I have dyslexia. The only times it was a hurtful hindrance were when I was in grade and high school. I solved those issues by dropping out and leaving home. Dyslexia reared up again as an issue in college when professors insisted I "learn to spell." I solved that problem by dropping those professors. Dyslexia meant I learned to read and write differently than most people; it became a "superpower" when I started understanding that I saw solutions for pattern-related problems that others missed. Dyslexia made me wealthy because it helped me solve technical issues by simplifying complexity. It also helped me tell and write stories differently. My stutter helped me find the right, small words. But I never learned how to spell, and often my grammar follows the paths of sound rather than the hallways of rules.

I remember when the Hearst publication Redbook purchased my 2nd story. I received a letter from their fiction editor congratulating me and saying something about my story having the most spelling mistakes of anything ever accepted by Hearst. That same letter said, "That's why we have copy editors." My novel, "Paper Targets," was published in February. I had a few great editors (especially thank you to Eric!!). But I don't think of dyslexia as a hindrance, rather, it is more of a superpower because it has helped me see the world in a way that is different than most see it.

Dyslexia has always been a major part of my life. So much so that the main character in my novel 'Paper Targets' suffers from severe dyslexia in the same way that I did. His dyslexia, for good and for bad, lets him see the world differently and is a prominent theme in the book. From the very first lines, I describe what my protagonist, Enzi, went through and also how his dyslexic view of the world shaped him:

"My first secret was that I could not read. And yet my earliest joy was listening to the murmuring of my mother as she read to me. We sat on a couch, a book shared between us, and I remember leaning against her. I also remember trying to touch the words, their shimmering mystery, as she held and guided my hand back and then slowly forth, beneath the lines....

"As I grew, letters kept flipping, reversing, and tormenting me. When I tried to explain, I st-stuttered. But looking at trees, the clouds, or the cracks on the sidewalks, I saw patterns that did not have to be deciphered or explained. And those patterns flowed into each other. Looking up, through the branching limbs of an oak, into the turbulence of a storming sky, then looking down at the rain splashing at my feet as I walked home from school, I felt connected to what I then had no words for...

"But my days alone, facing the bullies at school who were drawn to stutterers like me, or, conversely, being ignored by teachers who avoided those of us who struggled to read and talk, made me fidget. My inability to read or write, my dy-dyslexia that turned my vision into a forever migraine-aura, and frightened my speech into a st-stutter.

"When I wasn't in school, I would walk in the woodlands that divided the suburbs near where we lived. Among the trees and brush -- the White Oaks and the Tulip Poplars, the Sumacs and Dogwoods -- I found something that substituted for friendship. In the green and yellow light that filtered through the summer foliage, or among the shadows of the grass-dry mottled autumn days, patterns and shapes would form and dissolve as I walked. In those narrow strips of neglect behind the houses and the apartment buildings, those places where forgotten kids went to throw rocks and bottles or smoke weed, I fit in by walking by. I wanted to stop, to talk and listen. To learn the names of the other lost kids I saw, but instead, it was enough struggle to learn the names of trees."

Clearly, I wrote these parts from experience, though if you do read more of my novel, I assure you that I have never killed anyone nor hacked for money. (Though I have known a few that have). #

Paper Targets

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