Stephen King said, “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” I don’t know many pro writers who disagree with him. We might debate how much reading is enough, and I think a lot of us struggle to find time for writing, reading, and the myriad other things we have to do to live. To me, that competition for time makes the time that I do have to read more important.

I’m a science fiction writer. Right now, I write military sci-fi thrillers. My debut novel, PLANETSIDE, came out in 2018 and the sequel, SPACESIDE, released in late August. I think it surprises people when I tell them that the biggest influence on PLANETSIDE was GONE GIRL, by Gillian Flynn. If you happened to have read both, you’re probably thinking to yourself”¦but wait”¦PLANETSIDE is nothing like GONE GIRL.

Of course it isn’t. Yet, here we are.

It was late 2014 and I’d just given up on a fairly bland fantasy novel I’d written in third person from three different points of view. It wasn’t exactly *bad* but it definitely wasn’t good enough. I’d had a kernel of an idea for this science fiction book in my head since I got back from Afghanistan””just a few notes that I’d jotted to myself while deployed””but I had no real plan to do anything with it. I was a bit burned out and had taken a few weeks off from writing. As I often do, I used that time to read. A critique partner of mine had just read GONE GIRL and recommended it. I read one chapter and I was hooked”¦the voice just exploded off the page.

That was it. That story idea in my head”¦it needed to be told in first person, and it needed a lot of voice. I sat down that night and wrote a short first chapter (that has subsequently been deleted) and sent it off to my most trusted readers. They loved it. They wanted more. Fast forward nine weeks and I had a first draft.

The influence didn’t stop there.

I didn’t start out to write what I did. In my mind, PLANETSIDE was going to be military science fiction. It’s set in a military science fiction world, and that’s how we market it (mostly), but I was as surprised as anyone when it turned into more of a mystery. I’ve come to love my twists. My hope when you sit down to read one of my novels is that I throw something at you that you don’t see coming. And who does that better than Gillian Flynn? Maybe Nelson Demille in THE GENERAL’S DAUGHTER, which was another influence.

Even the voice of my main character owes some of its origin to mystery, taking a big cue from noir. I love Kristen Lepionka’s mysteries”¦I think we employ similar voice. I don’t think a reader has to be a noir fan to enjoy it, but I think taking elements that are fairly standard in one genre and translating them into another can feel fresh. We know a lot of the tropes of the genres we read most”¦and we love them”¦that’s why we read the genre. I think sometimes flipping the script on those tropes can be interesting too.

I’m not saying to avoid reading in your own genre. Not by a long shot. I probably read three books in sci-fi or fantasy for each one I read outside. But there are writers doing great things in every genre. By branching out, you might find something for your writer kit bag that you can use in a new way. It just might be the thing that makes your book stand out.

About the author: Michael Mammay is a science fiction writer. He is a retired army officer and a graduate of the United States Military Academy. He has a master’s degree in military history, and he currently teaches American literature. He is a veteran of Desert Storm, Somalia, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His debut novel, Planetside came out in July, 2018, and was selected as a Library Journal best book of 2018. The audio book, narrated by RC Bray, was nominated for an Audie award. The sequel, Spaceside, hit the shelves on August 27th, 2019. Michael lives with his wife in Georgia. You can find him on twitter (at)Michaelmammay or you can visit his website (note: website is michaelmammay dot com…don’t want to include a link in the email for risk of it going to spam)

When Lack of Social Grace Crosses the Line

An autistic responds to “The Shealy Logs” (Burgin Mathews, No Depression, Spring 2020)

In “The Shealy Logs,” Burgin Mathews relates the story of John Shealy, who created decades of logs of performances at the Grand Ole Opry. There’s a wrinkle: in 1999, police found that he’d “stalked, harassed, or bothered” 89 women. His lawyer obtained a psychological evaluation, and Shealy was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome.

At the time, Asperger’s was diagnosed as a developmental disorder distinct from, but related to autism; the most recent edition of the DSM collapsed them into a single category, Autism Spectrum Disorder. As opposed to autism, in Asperger’s, per the Autism Society, “there is no speech delay.” The diagnosis also excludes intellectual disabilities. Some individuals with Asperger’s are profoundly gifted: Bill Gates, musician David Byrne (lead singer and songwriter for the Talking Heads), and the late Derek Parfit, one of the most prominent philosophers of the contemporary era, are prominent cases.

Recently, in an online forum for adult autistics, a young man posted about being kicked out of places for making women uncomfortable. As it turned out, this young man was looking up women he’d met on Facebook to make romantic overtures to them. I explained to this young man that what he’s been doing is cyberstalking.

