchard Beach.

October 18, 2016 the civil rights violating "Too Gay For Old Orchard Beach" ordinance was overruled by Superior Court.The LGBTQA+ citizens of Old Orchard Beach were homeless for 9 months. 

The 4-door white truck, sits at the end of my driveway, every night at sunset... reeving his engine, squealing his wheels, and screaming gay hating obscenities out his window.

This picture was taken June 9, 2017:

The 4 door white truck continues to sit at the end of my drive way (146 Portland Ave, Old Orchard Beach, Maine) near every night around sunset, reeving it's engine and squealing it's tires, with the driver yelling anti-gay threats and obscenities out the window. He continues to do the same thing at my dad's apartment building (Biddeford Maine) a few times a week, usually in mid to late afternoon time. He continues to follow me to shopping to various stores in various towns throughout the states.

Phrases he yells from the truck include:

"Kill or be killed remember Saco Shaws all transsexuals are alike"

"I keep a gun under the seat of my truck, I'm gonna use it to shoot you in the head, you transvestite freak"

if cars are going by he yells to them: "that thing is Ken's son, look at how's it's dressed; it's insane, it has autism, we can't allow that thing and it's gay cars in our family friend town of Old Orchard Beach"

He often babbles deranged ramblings about something he calls "the gay-pocalypse", raving lunacy about how "all the gays are gathering" on his doorstep. He raves some crazy nonsense about how Armageddon is coming and the war to end all wars will be "the gays against the Christians" and Christians have to be ready to "kill the gays"

My car is the Autism Awareness Car and had 2.5million marbles glued to it (I have Autisn - savant - Kanner's syndrome) he claims tat my car "is gay" because of what it looks like. My car has been vandalised several dozen times, including to have the tires slashed 7 times in 6 months.

After dark often around 10PM, he stands at the end of the logging road across the street from me and shoots at my motohome (in February 2014 he shot holes in my neighbour's barn while doing this). I have video footage of 3 of his shootings at me here:  https://youtu.be/NUebzJ9sz9U and here: https://youtu.be/C4dZbgG-Smw

This has gone on since August 2013 now, in addition to all the vandalism, hate crimes, pet beheadings, etc that has happened, including the bomb that blew up our house in 2006.

As you know, that whole time I had not been able to get a plate number on the truck. He as just here again, and I just realized why I could not get a plate number... there are no plates on the truck, either on the front or on the back. However, as he was driving away today... I noticed, there is a plate, stuck up in the back window of the truck, where it can barely be seen, deliberately obscured from view behind a silver tool box.

Do You Know The Identity 
of the People Who Did These Things?
Have Information? 
Please Call FBI Agent 
Andy Drewer @ (207) 774-9322  

This is the reality of being transgender in Old Orchard Beach.

This is the reality of what bullies do to someone with mental illnesses, they do not understand.

Someone with a mental illness, they do not just live with their illness, but they also live with people's reaction to it as well. This is some thing many writers fail to realize. And it's quite annoying, for those of us, who actually have to live with the illness they are writing about, to read their work and know, they've never lived with our illness, they don't know what it's like.

Everywhere I turn there's a new book misusing yet another mental illness. I hate how characters act normal until all a sudden a plot changes requires them to "act crazy" so suddenly they are acting crazy, then the plot device over and they act normal again.

Mental illness ain't like that, you can't turn it on and off whenever the plot needs it. 

Writers rarely get it right. And would like to see that changed.

People always ask me about my main character, from current series "Quaraun the Insane" asking, what is wrong with him? What mental illness does he have? How did you research it? How do you know what to write?

My answer?

I write what I know.

Quaraun acts like me, talks like me, dresses like me, and the bullies in the books? They do to Quaraun, what real life bullies have done to me.

Quaraun was crippled by bullies and now walks on a cane after months paralyzed and months relearning to walk, because I was crippled by bullies and now walk on a cane after months paralyzed and months relearning to walk.

Never once has someone with Autism trespassed in my yard. Thousands of self-diagnosed Aspies have. Never once has someone with Autism stalked me - at least 1 (the Kboards Hacker) a self-diagnosed Aspie stalked me for 10 years including to hack most of my online accounts, before eventually getting caught an going to prison. His reason in court for the viscous, violent criminal activities he did: "It's okay, I have Autism, my IQ is 138, I had to do it to prove I could." The other stalker who helped him, Kendra Silvermander, the one who blew up my house with a bomb, cut my cats heads off and nailed them to my door, and filled my motorhome with 1,000s of gallons of feces, and is as yet currently unidentified and still on the lose, she is suspect by the FBI who is trying the find her, of also having Aspergers.

The worst ones of all are the Stephen King fans, Because I own the world's most haunted car, which Stephen King based Christine off of and because we are the Gypsies whose farm Thinner was filmed on, every summer my family is subjected to Stephen King fans, all proclaiming they have Autism, and since 1984, arriving in my yard in mass hoard of tens of thousands of screaming fangirls, do do monstrous levels of vandalism to my car and yard, all in the name of their love for Stephen King, and when asked to stop, they always say: "It's okay, I have Autism"... No, no you do not. I have Autism, and I know for a fact, no one with Autism does these things - they can't, but people with Aspergers do.

No, Your High IQ Is NOT An Excuse To Build Bombs 
Just To Prove You Are Smarter Then Every One Else!

There's a hell of a big difference between Autism and Self-Diagnosed Aspergers and when you place a patient of each, side by side, you can see it immediately, the vast differences between the two. 

Someone with Autism would never build a bomb and blow up your house.

Someone with  Self-Diagnosed Aspergers did:

No, Having Aspergers Is NOT An Excuse!
Proving You Are Smart By 
Dissecting Someone's Family Members 
Makes You a Sociopath 
Not An Intelligent Person With A Big Brain

Someone with Autism would never kidnap your cats, cut their heads off, and nail their heads to your door.

Someone with  Self-Diagnosed Aspergers did:

No, Having Aspergers Does NOT Excuse You!
Joining The Ku Klux Klan 
Does Not Make You "Part of the Group"
Promoting White Power
Does Not Make You Superior!
Harassing People Different From You, 
Doesn't Make You Smarter
It Makes You A Criminal!

Someone with Autism would never build a web site glorifying the Ku Klux Klan and calling people to action to kill the "bugger fagots" of Old Orchard Beach.

Someone named "Tom Addams" a self proclaimed "internet marketing guru" with Aspergers did:

Having Aspergers Does NOT Give You 
The Right To Be A Bully

Someone with Autism would never cut your car in half.

Someone with  Self-Diagnosed Aspergers did:

Do You Know The Identity 
of the People Who Did These Things?
Have Information? 
Please Call FBI Agent 
Andy Drewer @ (207) 774-9322  

Can you see the difference between ACTUAL Autism and self diagnosed Asperger's yet?

You remember the Autistic walk we talked about earlier? I used to do that. Hoping and skipping and dancing and twirling... bullies beat me up, for no reason at all, attacked me from behind, I don't even know who they were... 

I'm a woman who has had 7 miscarriages, and wears "elaborate clothes". Because I have no children, the residents of Old Orchard Beach, beat me up, calling me a transsexual, claiming only a man would dress like I do, claiming that the reason I have no children is because I'm not really female.

They left me paralyzed and crippled. 

They crushed my hips, my pelvis, and my spine, and took away, what little chance I had to carry a pregnancy to full term.

I'm crippled for the rest of my life. I can barely walk now. It's why I'm now on a cane. Any hope I had of having children is gone now.

That's the reality, of the gay hatred of this town. 

I have Autism. I wear pink. I wear glitter. I talk with a "funny gay sounding voice".

According to the people in this town:

I walk like a fag...

talk like a fag...

dress like a fag...

act like a fag...

and therefor must be treated like a fag...

I need to be taught my place...

I deserve to be shot in the head...

