Morning, friends! For my contribution to the Hollow Blog this week, the topic is… me. That’s right. Me.
I actually have very little to say, but I’m trying to make more of an effort to keep this blog up to date, especially in weeks where we don’t have a chapter release, like this one. For those interested in this kind of little minutia, behind the scenes, Rowan and I are working on putting finishing touches on Chapters 7 & 8 for next Tuesday, as well as getting pumped for Chapters 9 & 10 the release after that. This morning before work, I also did a second pass draft of chapters 21-24, and continued in my first draft of Chapter 25. The estimated release date for Chapters 25 and 26 is in March 2021, so, as you can see, I’m still well ahead of the game…
But about me. I’ve mentioned in previous places on the site that Hollow Reign is near and dear to me, that I started penning it when I was about twelve years old. This is true. What I don’t think I’ve gone into detail on is what that really looked like.
I was not a terribly verbal child. I had the ability to speak and to mimic others quite well, but it took me much longer to really be able to put that skill into practice in a meaningful, communicative way. I later learned that this is rather common for people socialized as female on the autism spectrum. Whereas “normal little girls” are interested in people and human relationships off the bat, it sometimes takes folks like me, folks who often don’t even identify as girls (autistic people are prone to, at much higher rates, be trans or nonbinary), until much later in life to develop that interest–if they ever do.
So, instead of having a bright external life… I had these galaxies of mine that I tinkered around in. I know that probably sounds very sad, and in some ways it is, but it was truly not the sorrowful thing it sounds like. Hollow Reign, for me, was always a place that I could express myself and feel through the Worlds around me at my own pace. Sometimes, that ‘feeling’ included the development of complex laws and societies, or developing characters, or even cool story planning mechanisms. In true autistic form, what this led to in the physical world was a stack of drafts–21 of them, to be precise–of almost the exact same story, over and over again. Granted, many of those drafts look much, much different than what you see now. We’ve taken some seriously huge leaps away from the old content and done some major reshaping to bring you this, the final project.
So, let’s see… apart from that? My cat is my world. I love teaching. I dig Pokemon. I’m not much of a gamer, but if I was going to game, it would be Pokemon or Animal Crossing. And I swim. And that’s… about it, frankly. So yeah, that’s me, the writer.
Cheers !
Hollow Reign 