This man found little sympathy from his fellow autistics. The responses, many of them from women””and female autistics, though less visible, very much exist””emphasized that it was his responsibility to understand what he’d done and correct his behavior. He protested that he can’t figure that out if no one will tell him what he’s doing wrong. Again, little sympathy: we emphasized that he just had to figure it out. I went so far as saying that, if he didn’t correct his behavior, he needed to curtail his interactions””up to the point of locking himself in at home.

“The Shealy Logs” also mentions that John would not accept his diagnosis. The article quotes him as writing, “There’s nothing wrong with me.” He then violated the no-contact list that was part of his release, trying to make personal apologies for his behavior.

Neither of these is acceptable. Refusing to take advantage of his diagnosis meant that Shealy also refused to investigate the resources that were available to help him learn about and improve his behavior. No disability, including autism, can excuse a failure to meet basic obligations to treat others in a respectful manner that recognizes appropriate boundaries. If autism makes it more difficult to do that, then the answer is that you work harder and find a way.

When I shared Shealy’s story in the same online forum, one response was that this stalking behavior can’t be related to his autism, that it would have to have been due to a comorbidity. I wish this were true, but it’s not. While this behavior is unusual and deeply aberrant even within the autistic community, autistics””especially autistic men””can be prone to violating social boundaries. Combined with the intensity of interest that autistics tend to develop, this can lead to some ugly outcomes.

As a child and teenager, I crossed that line three times. In grade school, I biked over to the house of a classmate in the next town after looking up her address in the phone book. My freshman year of high school, I put a friend up to calling a neighbor girl who I had a thing for. And my senior year of high school, I badgered a girl’s friends to give me her phone number.

The last two resulted in blowback that shaped me permanently. The neighbor girl’s mother came to my house and gave me a severe verbal lashing. The second incident followed a two-hour phone conversation that, had I not screwed up, was probably headed to me dating a girl I had a years-long crush on.

I learned hard, and I learned well. Like any other group, people on the autism spectrum have different capacities for learning. Mine is pretty good, and once a lesson is hammered into me, it sticks.

Even when I’m not violating social norms””and I’m pretty good about that””I can still make people uncomfortable at times during interaction. I speak too loudly, or I stutter, or I laugh like a hyena, or I am “making a face,” as my mother likes to say. My affect tends to read as “a coiled spring that did a giant line of coke.” Especially now that I’ve met other people like this, I realize just how very unsettling that can be. (I’m not sure if it counts as irony, but autistics can be put off by other autistics just as much as neurotypicals can.)

I know that, despite my best efforts, I will make a mistake, and it will be some degree of spectacularly cringeworthy. I have a memory like the subject “The Shealy Logs,” so I know that, after it happens, I will never forget. This, as one might imagine, leads to fairly severe social anxiety. I’ve gone to parties and even spent entire days at conventions without having a conversation. I’m not good at knowing when people are approachable, and if I’m not certain it’s acceptable to approach, I don’t. For a few years, I came back from Capclave with many of the books I’d lugged around in my backpack unsigned, until I finally””maybe someone explained it to me””learned the etiquette around signing requests. (As it turned out, that there was a “mass signing” did not mean I couldn’t ask in other circumstances!)

There are books I may never get signed because I wasn’t willing to go out on a limb. I’m fine with that. I’ve accepted that I will miss some opportunities because I’ve chosen to act with an abundance of caution. I exclusively try to meet potential dates online, because I don’t trust myself to work out what’s acceptable IRL (in the last 13 years, I’ve broken this rule once, but only after a woman clearly indicated her interest by striking up a conversation). The equation here is I’m that losing out on far fewer real opportunities than I am preventing someone being made uncomfortable.

Most people on the autism spectrum will never engage in any kind of stalking behavior, and we overwhelmingly do not accept autism as any kind of excuse for that behavior. Unfortunately, like autism itself, there is a whole spectrum of bothersome behavior, which can range from barraging people with undesired (but, honestly, mine are HILARIOUS) puns to genuinely creepy behavior (had I gone through with my idea of hiding in the dark basement outside my roommate Gennady’s room, waited for him to come out, and hissed, “I’m the leprechaun, don’ ye steal me pot o’ gold”). These can be hard things for some autistics to get their head around, because they inherently rely on someone else’s subjective state of feeling bothered or threatened. But””to hammer home a point””the autistic community overwhelmingly believes that it’s on us not to make others feel bothered or threatened.

BIO: Mark Engleson is a hunchbacked, autistic aspiring fiction writer and former stand-up philosopher who works as a technical writer/government consultant in Arlington, Virginia, leeching off the bloated carapace of America. He regularly posts on Twitter as @MarkJEngleson, providing updates on his life, which he describes as “a stack of flaming tires in a trolley in a collapsing mine shaft.” His music criticism can be found at ParkLifeDC and Lyric Magazine.

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