I look gay, and therefore I must be, 

because no one but gay men, talk in this voice

no one but gay men wear pink

no one but gay men wear glitter

no one but gay men prance instead of walk...

so they beat me up, because I'm "too gay" for Old Orchard Beach

they cut my car in half, because I'm "too gay" for Old Orchard Beach

they put a bomb in my house, because I'm "too gay" for Old Orchard Beach

they filled my motorhome with feces, because I'm "too gay" for Old Orchard Beach

they kidnapped my cats, because I'm "too gay" for Old Orchard Beach

they drove a back hoe over my house, because I'm "too gay" for Old Orchard Beach

they cut my cats heads off and nailed their heads to my door, because I'm "too gay" for Old Orchard Beach

because I have Autism

and that makes me "too gay for the family friend town of Old Orchard Beach"

I used to dance when I walked... but after 5 months paralyzed, 18 months relearning to walk, and now 4 years later, my leg is lame and I am crippled, barely able to stand, dragging a lame leg, I'll never dance again.

Do you know what that's like?

Can you even begin to imagine?

To be an Autistic person, who can no longer dance when I walk?

They hate gay men so much, that they are willing to beat up a childless autistic women, in ill health, accusing her of being a transvestite.

Because these evil people took away my ability to have children, I had cats; but they took my cats, and cut off their heads, and nailed them to my door.

Welcome to Old Orchard Beach. The gay-hating capital of Maine.

This is the reality of how Autistics are seen by the world.

This is the reality of how Autistics are treated by "normal" people.

This is the reality of being transgender in Old Orchard Beach.

This is the reality of what bullies do to someone with mental illnesses, they do not understand.

This is the reality of living with Autism.

Find out more here.

Do You Know The Identity 
of the People Who Did These Things?
Have Information? 
Please Call FBI Agent 
Andy Drewer @ (207) 774-9322  

Someone with a mental illness, they do not just live with their illness, but they also live with people's reaction to it as well. This is some thing many writers fail to realize. And it's quite annoying, for those of us, who actually have to live with the illness they are writing about, to read their work and know, they've never lived with our illness, they don't know what it's like...

...because not only do they make their characters act wrong... they make other characters' reactions to the mentally ill character wrong as well.

Autistics Being Bullied In The Quaraun Series

BoomFuzzy the Unicorn starts out the series as a bully. Like every one else he is quick to target and victimize the strange Elf. Often bullying him because Quaraun is so terrified of everything.

In fact their very first meeting is a violent rape scene, with Quaraun on his way home, stopping to sleep for the night in a make shit camp off the side of the rod, only to be woken up in the middle of the night, by being dragged out of bed, stripped naked, and raped by BoomFuzzy. The Phooka is a viscous predator and attacks the Elf intending to kill him and eat him, after raping him, but let's him go after tasting his blood and realizing the Elf is infected by a Thullid.

At first the Phooka thinks of it as a game and doesn't realize how badly Quaraun is being traumatized by the bullying. His initial perception of it s to think that Quaraun actually is enjoying the treatment he is getting, because Quaraun puts so little effort into fighting back. He doesn't realize the Elf is too scared to fight back or that Quaraun fears being killed if he fights back and so complies while being raped, hoping that by doing so he'll be allowed to live. (This entire rape scene is available to read online.)

BoomFuzzy rapes Quaraun multiple times, before he realizes that Quaraun is not actually consenting to the sex. It is not until he sees others doing the same: over and over again, and realizes Quaraun is daily being tortured and tormented by people who see him as too stupid to bother caring about. BoomFuzzy regrets having raped the Elf and tried to become Quaraun's friend. He begins to realize the Elf has no friends and goes from one day to the next, dodging bullies, hiding. He soon discovers Quaraun is starving to death, s his own family are the worst bullies of all, rarely allowing the stupid Elf to eat with them, often feeding him with the dogs where he has to fight for scraps, and forcing him to sleep in cold, damp dungeons below the castle, because he's not deemed worthy to be part of the family.

In trying to escape the daily abuse from his father and uncle, Quaraun often flees the castle to the forest, but getting from one to the other requires crossing the village, where he is constantly cornered and ganged up on by other Elves, who single him out and beat him up. He is frequently stripped naked, dragged through the streets by horses, and tied upside-down in trees for villagers to through rocks at him.

BoomFuzzy begins to regret his own similar actions and starts defending the Elf from the bullies. However one day Quaraun is nearly killed by a mob of bullying villagers, and would have been left to die in the streets, had someone not taken him in. That someone was BoomFuzzy who nursed the injured Elf back to health and went on to be his caretaker. As a result of this event, Quaraun is left badly scarred, and with crippling bone fractures that never heal properly, leaving him with a lame leg and a bad limp.

Because of the abuse he is subjected to, Quaraun develops phobias of everything that reminds him of any of the bullies. These phobias seriously limit his ability to live any quality of life.

Quaraun's quality of life changes when BoomFuzzy takes him in and starts caring for him. For the first time Quaraun is faced with knowing that not everyone is a mean evil bully and not every one is trying to hurt him. BoomFuzzy however is very old, very depressed, and in very poor health. One day when defend Quaraun from another attack, BoomFuzzy suffers a stab wound to the belly, which becomes infected and being a battle front solider, he has seen wounds like this before and knows he will linger on in agony for months before dying. Already in more pain then he can bare, BoomFuzzy commits suicide to end his suffering. Quaraun is devastated by the loss of his friend and becomes a recluse, barely able to function at all. 

Without BoomFuzzy, Quaraun is barely able to survive and becomes wild and feral, living in the mountains. It is during this time period that people dub him "Quaraun the Insane".

It is not until BoomFuzzy returns from the dead, now a Lich, and becomes Quaraun's fierce guardian and protector, that you start to see Quaraun able to function in society.

I think one of the most baffling things of all, is the alarming amount of readers - more then 80% of them - who have stated they considered the Quaraun series to be Erotica.

Yes, there are graphic sex scenes in just about every volume, but they are not happy or enjoyable for Quaraun. Several volumes contain gang rape scenes where multiple men, often drunk, drag him off the street, beat him up, then rape him over and over and over and over again. Yes, if 12 men are raping him, you see the whole thing for all 12 of them, 12 men cumming in and on him, and the horror going through his mind the hole time. A gang rape scene can spread on for as many as 50 pages of steady none stop rape.

The entire thing beginning to end shows Quaraun's absolute terror of the 12 men who are raping him. A short clip from this very long, drawn out rape scene is below:

How is that scene, which goes on for almost 20 pages, seen as Erotica, I do not know. But that scene and others like it are hailed by fans of the series as being "some of the best erotica ever written".

It is rare for a rape scene in the Quaraun series to last for fewer then 10 pages.

This is NOT Erotica. It is absolute pure psychological terror as the reader experiences the entire rape beginning to end, right along with Quaraun.

I'm sorry, but you have to see it from the perspective of someone with Autism... me.

I have Autism. Like Quaraun I am also asexual and have no sex drive at all. I can not grasp any understanding of how a rape scene can be seen as erotic. I can not understand why the rape scenes in the Quaraun series are said by readers to be "some of the best erotica" they ever read.

How is it erotic?

What about these scenes is sexually exciting?

What is is about 12 drunk men, cumming in and on another man over and over and over and over and over again that people find erotic?

I do not understand.

The sex scenes in the Quaraun series are horrific tales of abuse, violation, torture, and bullying gone the point of bodily violation.

After each rape scene Quaraun is left deeply traumatized, often injured. 

In the 12 man gang rape scene above, he suffered serious internal injuries when one man violated him with a dagger, causing serious, life threatening anal/intestinal stab wounds.

By the end of that rape scene Quaraun is unconscious, serious injured, and left in the gutter to bleed to death.

There is nothing erotic about 12 rapists, bullying a mentally handicapped Autistic man who isn't able to fight back or defend himself.

How do people find the scenes like this sexual arousing or erotic, I do not know.

The Quaraun series is not Erotica on any levels at all and yet, I get hundreds of fan emails saying how much they love the "over the top, extreme BDSM" scenes of the Quaraun serious.

A mentally handicapped man is being sexually tortured by hateful bullies - that's NOT BDSM. That's abuse and rape and the most horrific violation of privacy that can be committed to an Autistic person.

It's not Erotica, it's absolute Horror. Sheer terror on the worst levels imaginable.

