CTP (S3EOctSpecial9) Autism, Fantasy, And Finding Your Voice

CTP (S3EOctSpecial9) Autism, Fantasy, And Finding Your Voice
[BOOKS / AUTHORS Weeks - Week 2 sub-episode 2 (Tue. 20251021)]
We sit down with author JM Shaw to talk about the Callum Walker fantasy series, neurodiversity, and the craft choices that make myth feel human. The talk moves from masking and sensory overload to plotting, publishing, and how creativity becomes a lifeline.
• why “what if fairy tales were real” became a series hook
• moving from pantsing to plotting as worldbuilding deepens
• writing mythic creatures with human emotions
• autism, ADHD, masking and late diagnosis
• sensory overload, stimming and anxiety management
• journaling, dictation and night‑note workflows
• avoiding early deadlines to beat writer’s block
• identity over “cure” and embracing different brains
• marketing as “showing we exist” through readers and schools
• where to find the books and how the pen name fits genre 

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening And Books Authors Weeks
• 1:52 Meet Author JM Shaw
• 4:10 Life In Canada And Early Writing
• 5:54 OCD, ADHD, Anxiety And Coping
• 7:41 Dyslexia, Dictation, And Writing Habits
• 11:14 Avoiding Deadlines And Writer’s Block
• 11:42 Origin Of The Callum Walker Series
• 13:34 Themes: Self‑Acceptance And Family
• 16:55 Fantasy As A Mirror Of Reality
• 20:20 Fear Of Heights And Emotional Realism
• 22:24 Personal Interests Shaping Characters
• 24:57 Late Autism Diagnosis And Masking
• 27:46 Scripts For Social Skills And Parenting
• 30:21 Neurodiversity, Identity, And Creativity
• 35:15 Journaling As Catharsis
• 37:40 From Typewriter To Publication
• 41:01 ADHD, The Spectrum, And Daily Function
• 45:17 Sensory Overload And Meltdowns
• 49:15 Marketing By “Showing We Exist”
• 51:24 Where To Find JM Shaw’s Books

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:19

Welcome to Constitutionalist Politics Podcast, aka C T P. I am your host, Joseph M. Leonard, and that's L-E-N-A-R-D. C T P is your no must, no fuss, just me, you, and occasional guest type podcast. Really appreciate you tuning in. Graham Norton will say, let's get on with the show. Hello everyone. Welcome to Books, Authors, Weeks. October of 2025. I had Health Weeks in February 2025. I had a Music Weeks, three of those in the month of March 2025. So here we are October. I have a lot of fellow authors I have the chance to have discussions with. So Books Authors Weeks October 25. Without further ado, let's head into a discussion with a fellow author. Hello everybody. Welcome to another Christitualist podcast. Joining to meet joining to why does this always happen to me? I could talk fine until I hit record. And then the brain and the mouth refuse to cooperate. Joining me today, JM Shaw. J for Jennifer. Yes? Yes, correct. Okay, JM Shaw. And it says here on my notes, JM Shaw lives in Airdrie, Alberta. Did I get that right? Airdrie? Okay. Which is in Canucastan land, for those who don't know. Shout out to my other friends up in the great white north, despite my joking Canucksan land. I love Canada. I used to vacation there all the time, but I've already gone off the rails and off track with her husband and two young children. She and her family embarked upon a journey of understanding, acceptance, and lifelong learning when they discovered their shared diagnosis of autism and ADHD. And you are the author of several books: Caleb Walker and the Ascension, Caleb Walker and the Convergence, Caleb Walker and the Fractured Veil. And that all part of the Forsaken Souls series, or is Forsaken Souls a book on its own?

SPEAKER_01: 3:15

Forsaken Souls is the fourth book in my Callum Walker series.

SPEAKER_00: 3:19

Okay. All right. Now that we got that out of the way, let's back this garbage truck up. Beep, beep, beep. Who is JM Shaw? We we know where you're living now, but where were you born and raised? And you know, if you weren't born and raised there in Alberta, what made you decide to move? How much time have you spent in prison and for what? That kind of nitty-gritty.

SPEAKER_01: 3:50

Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, I was born in this teeny tiny little town in northern BC that's not even on most maps. I think there's like 300 people in the town. I'm the oldest of five kids. I'm the only girl. I thought my sole purpose in life was to babysit, and I made my brothers pay. And I moved to Alberta because there's no jobs in BC. And I met my husband in Alberta and he moved from Ontario. So we met somewhere approximately in the middle and met and married and had kids. And I've always been a lifelong dreamer. And I've been writing for over 35 years now. And it's kind of been started as my hobby, became a passion. Now it's just cheaper than therapy.

SPEAKER_00: 4:29

Oh, I hear you on that. I I write in part as hobby part therapy part. I know other people need to hear this stuff so they know they're not alone. Right. And for the record, BC is British Columbia connectistan land for you know people in southern states, unlike me on Detroit, with Windsor, just literally, I could almost throw a stone across the river and hit somebody on the head over there. They they you know they don't know their geography up there.

SPEAKER_01: 5:06

Yes, I forget, but yeah, BC. We all know BC means British Columbia, but yeah, I forget that not everybody knows that.

SPEAKER_00: 5:12

So yeah, and BC is north of Washington State, Alberta is north of what U.S. state for reference.

