Big Plans for 2018

English: Podcast or podcasting icon Français : Icône pour les podcasts ou la baladodiffusion (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Autistic Me Podcast is coming! My microphone and mixer sit on my desk, waiting for me to record the introductory episode, which I will make available in January if all goes according to plan. The podcast will begin without any guests, but that will change if I can build an audience. Podcasting requires some extra effort, from preparing cover and episode artwork to publishing the RSS feed for iTunes and other services. I’m hoping the extra effort helps make The Autistic Me available to more people. I do plan to transcribe episodes, lightly edited, and post the text to the standard blog, too.

With the podcast and podcast transcripts extending the reach of The Autistic Me, I intend to increase my activity on social media. We have a Facebook page for The Autistic Me and a neglected Twitter feed (@autisticme). The Facebook page growth stalled at 950 followers and the Twitter account stalled at 850. If you want to help build the audience for The Autistic Me, please follow us on social media. My wife and I will be working together to improve the value of everything that is The Autistic Me with more posts and more personal reflections.

If you have topics you’d like to hear addressed during a podcast or explored on this blog, please contact me via the Facebook page.

The podcast start will lead in to the release of the 2018 revision to A Spectrum of Relationships, an ebook I released in 2011. I hope to release the update over the current edition so any current owners of the ebook can receive the new edition. Then again, at only $0.99, it isn’t a major purchase for most readers. The handful of reviews are mediocre, which has bothered me. We spent a lot of time editing and reviewing the material, and we are investing more time and energy in the 2018 revision.


As a writer and professor of rhetoric, few professional rebukes could sting more than a mediocre review of my writing. The irony is that I’m never satisfied with my writing, either. What’s wrong with writers that we doubt ourselves yet respond poorly to negative reviews?

Also, I co-edited a book this year (2017) with Dànielle Nicole DeVoss, Type Matters: The Rhetoricity of Letterforms, which is now available on Amazon ($100 hardback, $60 paperback). You can visit the Parlor Press website at parlorpress.com for information, too. This marks my second “real” academic publication, with the first being a chapter on course accessibility for students with special needs. That chapter appears in Making Space: Writing Instruction, Infrastructure, and Multiliteracies edited by James P. Purdy and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss (she’s amazing).

Writing about designing virtual spaces and texts for students with special needs demonstrates one of my areas of expertise, adding to the authority of The Autistic Me content.

One of my goals with the expansion of The Autistic Me is to debunk myths and misperceptions about autistics. There is a myth that autistics have one or two areas of perseveration – a nice way to say we’re expected to be obsessed with things. In academia, a professor is expected to have one or two “specializations” instead of a variety of interconnected areas of interest.

Increasing the frequency of blog posts, preparing a weekly podcast, updating a book, and maintaining social media won’t be easy. I’m also busy looking for a day job to fund my various plans. There are also some (huge) family things we hope to resolve in 2018, which will add to the value of the podcast and blog.