GhoulSpawn and The Lich Lord's Lover is the first time you see Quaraun having fully consensual, non-violent, loving sex with any one. It's the first volume t show a sex scene with him and GhoulSpawn.

Happy, loving, kind, consensual sex scenes are almost completely nonexistent in the Quaraun series. The only time you ever see Quaraun fully consenting to sex is with GhoulSpawn. GhoulSpawn is as gentle and delicate as Unicorn is viscous and violent.

While there are many sex scene with Unicorn, Unicorn is sadistic and takes great delight in sexual torture, which Quaraun never fully submits to and only allows because he doesn't feel he has a choice.

GhoulSpawn on the other hand is the lover, who became a lover after many years of a close friendship.

Quaraun has 4 wives over the course of the series. Only one of them he actually loves.

Quaraun's first wife is his sister, whom he was forced to marry, by his evil father. Both his sister and his fater are power hungry for the throne. His father's older brother is the king, but he himself has no children and had named his nephew (Quaraun) next to be king, which is the case of most of his father's animosity towards him, as he felt he should have been picked.

His father comes up with a plot to force Quaraun to marry his sister, then wait for a son to be born from that union. Quaraun's son would be the automatic heir. The plan was to once e fathered a son, then kill Quaraun.

However, Quaraun refused to marry his sister, and wen the marriage was forced on him, he refused to consummate the marriage, which his father cured by holding Quaraun down while his sister/first wife raped him. This rape scene takes place graphically on the page. This event is repeated over and over again until his sister/wife eventual gives birth to 4 children.

Knowing that his father and sister are plotting to kill him and with no one believing him or helping him, Quaraun ends up killing his father and sister/wife the night before they were going to kill him (part of this chapter is available to read online).

His second wife was a Human. A pregnant nurse who took care of him after he falls through a portal to the future and was beaten up by strangers. Days before he is released from the hospital, the nurse's abusive ex arrives and beats her up, killing her unborn baby. Quaraun takes the traumatized woman with him when he leaves the hospital and finds a portal back to his own time. He feels no love for her, but rather pities her, seeing how traumatized she is by the lose of her baby and now being stuck in the 1400s. In his mind the best way to fix the problem is to take her as his wife and replace the baby with another one. There is a 2 year period where he and Unicorn are separated and Quaraun is living with his Human wife and half-Elf daughter.

The sex scenes between Quaraun and his 2nd wife are consensual, but mild, vanilla, and infrequent and cease once she becomes pregnant, as he had no sexual attraction to her and his only goal was to give her a baby to replace the one that died. After the baby his a few months old, he leaves her and returns to Unicorn. He continues to visit her and the baby and provides her with a home, something which baffles Unicorn as Quaraun never tells Unicorn this is his wife and child. Unfortunately a war is going on in the region and the village is razed, the wife murdered and the baby kidnapped.

It is in this story (A Baby For The Necromancer) that Quaraun receives his crippling back, hip, leg, and knee injury that leaves him paralyzed for months, then crippled and on a cane for the rest of his life, and is in fact the eact same injury I have.

Quaraun spends decades in a fruitless search to find his daughter. Eventually he gives up hope and assumes she is dead.

The most brutal and graphic rape scenes of all are in Zebulon's Captive... the back cover blurb of which is follows:

=============

It was a beautiful sunny, summer morning, when Quaraun's world turned very, very dark. 

With the three wizards, Quaraun, BoomFuzzy, and GhoulSpawn now living together at Black Tower, life has become peaceful and quiet. BoomFuzzy free to cook to his heart's content, GhoulSpawn lost in reading his books, and Quaraun tending his every growing rose garden...

One second everything was normal and then next, Quaraun vanished without a trace. Swallowed by a multi dimensional portal that swept away every Elf on the planet, from every where, all at once.

The Elves find themselves in the distant future, imprisoned by a madman named Zebulon. Slave trader. Zookeeper. Side show ring master. Elf breeder.

Quaraun, ever the peaceful non-violent hippie of an Elf, takes a complacent stance to the abuse he receives at the hands of the Humans, refusing to fight back or defend himself.

When Quaraun finds his missing half-Elf daughter, now an adult and being used as a breeder, repeatedly raped and tortured, his complacently wanes, given way to wrath unleashed on every Human he meets.

Leaving a bloody trail of bodies in his path, Quaraun takes his daughter and escapes, eventually finding his way back to his own time...

But time moves differently in different dimensions, and while for BoomFuzzy and GhoulSpawn only 7 days have gone by... each day here, was 10 years there for Quaraun, who has now aged by nearly a 100 years, is now married to his half-Elf daughter, and is no longer the gentle, peaceful, kind hearted, loving Elf they once knew.

=============

In Zebulon's Captive you see Quaraun (a rare breed of Elf) used as breeder, by viscous Human slave drivers who brutally punish him when he refused to breed with the female Elves. His already fragile mind is torn apart by being forced to rape young girls against his will. The discovery that one of the girls was his missing daughter shattered what little sanity the, now very ancient, Elf had left.

My Two Favorite People is the same story as "Zebulon's Captive"... This is the story told from BoomFuzzy's perspective and takes place at Black Tower...

=============

One second everything was normal and then next, Quaraun vanished without a trace. Swallowed by a multi dimensional portal that swept away every Elf on the planet, from every where, all at once.

At first assuming their friend was whisked away into a portal, BoomFuzzy and GhoulSpawn try desperately to find Quaraun, but when they discover every Elf on the planet has gone missing, they know dark magic is a foot.

For 7 frantic days they try to find out what happened, and then, as suddenly as he vanished, Quaraun returned... his face scared beyond recognition, his hands burned to the bone, and his tongue cut out.

But time moves differently in different dimensions, and while for BoomFuzzy and GhoulSpawn only 7 days have gone by... each day here, was 10 years there for Quaraun, who has now aged by nearly a 100 years, is now married to his half-Elf daughter, and is no longer the gentle, peaceful, kind hearted, loving Elf they once knew.

Now crippled beyond any ability to function on his own, Quaraun is cared for by a pregnant near-feral half-Elf who viciously defends him and refuses to let either BoomFuzzy or GhoulSpawn near him.

Unable to discover what has happened to their beloved Moon Elf, BoomFuzzy and GhoulSpawn call on the help of GhoulSpawn's future self to find out what happened.

The Gremlin has nothing good to tell them, when he reveals that they are now on a count down to the Battle of Ongadada, which is less the 9 months away, and happen the day Quaraun watches his pregnant wife and unborn baby die.

This is the story that introduces Quaraun as the Grand High Emperor of the Triple Planets, the evil, serial killing Necromancer who builds the blood thirsty, flesh eating, Twighlight Manor, and goes on to become the primary villain of The Twighlight Manor series.

===============

The Quaraun series is the prequal back story to the Twighlight Manor series that I had written in the 1970s. Quaraun is the unnamed Pink Necromancer of the Twighlight Manor series. The Quaraun series tells the story of how he became the evil Necromancer he would eventually become...

.... is becoming the viscous villain of the Twighlight Manor series, was a result of his finally saying enough was enough. He was sick of being bullied. Sick of being taken advantage of. Sick of people hurting hi. Sick of being raped over and over again. And when he finally fought back, he went on to punish every one in the galaxy by killing 30 billion people across 3 separate planets.... to ensure that there was no one left out there to rape him again.

Decades of bullies raping him over and over again, are what drove the quiet, gentle, kind hearted, peaceful, ever loving little Elf, to go on his vicious blood thirsty rampage in the Twighlight Manor series.

Rape is not erotic.

Rape hurts people.

Rape is a mean, terrible, ugly thing.

Rape destroys lives.

1 in every 5 people with Autism will be raped in their life time.

1 in every 3 Autistic people raped will be raped by a close family member by the time they are 8 years old.

1 in every 9 Autistic people will have been raped 20 or more times by the time they are 30 years old.

Readers often dub Quaraun as "the gay Elf wizard".

Many readers of the Quaraun series classify the series as "gay Erotica".

Quaraun is not gay.

