Living in a Noiseless World: A Deaf Poetry Book Shares What it’s Like to Be Deaf

 

It’s hard to write about a disability unless you have experienced that disability yourself. And while I don’t like the word “disabled” or “disability,” the fact is that deafness is a disability and being deaf makes a person disabled. That is the label which society has given to anyone who can’t hear, walk, see or speak. “Disabled.” And while I grudgingly accept this designation as I have navigated through almost forty years of living with deafness, I have not allowed that term to define me, or the life that I choose to live.

 

I have included Deaf characters in my fiction. I have written articles about deafness and on topics relevant to the Deaf community. I have also written essays about being deaf. Some of those things were published. I have written poems about being deaf, and so far, only a couple of those poems have been published.

 

Now people will have the opportunity to read many more of those kinds of poems, because at long last, after many years, my collection of deaf poetry has been published.

 

Noiseless is a collection of poems about deafness written by a deaf poet. These poems shed light on what it’s like to be deaf, as well as issues affecting the Deaf community. These poems also offer insights on relevant topics and reminders of the need to do away with ableist attitudes and ableist language in society. Ultimately, the poems in this book reflect a strong desire shared in the Deaf community: That we only want to belong and be a part of everything that our hearing peers get to be a part of. (And including sign language interpreters at important televised and public events sends the message that Deaf people are being included.)

 

I started writing poems for this book many years ago – I can remember asking someone for feedback on some of the poems in 2017. When I felt the manuscript was ready to submit, I sent it out – the publishers as well as contests which were held by publishing companies. None of them accepted the manuscript, even the ones which published books relevant to the disability community.

 

While these rejections poured in, I took the manuscript through another round of revisions. While working on these revisions, I stayed up to date on news and issues which impacted the Deaf community. Some of these news items I read inspired poems that ended up in the final draft of the manuscript that was eventually published.

 

At the same time, many of my own experiences as a Deaf person inspired many of the poems in this book. How I was moved to the back of a church because my ASL interpreter was too much of a “distraction” for those in attendance. How a hearing person would refuse to write things down for me when she spoke then got upset when I couldn’t understand what she was saying. And of course, the many times people have screamed into my ear after they were informed that I am deaf, as though talking louder would allow me to magically hear them. (There is a difference between deafness and hard-of-hearing.)

 

These are just some of the aspects of living with deafness which these poems explore. While the poems in Noiseless are not meant to capture what it’s like to be deaf for everyone (because not everybody who is deaf is able to speak, like I can, and everybody lives with their disability differently), I do hope that some of these poems are relatable enough to Deaf readers that they will find it enjoyable.

 

Many thanks to Crystal Baynam at Baynam Books Press for accepting this book for publication, editing it, and for the cover design. I also wish to thank everyone for all of their support for this book.

 

Noiseless is now available in ebook and print formats.

 

Here is the blurb:

 

Individuals living with deafness have existed for millennia, yet in today's world, we remain undervalued, misunderstood, discriminated against, stereotyped and underrepresented.

 

We constantly run into communication barriers, discrimination, ableism and misconceptions. For many of us in the Deaf community, we struggle with social isolation, finding it hard to fit in and be included in a world that prioritizes the ability to hear. The poems in “Noiseless” capture various aspects of what it's like to live with deafness.

 

These poems hope to show that deafness is not the tragedy which the hearing world claims it to be. Thanks to greater awareness of the Deaf community, Deaf culture, and Deaf-focused education, individuals who are deaf are at long last finally finding their place in the world, no matter what barriers remain.

 

We still have a long way to go, but together we can make society a more Deaf-friendly place to be.

 

And here is the link

Have Yourself a Toxic Family Christmas: NEW RELEASE of Home for the Holidays!

 

No, I am not ACTUALLY wishing this upon you. I am merely suggesting you read about a toxic family Christmas – in my new book!

 

I hope you have an awesome Christmas, if you celebrate it. And if you don’t? Please check out my new book anyway!

 

Some stories have a very interesting way of appearing to writers. They come as ideas, a feeling, a gentle nudge at our brain, a memory, an experience, an impression from something – or even as a scene!

 

That is what happened for me, with my new extreme horror novelette, Home for the Holidays. (Which is my FIRST extreme horror book! I am not new to writing extreme horror; I have done it with short stories. And I challenged myself to write extreme horror in a book-length story. I hope I succeeded!)

 

But, yes, this story came to me as one scene. The scene in question? A mother sitting at the table with her adult children and the three of them talking about what they wanted to do while they all had a break from school and work. That’s it! That was the scene!

 

So I wrote it. And at the end of the scene, the daughter says she wants to see Grandma, to which her mother looks at her with horror, then stands from the table and says “Absolutely not.”

 

Yep. That’s how the scene ended. And I was curious, too. Why was the mother saying they could not see her mother? Why did she want to keep her children away from their grandmother during Christmas?