Quaraun is with BoomFuzzy because BoomFuzzy raped him and then later felt guilt about it and tried to make up for it by becoming Quaraun's caretaker.

BoomFuzzy continues to sexually abuse Quaraun through out his entire life.

Quaraun does not have the mental ability to understand love and sex, and remained BoomFuzzy's lover in a twisted Stockhlm Syndrome relationship, of victim being loyal to his rapist.

Because Quaraun his Autistic, he lacks the ability to understand how to avoid situations, places, and people who will abuse and take advantage of him, resulting in he is frequently bullied, beaten, molested, and raped by strangers.

Throughout the entire series, GhoulSpawn is there, trying to convince Quaraun that BoomFuzzy is an abuser not a lover, but Quaraun is too confused to understand the difference between love and possessive sexual abuse.

GhoulSpawn is himself frequently bullied, abused, and raped by BoomFuzzy, in a viscous lovers triangle, of BoomFuzzy deliberately tormenting GhoulSpawn to try to chase him away, and GhoulSpawn trying to rescue Quaraun from BoomFuzzy's obsessive dominance. Quaraun and GhoulSpawn eventually become lovers as a result of this, which triggers BoomFuzzy to become brutally violent to both of them, on several occasions beaten either of them close to death.

The Quaraun series is not about a gay man's sexual journey...

The Quaraun series is about an Autistic man's struggle to survive in a world that if filled with depraved, bullies and abusers who hurt him over and over again.

Which is why I have said over and over again, the Quaraun series is Literary Slice of Life Fiction more then any other genre.

See here for more information on the graphic scenes of Suicide, Rape, and a Abuse in the Quaraun series.

Autistic Insanity In The Quaraun Series 

Autistic Stereotypy, Tics, Stimming, and Punding:

Throughout the Quaraun series you see multiple characters doing various Stereotypy, Tics, Stimming, and Punding.

Though it was not intentionally written into the story, readers have asked me if BoomFuzzy the Unicorn might possibly have Tourette syndrome and/or Bi-Polar Disorder. I do not know what Unicorn "has", as I never tried to make him "have" anything and therefore never researched anything for him to "have".

However, looking into this, it does appear I may have unintentionally written his as having both Tourette syndrome and/or Bi-Polar Disorder, as, as readers have pointed out, he does have a vast amount of symptoms of both. I bring it up here, because of one symptom he has which stands out far above and beyond the rest, and has been the source of many complaints by critics of the Quaraun series:

• Coprolalia (the spontaneous utterance of socially objectionable or taboo words or phrases)

Yes, this is a very clear issue with BoomFuzzy the Unicorn and his over use of the words fuck, dick, penis, and every sexual explicative he can think of to say, for absolutely no reason at all other then to say them as much as possible, as often as possible, on every single page of every single novel. It is Unicorn's mouth that gives the series it's M-Rating more then for any other reason. When I designed him, I did so saying "He's from Biddeford, I have to make him talk like the rest of the 26,000 people who live in Biddeford". I actually was unaware this was a Stereotypy with an actual name, but it is.

My question now, is: Is it possible that all 26,000 residents of Biddeford, Maine suffer from Coprolalia?

But, back to Quaraun. Quaraun has Stereotypy, Tics, Stimming, and Punding going out the wazoo. He's doing one or the other constantly and has far too many variations of each to count.

Let's try to count a few of his most common Stereotypy, Tics, Stimming, and Pundings:

• Quaraun is constantly touching the beads and embroidery on his dresses
• he frequently stops what he is doing to pace around in small circles for no reason at all
• when others are talking, to each other, he sits on the ground, slowly rocking back and forth and humming to himself
• he sleeps on a bed of furs, which he strokes repetitively as a way to sooth himself to sleep each night
• he only wears pink and has a meltdown if someone tries to make him wear another colour
• when people talk to Quaraun, he frequently finds a detail on their clothing to focus on (avoiding direct eye contact) and often becomes so focused on memorizing the details that he forgets to listen to what is being said
• if he finds something squishie, he will pick it up and squeeze it obsessively for hours on end
• he obsessively collects small colored objects (sea glass, pebbles, beads, etc) and lines them up as perfectly as possible
  
• when entering someone's home or any random inn or tavern, he begins to paw through things to "tidy things up", "straighten things out", or otherwise "help them organize their place more effectively"

Someone with Autism has rituals they have to perform at certain times of the day. Rituals that must be done exactly every time, with no amount of change.

Quaraun has very long hair, In excess of 12 feet. Every morning, at the exact same time of every day, he very carefully lets his hair down and brushes it 100 times. It doesn't matter what is going on around him - thunder, lightening, war, pirates attacking the ship he's on - Quaraun will not stop brushing his hair until he has counted to a hundred strokes. And if you interrupt him and make him lose count, he starts over again.

While this is seen as a minor annoyance (by other characters) in almost every novel, this activity takes front and center stage in Captain Quick and the Pirate Ship Rent-A-Prize, when Quaraun is in the middle of his morning hair brushing ritual, as pirates attack the ship and take the crew hostage and much to the annoyance of the pirates, Quaraun refuses to allow himself to be taken hostage until after he has finished brushing his hair, which causes the pirates to realize Quaraun is close to being mentally retarded, which results in their singling him out from the rest of the crew to beat and rape him.

In nearly every novel, you also see, Quaraun's daily ritual of unpacking his bag of holding, then unpacking the boxes in the bag, one box in particular becoming his focus. The large wooden box is filled with dozens of tiny hand blow glass bottles, each a bright vibrant colour.

Every night before bed, Quaraun unpacks the box, carefully lining up the bottles in rainbow order (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink), lining them up along the floor for no particular reason at all, then carefully putting them back in the box.

Wikipedia has the following to say about Punding:

Punding is something that I myself do at levels described by people who know me personally as "astounding". They are often referencing the fact that I own 300,000 books and frequently remove them all from their shelves for no reason at all, other then to put them back on the shelves once the shelves are empty. I also own several hundred boxes of Crayola Big Box Crayons, and on a near weekly basis, dump the several thousands of crayons on the floor to line them up end to end in rainbow order.

Before the bomb blew up my house October 18, 2006, I had bum length hair (which was burned off by the resulting fire caused by the bomb) and spent hours each day brushing my hair endlessly.

If you've ever watched my YouTube videos you will frequently see the stimming in action, as I keep on my desk, a "fruit bowl" filled with marbles, pebbles, squishies, glitter tubes, stress balls, beanie babies, and other assorted things, which you often see me squeezing and tossing from one hand to the other. I do this 24 hours a day, none stop. In public places where such activities are frowned up, you see me carrying a "tactile" purse, which has fur on one side, and movable color change sequins on the other, with my hand constantly rubbing the fur and sequins.

If you ever paid attention to my cloths, you'll notice I wear highly tactile dresses covered in beads, sequins, and embroidery, which my fingers are constantly tracing and rubbing over. It is for this tactile reason that I wear elaborate ball gowns, and it is for this same reason I have Quaraun doing the same thing in the novels.

Nearly every act of Stereotypy, Tics, Stimming, and Punding you see Quaraun doing in the novels, is in fact a thing I do myself in real life and was the reason those where the things chosen to be done by Quaraun, as they are the ones I knew how to write. Basically it's me writing what I know, but writing my character doing what I do.

Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder and
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
In The Quaraun Series

What is Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder?
Or is it Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?
Doctors can't decide.

Quaraun has Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder, which is similar too, but is not Schizophrenia, or possibly Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. 

Both Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and SchizoEffective Personality Disorder is an anxiety disorders. A person with either PTSD or SEPD has a high need for a safe zone, where they can go to crash when stress levels get too high.

A person with PTSD or SEPD finds everything terrifying. They suffer from high anxiety levels and have a heightened flight response. Often accompanied by abnormally high heart rate and abnormally low blood pressure someone with PTSD or SEPD is prone to fainting spells, dizzy spells, headaches, and panic attacks.

Basically there are a million and one phobias out there to frighten a person and someone with PTSD or SEPD has every one of them.

A person with PTSD or SEPD is constantly listening for danger, constantly looking in all directions for any sign of movement, they hear every sound, see every shadow, and are ready to run at a moments notice.

It is for this reason you see Quaraun, always nervous, always twitching his ears, his eyes always darting to and fro, and him jumping nervously and fainting at every sound.

Like Autism, Stereotypy, Tics, Stimming, and Punding, I chose to give Quaraun Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder because I myself have it and know what it is like to live with it.

Like Autism, I have done no research into the disorder itself and simply write Quaraun doing the exact same things I do.

Readers have pointed out that what Quaraun does bears more resemblance of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder then Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder.

Well, if that is the case then you will have to take that up with my doctor. (Need her contact information? Here you go, here it is: Patty Blanchenship 207-282-3349) In the past 10 years I have had 4 different doctors (the change being due to doctors moving out of state; I have never willingly changed doctors.)

The first one diagnosed me as: Autistic Savant, with OCD Tendencies, as well as Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder and/or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The next one dropped the Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder and said it was Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, he also laughed and said "that guy was a quack, any psychologist knows this is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. You can't get Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder from stress, what was he thinking? You get Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from stress, thus the name STRESS DISORDER."

The 3rd one dropped both the Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder and the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and replaced them with "high anxiety caused by abnormal harassment from locals in the neighborhood"

The 4th and current doctor changed that last part to: "Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder caused by stress from shooter in driveway, kidnapped cats, bomb in house, cat heads nailed to door, and 19 years of being harassed by a stalker."

The first part: Autistic Savant, with OCD Tendencies has remained the same throughout.

It should be pointed out that the original diagnosis from the 1970s by my pediatrician (when I was 8 years old) said: Autistic Savant, with OCD Tendencies and did not include the extra part.

Interestingly Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder is something you are born with, you do not developed it over time and this diagnosis was not added until I was 42 years AND it was added by a doctor who talked to me for under 15 minutes, whom never saw me before that time and never saw me again after that one 15 minute meeting. This is the same doctor who also diagnosed me as "A Feral Child Raised By Cats" and then when on to conclude that both of my parents, a dozen of my aunts and uncles, and 200 of my cousins had "Schizophrenia" (something he said in court to a judge... he claimed to have spoken to each of these relatives in some 200+ 15 minute sessions). When told we were Gypsies, he also stated that "Gypsies are mythical creatures that do not exist".

I have since learned that he was a "psychologist in training" and lost his practice the year following that court case (which was a battle between the Scottish Travelers and the Scottish Gypsies and to this day I do not know, what the court case was about, or why every member of the clan - even those of us not involved in the court case - were required to have 15 minute meetings with this doctor.) All I know is my mother was the defendant, I don't know who the plaintiff was and never knew what the case was about.

Interestingly the current doctor said in 2017 "Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder caused by stress from a stalker" and when I researched to find out what that even meant, I found that you CAN NOT get Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder as it is something you are born with, it can NOT be caused by stress. 

However, I did not have this prior to the bomb that blew up my house October 18, 2006 or the church mob that cut my car in half May 10, 2010, or the back hoe that drove over my house August 8, 2013, or the 4-door white truck driver who beat me up and left me paralyzed 5 months and crippled the rest of my life and doctors debate as to if my diagnosis of  Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder (something one is typically born with, and something I did not have symptoms of prior to the multiple murder attempts on my life by the as yet unidentified stalker) may in fact be Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, that simply has a heightened 24 hour anxiety that never shuts down, rather then is trigger by stimuli.

So, which doctor is correct?

Is it Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder or the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Well, readers of the Quaraun series tell me that his symptoms (which are my symptoms as I experience them, put on the page) are Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and not Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder.

If you think these are symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and not Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder, then, go tell my doctor that, because, I only gave Quaraun the same diagnosis my doctor gave me.

What are the symptoms?

• since the bomb blew up my house I can no sit in any room unless I am near a window and in direct line with the door
• 
  
• since the shooter started arriving in my driveway, all sounds of loud bangs trigger meltdowns, including thunder and lightening; which has startled those who know me as  in my childhood and teen years I used to stand on the roof and dance in time to the thunder during lighting storms
• 
  
• since the fire caused by the bomb, I am unable to be near and have an extreme phobia of open flames; yet we used to have a woodstove and go camping and having no electricity we used candles and kerosene lamps - all things I used daily, and now run screaming from
• 
  
• since the back hoe drove over my house - I now have a phobia of all construction vehicles - the sound of any large truck triggers a panic attack, dizzy spells, and passing out
• 
  
• since the 4-door-white-truck driver beat me up and left me paralyzed 5 months and relearning to walk 18 months, I now have a phobia of all white cars and trucks as well as people dressed in white, and any movement that is white; overall a phobia of the colour white in general
• 
  
• since being beaten up by Kendra Silvermander at multiple restaurants and libraries, I have not been able to eat at restaurants or go to libraries; and yet I for 40 years had 5 library cards and took out 70 to 100 books each week, and ate at restaurants daily
• 
  
• night terrors - since the bomb blew up my house (an event that occurred at 1AM) I have been unable to sleep at night

Those are the symptoms.

Is it Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Doctors can not agree, and the readers of the Quaraun series say overwhelmingly that is it Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Autism is not a mental illness.

A mental illness is something you are NOT born with.

Autism is something you are born with.

OCD and PTSD on the other hand are both mental illnesses. 

No one is born with OCD or PTSD. Both OCD and PTSD are caused by suffering from extreme traumatic stress.

OCD is most often caused by being raised in a violent, uncaring, unloving household. Yes, if you have OCD, it probably is your parents fault. OCD arises in people who can no longer trust the people nature intended us to trust (parents, aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins, grand parents, spouses.) OCD is a side effect of having lost trust in someone you previously deeply trusted.

OCD is also caused by the traumatic and sudden, unexpected death of a loved one whom you were very close too.

OCD is your brain, hyper over compensating to keep your body safe from things that normally wouldn't harm you (washing your hands for example: normally a person washes their hands quickly and without thought and this is enough to remove germs; someone with OCD however may wash their hands dozens of times in a row, scrubbing with a brush till they remove their skin, in a bizarre attempt to remove germs that are not there to begin with, with the brain thinking some illogical thought along the lines of: mommy doesn't love me, mommy should have loved me, therefore germs want to kill me, I have to remove every germ.)

PTSD is caused by suffering traumatic bodily harm, such as being raped or shot. It is triggered by coming into contact with hings that were around you at the time of the event. (For example, a stranger walking by, is wearing the same aftershave the rapist wore or the colour of the sunset is the same as it was at the time you were attacked.) PTSD is your brain on hyper alert, expecting the attack to repeat itself at any moment.

Both OCD and PTSD are mental illnesses that are caused by physical harm being done to your body and your brain trying to protect you. Both OCD and PTSD can go away with time, but it requires many years of being in a safe environment, surrounded by safe non-volital people, with no one hurting you during that time.

Even if one is cured of OCD or PTSD, either can return, if you are traumatically injured again. OCD, if you are once again injured by someone you trust, PTSD if you are once again harmed by a stranger.

Someone who has BOTH OCD and PSTD, has been hurt by people they trusted AND strangers, and has no one they can turn to for emotional support, and rarely is able to form new relationships as a result of losing the ability to trust either friend, family, or stranger.

As a child, teen, and young adult I was overly relaxed (typical of Savant Autism) and had completely zero anxiety or other emotional response to anything at all. It was not until in my 40s, after being paralyzed for 5 months and spending 18 months relearning to walk, that I began to display the current, 24 hours keyed up, none stop, never turned off extreme paranoid anxiety levels that I now have.

So, whatever it is, Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the symptoms listed above, that's what Quaraun has, though doctors are having trouble deciding if it is Schizo-Effective Personality Disorder or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Thullid Infestation: A Fictional Illness Based Off a Blending of Three Real Life Illnesses:
Brain Sucking Amoebas, Kuru, & Mad Cow Disease

What is Thullid Infestation?

Quaraun suffers from Thullid Infestation, and this is what causes the bulk of his "insanity" issues.

Quaraun has a demonic, alien jelly fish from outer space living inside his brain, after she burrowed a hole in his skull to get there. Quaraun is slowly going insane, in a madness similar to mad cow disease, caused by the holes the tiny parasitic jellyfish is eating in his brain tissue.