 

These and other questions are what I pondered, explored and toyed around with as I tried to figure out the rest of this story.

 

One thing I observed during that particular holiday season that I wrote this story was that there were a lot of people posting online about how the holidays were not so cheerful for them, because they could not celebrate Christmas with their toxic families. I know people who have had to sever ties with their parents and siblings because of toxicity, homophobia/transphobia, or because of past abuse that seeps into the present. I myself have had to unfortunately sever ties with a couple of siblings who are toxic. (And, believe me, I have given them many chances, only because they are siblings. Family is hard, dammit.) This made me realize, you know, that not everyone gets to go home for the holidays.

 

And that’s where I got the title for my story. That’s also where the rest of my story started to unfold!

 

Toxic family + Christmas + the expectation (illusion?) of being with family during Christmas = the perfect Christmas horror story! I decided to make it extreme horror based on some of the things happening in the story.

 

I used some of my own experiences of past abuse from my dad in the story, and I combined it with other things I have read in books of abusive and toxic families, in creating the past of the mother of the adult children in the story. There’s also a dream I had of one scene in particular that I used in the story (writing that scene made me nauseous). And the amazing cover by the very talented Christy Aldridge of Grim Poppy Design gave me the nudge to write yet another scene. And, finally, an idea I had for another scene I added during the revision stage of this story came from my original idea of what the cover looked like.

 

But other than that, the story took on a life of its own. It’s definitely not the same story that was originally accepted by a publisher that now no longer exists but it ended up being the story I was satisfied with when it was published by Twisted Dreams Press on Friday the 13^th.

 

As a writer of horror, I challenge myself to try my hand at writing the different subgenres of horror. I will probably do the same when the time comes that I start writing fantasy, romance, suspense, etc. But for now, I am writing in the horror genre, and I’m happy that I made the leap to try writing an extreme horror book. It’s a novelette, sure, and maybe I’ll take it as far as writing an extreme horror novel at some point. For now, this is my contribution to the horror community, and I can only hope that it is a good one.

 

Blurb:

 

Mona Townsend was five years old when her mother tried to kill her father.

 

This crime cost her and her brother, Colton, 23, twenty years with their mother.

Finally reunited on one December morning, the siblings are willing to forgive all and create a fresh start with their mother.

With Christmas coming up, Mona wants to make the occasion extra special.

Knowing that her mother has had a long-term rift with her own mother, she and her brother hatch a plan: Why not surprise their mother with a family reunion so that the two women can bury the hatchet and have a relationship again? After all, if she was capable of forgiving her mother for the past, why wouldn’t her own mother want to set things right with her mother too?

It was Christmas, after all. A time for miracles and family.

But what Mona and Colton don’t know is that their mother had a very good reason for severing ties with her own mother, and that some families are too toxic to appreciate the holiday spirit.

 

Buy link

Redefining the Bad Girl: Triggered is a Collection of Stories of Teen Girls Recognizing Their Power

 

For years, girls have been told to be silent. To listen, not speak until spoken to, be submissive and stay out of trouble.

 

In other words, we have been told to be “good girls.”

 

But that shit doesn’t fly when being a “good girl” means being a doormat, getting trampled on, being abused, bullied, harassed and pushed around.

 

You know what? Screw that!

 

Girls need to stand up and make their voices heard. They need to make their boundaries clear, walk away from disrespectful jerks and fight for their rights.

 

This is especially true now more than ever, when females in this country have very little reproductive rights left and the government continues to keep trying to control them.

 

Being a girl is hard. Add being a teenager to that equation and it’s a recipe for chaos!

 

And that’s what the stories in my new book, Triggered, presents to readers who enjoy reading YA horror. These ten stories are about ten girls who fight back – one of them getting revenge from the other side! (This particular story, “The Soul Collector,” is an origin story for a YA novel I am currently writing.)

 

Filled with gore, bloodshed, murder sprees and hysteria, Triggered offers readers stories about what happens when someone awakens the beast within, unleashing the bad girl who turns deadly in order to seek justice.

 

Many thanks to my editor, Jennifer Horgan, for her hard work in helping me make the writing shine. Thank you also to my beta readers who offered valuable and helpful insights for these stories. And my cover designer, Ruth Anna Evans, for an outstanding cover.

 

Triggered was published by Twisted Dreams Press in September 2024 and it is available through Amazon, as well as Kindle Unlimited. Print copy of the book coming soon!

 

Here is the blurb:

 

The best kind of revenge is the kind that no one would expect.

 

Ten girls have been tormented by people who thought it was okay to hurt them. They never expected them to fight back.

 

But they do.

 

Not only do they fight back, but they delight in freeing their inner monsters on anyone who hurts them.

 

Ten girls who have been wronged. Who have been forced to conform. Who have been laughed at one too many times.

 

These girls find the power within themselves to fight back and get their revenge. And make their tormentors pay.

 

Here is the buy link