Because I could not find a real illness matching what I wanted for use with Quaraun, I created the Thullid Infestation, based of combining the actions of the Naegleria fowleri and the symptoms of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) with Kuru, a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy.

Quaraun in turn suffers the very real side effects of someone suffering from these 3 brain disorders.

What is a Naegleria fowleri?

The Naegleria fowleri, also known as the "brain-eating amoeba" is a tiny water creature, that can in fact swim up your nose, attach itself to your brain, and slowly cause insanity by eating your brain tissue.

Unfortunately, the creature kills you with in 2 to 3 weeks of infestation, long before you succumb to the insanity it would otherwise cause.

While the real Naegleria fowleri takes 2 to 3 weeks to kill a person, the Thullid jelly fish of the Quaraun series takes 2 to 3 years to do the same.

The person knows completely what is happening to them, but there is no cure, no way to remove the parasite from the brain. It is said in all the realms there is no worse way to die then by Thullid Infestation.

Once the Thullid has killed it's host, it then takes over the body, reanimating it, and living inside of it, much the same way a Hermit Crab takes the shell of a dead snail.

The most frightening part of this, is those around you, have no idea you have died and the Thullid now pretends to be you. It has spent those 1st 2 or 3 years learning to mimic your speech and habits and slowly growing it's tentacles into your spine and nerves, completely taking over your body.

In the case of both Quaraun and GhoulSpawn, neither Elf was fully sane to begin with and the brains of both Elves were physically damaged by their captors during implantation. More importantly, in both cases the larvae being implanted in them, were each also physically damaged.

With each Elf suffering brain damage and each parasite suffering body damage, the end result of in each case the Thullid infestation process was not completed, resulting in both Elves retaining portions of their brain function, even after their bodies had died.

While most Thullids eventually fully engulf the body, developing the giant squid-like head, both Quaraun an GhoulSpawn are mutations, which retained their jelly fish larval state and therefore never lost their physical Elven bodies. Unfortunately this had physical side effects of what is known as actual clinical insanity.

Some important things to consider:

Some important things to consider:

If you asked someone "What makes a person insane?" in most cases you will get a variety of answers involving stuff to do with clothing style, way they clean house, how they act personality wise, types of things they own (car, house, etc), their sexuality, and over all, but the fact that they do things different then you do. In the medical field, those are all things that make a person "different than you" but not "insane".

What in the medical field today, constitutes a diagnoses of being truly and clinically insane?

To be considered clinically and medically insane a person must be diagnosed as having any one of numerous disease classified as: neurodegenerative diseases.

Neurodegenerative diseases and injuries which are currently listed in medical journals as being "types of insanity" include:

• Abusive head trauma (AHT), previously known as shaken baby syndrome (SBS)
  
• AIDS Dementia Complex (ADC)
  
• Alexander disease
  
• Alzheimer's disease
• Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
• Asperger syndrome
  
• Autism
  
• Batten disease
• Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease)
• Brain herniation
  
• Canavan disease
• Cerebral contusion
  
• Cerebral laceration
  
• Cerebrotendinous xanthomatosis
• Chronic traumatic encephalopathy
• Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease
• Dementia pugilistica (DP)
  
• Dentatorubral-pallidoluysian atrophy
• Diffuse axonal injury
  
• Encephalitis
  
• Epilepsy
• Fatal familial insomnia
• Fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome
• Fragile X syndrome
  
• Fragile XE mental retardation
  
• Friedreich's ataxia
  
• Frontotemporal dementia
  
• Gerstmann–Sträussler–Scheinker syndrome
• Glutaric aciduria type 1
• High-functioning autism (HFA) - an autistic person having an IQ of 70 or higher
  
• Huntington's disease
• Korsakoff's syndrome
• Krabbe's disease
• Kuru, a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy
• Maple syrup urine disease
• Machado-Joseph disease
  
• Meningitis
• Multiple sclerosis
  
• Myotonic dystrophy
  
• Niemann–Pick disease type C
• Neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis
• Neuroacanthocytosis
• Organic acidemias
• Parkinson's disease
• Pelizaeus–Merzbacher disease
• Penetrating head injury
  
• Pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS)
  
• Pick's disease
  
• Post-concussion syndrome
  
• Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy
  
• Rabies
  
• Sanfilippo syndrome type B
• Savant syndrome (also known as autistic savant)
  
• Spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy
• Spinocerebellar ataxia
• Sundowning, or sundown syndrome
  
• Syphilis
• Tabes dorsalis
  
• Tetanus
  
• Tourette syndrome
  
• Traumatic brain injury (TBI), also known as intracranial injury
  
• Trinucleotide repeat disorders
  
• Urea cycle disorders

Yes, all of the diseases above are the true and medical definitions of the diagnoses of "being insane".

As you can see, what the medical world considers to be "insanity" and what the movie industry considers insanity are two vastly different things.

Were you surprised by any of the things on that list? 

Were you surprised by any of the things NOT on that list?

Were you surprised to learn that several of your friends and family, whom you think of as being "perfectly sane" have illnesses listed on this list?

What few people fail to realize is that being insane, quite literally means "having a lose of control of brain function".

Also please note that the word "insane" or "insanity" is considered derogatory and is no longer used by doctors as of 1994.

In any case, with Quaraun, we knew he had a specific problem causes his lose of control of brain function: a parasite had burrowed into his brain and was eating holes in it. Meaning that of the illnesses listed above, there was a need to look for ones that specifically caused small holes in the brain, in order to find one similar to what was wrong with Quaraun, in order to determine which of the symptoms he would likely be displaying.

Which is why I chose two such illnesses to build Quaraun's symptoms upon:

• bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease)

and 

• Kuru, a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy

According to Wikipedia:

All of the diseases in the yellow list above share common symptoms, caused by deterioration of brain cells. Contrary to popular urban myths, symptoms of actual clinical insanity are not what most people think they are, and include:

• an abnormal gait
• abnormal motor behavior
• agitation
• anxiety
• anxiety relating to certain situations
• apathy
• ataxia
• blurred double vision
• body rocking
• building hundreds of small items over and over again, such a wooden boxes
• changes in sleep or appetite
• clonus
• clumsiness
• collecting pebbles or other small colored objects and lining them up as perfectly as possible
• compulsive behaviors: time-consuming behaviors intended to reduce anxiety that an individual feels compelled to perform repeatedly or according to rigid rules, such as placing objects in a specific order, checking things, or hand washing.
• communication difficulties (e.g., using and understanding language)
• confusion or a lowered level of consciousness
• coprolalia (the spontaneous utterance of socially objectionable or taboo words or phrases)
• copropraxia (involuntarily performing obscene or forbidden gestures)
• deafness
• delirium, also known as acute confusional state
• delusions or hallucinations
• dementia
• demyelinating disease
• depression
• difficulty pronouncing words (dysarthria)
• difficulty swallowing
• difficulty with changes in routines or environments
• difficulty with social behavior
• diminished reflexes
• disassembling complex items such as wristwatches and putting them back together again
• disinhibition and impulsivity
• echolalia (repeating words just spoken by someone else)
• echopraxia (repeating or imitating another person's actions)
• ear infections
• elated mood
• episodes of intense pain and disturbed sensation (including glossodynia)
• excruciatingly painful spasms of the muscles
• excessive eye blinking
• excessive self-rubbing and scratching
• fatigue
• fidgeting with, carrying, wearing, and constantly touching movable jewelry, textured objects, slime, and glittery liquids
• genital anaesthesia
• grimacing
• hand/nail/finger/toe-biting
• hand clapping
• hand paralysis
• headache
• head-banging
• head jerking
• hearing problems
• hemiparesis
• hypoxia
• impaired muscle coordination
• impaired vision
• inability to understand the social communication of others
• incapable of walking without support
• incontinence
• incoordination
• involuntary head, arm or leg jerks
• irritability
• joint pain in the legs
• lack of face and emotion recognition
• lameness
• lexilalia (repeating words after reading them)
• lip puckering
• lip smacking
• loss of sensation
• loss of coordination and control over muscle movements
• loss of muscle control
• marching in place
• may become unresponsive to their surroundings
• may lose the ability to speak
• memory distortions
• motor tics
• muscle spasms
• nervousness
• neurological symptoms
• ocular paralysis
• organic brain syndrome
• pacing, especially paving in small circles
• palilalia (repeating one's own previously spoken words)
• paresthesias (shooting and burning pains, pricking sensations, and formication)
• persistent pacing
• perception and visual problems
• phonic tics
• poor balance and coordination
• preoccupation with a single television program, item, toy, game, etc
• pulling at clothes
• punding: the compulsion to perform repetitive mechanical tasks, such as sorting, collecting, lining up objects, or assembling and disassembling common items.
• pursing of the lips
• rapid, involuntary movements of the limbs, torso, and fingers
• repetitive behavior
• repetitive crossing and uncrossing of legs
• repetitive feeling/touching soft or otherwise enjoyable textures 
• repetitive movements, such as hand flapping, head rolling, or body rocking
• repetitive throat clearing, sniffing, or grunting
• respiratory irregularity, such as grunting and difficulty breathing
• restricted interests: interests or fixations that are abnormal in theme or intensity of focus
• ritualistic behavior: unvarying pattern of daily activities, such as an unchanging menu or a dressing ritual. 
• rubbing, itching, or licking ones self
• self-caressing
• self-injury behaviors such as eye-poking, skin-picking, hand-biting and head-banging
• self-stimulatory behavior, also known as stimming and self-stimulation
• shoulder shrugging (involuntary)
• shows panic when presented with liquids to drink
• snapping fingers
• sometimes seizures
• spastic paraparesis
• speech problems, speech and language difficulty
• spinning objects
• stereotypy
• tardive dyskinesia: repetitive, involuntary movements such as eye blinking
• teeth grinding due to pain
• thunderclap headache (a headache described as "like being kicked in the head")
• tongue movements
• touching objects
• touching people
• tremors (titubation)
• trouble eating or swallowing
• trying to systematically remove the entire contents of all the drawers and shelves in the home and sort through all their contents
• unsteady gait
• unsteady stance
• unusual eating behavior
• vomiting
• wandering or restlessness
• weakness (muscle)
• weight loss

These ACTUAL symptoms of clinical insanity, do not mesh well with the knife wielding psychopaths of horror movies, now do they?

As you can see, what the medical world considers to be "insanity" and what the movie industry considers insanity are two vastly different things.

Of the symptoms on that list, I chose very specifically the ones which are displayed by a person suffering from:

• spongiform encephalopathies.

You see both Quaraun, and in later stories also GhoulSpawn who likewise becomes infected, doing the things on this list, because both of them have suffered from brain damage, which has resulted in numerous small sponge like holes in their brains, causing cerebral fluid to leak into places it doesn't belong, which gives the parasitic Thullid the warm, wet, protected place it needs to live, but also results in the host going insane.

Some one who is truly clinically insane, by the actual medical definition of the word, suffers from limited mobility, walks with a gait, requires a cane or in more severe cases a wheelchair in order to get around, numbness, itchiness, joint pains... ect, because their brain is no longer sending the proper signals to their nerves and muscles.

And this is why you see both Quaraun and in later novels also GhoulSpawn, walking with a cane. Tripping and falling frequently. Slurring their words. Having trouble getting words out when they speak. Stuttering. Forgetting what they were saying mid sentence.And doing all the other thing on that list...

...because Quaraun is insane by the actual, clinical, medical definition of the word.

Resources:
Where to find ACTUAL (Accurate) Information on ACTUAL Mental Illnesses

Every year since 2004, I post in the Mental Illness thread on NaNoWriMo, a list of places where authors can find actual/accurate information on a variety of mental illnesses and physical disabilities to help them write their characters more accurately. Most of these site also have lists of other sites as well.

Here for you now, is that list:

Act Early on Developmental Concerns: Partnering with Early Intervention 

Action on Mental Illness 

ADDitude 

Adolescents with autism spectrum disorder at risk for bullying

Advancing Futures for Adults with Autism 

Advice for autistic adults about work - NASAlmost half of kids with autism are bullied, study shows

American Association of People with Disabilities 

American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities 

American Council of the Blind 

American Diabetes Association 

American Foundation for the Blind 

American Lung Association 

American Medical Association 

American Psychological Association 

American Psychological Association's Trauma Psychology Division 

American Psychologist® 

American Trauma Society 

Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transit 

An Anti-Bullying Intervention for Children with Autism 

Anxiety and Depression Association of America 

AnxietySocialNet - Agoraphobia support groups and more 

Arc (formerly known as Association for Retarded Citizens of the United States; the oldest mental health advocacy group, founded in 1953)   

Archives of Scientific Psychology®

Are Autistic People More Sensitive To Trauma

Asian American Journal of Psychology 

Aspies For Freedom 

Assistance Dog Advocacy Project  

Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback 

Association for Real Change 

Association of University Centers on Disabilities 

Australian Centre for Posttraumatic Mental Health 

Australasian Society for Traumatic Stress Studies 

Autism Awareness.com  

Autism Awareness Online 

Autism and Asperger Syndrome Educator’s Guides, Organization for Autism Research (OAR) 

AutismCares 

Autism Genetics Initiative Data Archive 

Autism Genetics Resource Exchange 

Autism Network International 

Autism NOW 

Autism Society 

Autism Society of Maine 

Autism Speaks 

The Autism Speaks Transition Tool Kit 

Autistic Self Advocacy Network 

Autism Source, Autism Society of America (ASA) 

Autism Spectrum Disorder and bullying 

Autism Wandering Awareness Alerts Response Education (AWAARE) 

Behavior Analysis: Research and Practice 

Biofeedback Foundation of Europe 

BC Schizophrenia Society Foundation 

Brain Poke 3.0 

Brian Othmer Foundation 

Bullying and Autism - Medical Home Portal 

Bullying and Autism Spectrum Disorders: guidance for 

Bullying and autism spectrum disorders - Norfolk Schools 

Bullying Experiences Among Children and Youth with Autism 

Bullying For Parents 

Bullying No Way! 

Bully Stoppers - Victorian Government

Canadian Foundation for Trauma Research & Education 

Canadian National Institute for the Blind 

Canadian Psychology / Psychologie canadienne 

Cannon (1942/1957). "Voodoo" death. (Walter Cannon's seminal article on death through the shock of terror.)

Care For Disabled Veterans: Acknowledging Post-traumatic Stress Disorder from Iraq War Experience 

Caring for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Resource Toolkit for Clinicians 

CDC’s Disability and Health Program 

CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities Funding Opportunities 

The Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning (CSEFEL) 

Center for Evolutionary Psychology 

Child Abuse Prevention Network 

The Child Survivor of Traumatic Stress [newsletter] 

The ChildTrauma Academy 

Child Trauma Institute 

Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder 

Children’s Health Insurance Program 

Children with Disabilities and Special Needs - Patricia E Kefalas Dudek - Advocate For Elders, People With Disabilities, and Their Families:  

Choices In Recovery 

Clinical Practice in Pediatric Psychology® 

ClinicalTrials.gov 

Code of Federal Regulations, Title 45, Part 46 

Community Alliance for the Ethical Treatment of Youth 

Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates 

Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology® 

Data Resource Center for Child and Adolescent Health 

Davidson College - Abnormal Psychology in the Department of Psychology - (not a group, but lots of info about a wide range of mental illness - great if you need a general definition of what an illness is, written in non-medical language) 

The Decline in Child Sexual Abuse Cases. 

Department of Education 

Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance 

Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics Online 

Developmental Screening/Testing Coding

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 

Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund 

Disability Rights Movement - Patricia E Kefalas Dudek - Advocate For Elders, People With Disabilities, and Their Families:  

Disabled American Veterans 

Disabled Peoples' International 

DisAbled Women's Network Canada 

Down Syndrome Advocacy Foundation 

Dreams for Kids 

Drew Westen's Lab of Personality & Psychopathology 

Easter Seals 

Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma 

EEG & Clinical Neuroscience Society 

The Effects of Psychological Trauma on Children with Autism

Elder Care - Patricia E Kefalas Dudek - Advocate For Elders, People With Disabilities, and Their Families:  

Emerson Training Seminars 

The Empowerment Council 

End of Life Issues - Patricia E Kefalas Dudek - Advocate For Elders, People With Disabilities, and Their Families: 

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 

Eric H. Chudler's Home Page 

European Federation of Associations of Families with Mental Illness 

EFORT European Federation of National Associations of Orthopaedics and Traumatology 

European Society for Trauma and Dissociation 

European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies 

Exploring the Nature of Traumatic Memory 

Family Association for Mental Health Everywhere 

Families for Depression Awareness 

Family Council - Empowerment For Families 

Find Your Local Trauma Center 

Foundations of Positive Psychology 

Freedom From Fear 

F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Down Syndrome Advocacy Group 

Friends for Mental Health 

Galloway's Society for the Blind 

Handicap International 

Health Psychology® 

Health Resources and Services Administration 

Human Behavior and Evolution Society 

Infinite Ability 

Information Sheet Bullying and Autism Spectrum Disorders 

International Bipolar Foundation 

The International Classification of Diseases 

International Consortium for Brain Mapping 

International Disability and Development Consortium 

International Society for Neuronal Regulation 

International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies 

International Trauma Studies Program 

Internet Mental Health (a database of links to mental health websites - not a professional organization - very old site, some links broken/some info outdated) 

Journal of Abnormal Psychology® 

Journal of Applied Psychology® 

The Journal of Injury and Violence Research (JIVR) 

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology® 

Journal of Rural Mental Health® 

Leaving the Mentally Ill Out in the Cold (newspaper/blog post) 

Learning Disabilities Association of America - Disability Rights and Advocacy 

Lew Goldberg's International Personality Item Pool 

Life Journey Through Autism Series, Organization for Autism Research (OAR) 

Lyme Disease.org 

M-CHAT 

M-CHAT Scoring Instructions

M-CHAT Scoring Template

M-CHAT Follow-up Interview 

Maeve: Psychiatric Service Dog and Mental Health Advocate 

Maine Autism Alliance 

Marriage Advocates - Infidelity and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder 

Mencap (The Royal Society for Mentally Handicapped Children and Adults) 

Mental Disability Advocacy Center 

Mental Health Advocacy Inc 

Mental Health Advocacy Services 

Mental Health America 

Mental Health for Youth in Armed Conflict 

Mental Health Services Locator, National Mental Health Information Center 

Mental Wellness Today (magazine - has large article database) 

MindFreedom International 

MIT: OpenCourseWare 

Mood Disorders Society of Canada 

Mood Disorders Association of Ontario -  Helpful Links 

Muscular Dystrophy Association 

Naropa University: Somatic Counseling Psychology 

National Advocate for People with Down Syndrome 

National Association of County and City Health Officials 

National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) 

National Alliance on Mental Illness 

National Association of the Deaf 

National Association of Special Education Teachers 

National Autistic Society 

National Centre Against Bullying - The Alannah and Madeline Foundation

National Center for Education Statistics 

National Center for Health Statistics 

National Center of Medical Home Initiatives for Children with Special Needs 

National Center for PTSD

National Child Traumatic Stress Network 

National Database for Autism Research 

National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities (NICHCY) 

National MS Society 

National Network of Adult and Adolescent Children who have a Mentally Ill Parent 

The National Professional Development Center on Autism Spectrum Disorders 

NCP Clinicians Trauma Update Online 

Neuropsychology Central 

NeuroScience Center 

North American Society for Childhood Onset Schizophrenia 

Office of the Children's eSafety Commissioner - Australian Government

Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services 

Open Culture: Free Online Classes 

Open The Doors 

Operation Autism for Military Families 

A Parent’s Guide to Evidence-Based Practice and Autism 

Parkinson's Disease Foundation 

Personality Theories 

Pet Partners - Denied Access, Now What? 

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - Patricia E Kefalas Dudek - Advocate For Elders, People With Disabilities, and Their Families:  

The PTSD Alliance 

The Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Alliance 

PTSD Research Quarterly 

Prejudice. No way! - NSW Government

Primate Handedness and Brain Lateralization 

Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy® 

Psychology of Violence 

Racism. No way! - NSW Government

Raindrop: Death Education for Children of all Ages 

Recovered Memories of Sexual Abuse: Research and Resources 

Reflections on The Problem of Psychic Trauma 

ReThink Mental Illness 

Retrieving, Assessing, and Classifying Traumatic Memories 

Sane Australia 

Schizophrenia and Related Disorders Alliance of America - SARDAA 

Schizophrenia Awareness Association of India 

Schizophrenia News and Information 

Schizophrenia Society of Canada 

School Accreditation, National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) 

Society for Neuroscience 

Special Education Advocacy 

Special Education Technical Assistance and Dissemination Network 

Spina Bifida Association of America 

Stress, Trauma and Sleep in Children 

Suicide.org 

Suicide Awareness Voices of Education 

Teaching Tips for Children and Adults with Autism 

Terrorism Injuries: Information, Dissemination and Exchange (TIIDE) 

Time To Change (personal stories about mental health stigma and discrimination, written by people with mental illnesses - updated daily) 

Trauma.org 

Trauma Clinic, London 

Trauma Intervention Programs, Inc. 

Trauma Pages 

The Traumatic Stress Centre (Wales) 

Trauma Survivors Network 

UCLA Brain Mapping Center 

United Cerebral Palsy 

UK Psychological Trauma Society 

University of Washington - Fact Sheets - Facts About Mental Illness and Violence 

Using Drawing as Intervention with Traumatized Children 

Visible Human Project 

VOR (formorly known as Voice of the Retarded; one of the oldest mental health advocacy groups, founded in 1983)  

Washington Autism Alliance & Advocacy 

Webcast Berkeley: online courses & speakers at UC Berkeley

The Whole Brain Atlas 

William Calvin's Page 

Young Children with Challenging Behavior 

Zero to Three 

Autism & Me:
The Squidoo Lens
10th Anniversary
(2007 to 2017)

During NaNoWriMo 2007's novel writing contest, a forum thread was started... a young author wanted to write an Autistic main character and asked on the NaNoWriMo forum if any one could tell her how to write a mental illness that she did not have and also knew no one with... the result was a 700 page non-fiction book, called "Autism and Me: On Being An Adult With Autism, A Look Into My Everyday Life."

Originally published on LuLu as a book for sale, a month later I unpublished it and released it as a free to read online series of articles on Squidoo. I continued to add new articles to the series on a near monthly basis in the 10 years since then.

The series of pages linked below, are those articles, the 2007 originals, the ones written in the years since, and the 2017 10th Anniversary updates on what has changed in the decade since those first articles were released.

Don't Know Where To Start?
Start With These Two First

A Plea To NaNoWriMo Overachievers: 
If You're Gonna Write Autistic Characters,
Then Stop Research Asperger's And 
Start Researching Autism For A Change!

"Can anyone tell me how to write characters with autism while avoiding stereotypes? Thank you."

Here is my response to a question from the NaNoWriMo forums on avoiding the stereo types when writing about characters with Autism:

My response, resulted in a 700+ page non-fiction book on living with autism. 

The response, went off into a rant, not because of the person asking the question, but instead, because of the 300+ Asperger's patients who responded to the question to tell her how to write ASPEGER'S characters, all while claiming their Asperger's was the SAME THING as Autism.

More then 2,000 forum posts were added to the thread, by these 300+ people, boldly spreading huge amounts of extremely inaccurate misinformation about what Autism is and is not, and helping to spread the urban myth that Aspergers is a type of Autism.

Sadly after taking 3 days to read every post on the thread, I finally reached the end to find that not even ONE of the more then 2,000 posts had given her ANY information about Autism.

My response is too long for one page, all pages are being linked to here:

Think you know what it's like to live with Autism?

You might be surprised how little you really know.

A look at REAL Autism and the myth spread by those with a self-diagnosis.

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