SPEAKER_01: 5:23

Like Idaho, probably around there, like so Idaho is BC, and then right next to BC is Alberta.

SPEAKER_00: 5:30

Exactly that's exactly what I was going for there. Indeed, and I don't want to belittle the ADHD thing, but in part, or some might argue the whole reason I'm on disability now since 2004 was OCD mild on the spectrum slash ADHD mild on the spectrum, but in IT constantly on call and awakened in the middle of the night. But every night I try to go to bed, or if I get awakened in the middle of the night, try to go back to bed. The OCD ADHD, like I'd go to Nana's kitchen and oh, there's a picture missing. Either please put up a picture or take the nail out of the wall. You're driving me crazy. Or at night, you know, somebody mentions karma for a random thing. Oh, do you know Rick Springfield's song about karma? I gotta hear that now. It'll be in my head all day, or random weirdness. Someone mentioned groundhog for whatever dumb idea, right? Oh, now I gotta see the movie Groundhog Day, or it'll drive me crazy till I do. But I'm not on meds for those things, but those things led to my stress breakdown and my immune system somewhat crashing. Thankfully, it hasn't led to that kind of catastrophe for you yet.

SPEAKER_01: 7:09

I've had uh a lot of problems with anxiety and depression throughout my life, and that was one of the diagnoses of the first generally go hand in hand, yes.

SPEAKER_00: 7:19

Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt.

SPEAKER_01: 7:21

That's okay. I mean, uh just within the last uh 12 months, or I guess it was a little more than 12 months now, I was I found out that I also have dyslexia, which makes writing really interesting.

SPEAKER_00: 7:32

Well, the good thing is now we can all cheat. And by cheat, I I have several shows that no, don't use AI to create your content and pretend it's yours. That's not the kind of cheat I'm talking about. I'm talking about you can use Google Assistant or Alexa or Microsoft Word. There's a dictate add-on where you can vocalize it, but of course, the auto-destruct, not auto-correct, I call it auto-destruct, right? Doesn't get I I find that in like in my how to write a book and get it published. One of the hints, tips, and techniques I have is you have your phone with you everywhere. Pull off to the side of the road when you have a thought, dictate yourself an email with your thoughts, your text, your your dialogue, your whatever's in your mind, and email it to yourself. Then you could copy and paste it into your manuscript, and then it needs a lot of cleanup. I find like just the other day, I'm working on my CTP4 book. I hope it'll be out by the time this airs, and I dictated something, and I'm reading back the sentence, and what was I trying to say there? I certainly didn't, you know, mean what it says I said there.

SPEAKER_01: 8:57

Yes, I have the whole I know I was going somewhere with this, but I lost my train of thought. Most of the time, it's just because I'm writing my notes in the middle of the night because I wake up and I have thoughts in my head, I have to write them down. So if I didn't write, I would never sleep.

SPEAKER_00: 9:12

Yeah, you and I are kindred souls. I didn't get to bed till six o'clock this morning because once I started writing things, I'd go to bed. Oh, get back up, write some more. Go to bed, get back up, write some more. It was like, oh, now I gotta finish and release this book, or I won't get any sleep.

SPEAKER_01: 9:34

Yeah, and I know it's terrible because I post self, I impose like deadlines on myself that don't really need to be imposed. And I I get I become anxious about them. And my husband will have to remind me, it's like, you know, you don't have to have that done by then, right? That's just the arbitrary deadline you've placed for yourself.

SPEAKER_00: 9:53

Thank you for saying that in how to write a book and get it published hints, tips, and techniques. There's a deadlines chapter, and I go into that. Do not impose a deadline before you start writing. Wait till you're near the end of the book, then you consider okay, well, maybe two months from now is my deadline to have it to the publisher or self-published if you're doing that, whatnot. Yeah, imposing an early deadline, you hit the nail on the head, you just stress yourself more, and it could cause more writer block because you've pressured yourself.

SPEAKER_01: 10:40

Yep, yep. I don't know about you, but I I deal with writers for me to be able to overcome writer's block, it helps me to know what's causing it. If I can figure out what's causing it, I can usually get past it.

SPEAKER_00: 10:53

And there's of course more than one thing that can cause a writer's block. Again, just the fact the very fact that you set yourself a deadline. Oh, I'd like to have 10 pages a week. Ah, stressed. No, no, I can't write one page this week, right? Or or other reasons, but so let's talk about it as a series. What inspired the first in the series that then led to where we are now, Forsaken Souls, which will be the fourth in the series? Yep, yeah, but let's go back to that first.

SPEAKER_01: 11:36

Well, but yeah, so I was watching a show on Netflix called Merlin. I'm a big fan of like the round knights, the round table, King Arthur Merlin. And I was watching this show on Netflix called Merlin, and I'm like, I have an idea. And my series kind of started with that, and then I was kind of formulating in my head, and I have a I always start a a new model model novel. Sorry, I can't speak either today, with a question.

SPEAKER_00: 11:59

I I've rubbed off on you. Yeah, it's contagious.

SPEAKER_01: 12:03

Yes, we're our minds are working faster than our mouths, our mouth can't get it.

SPEAKER_00: 12:06

That's part of the OCD A D H D thing, yes.

SPEAKER_01: 12:11

But I know the question that I asked before I started the series was what if fairy tales were real and the monsters were flesh and blood? We just didn't know it. What would that look like and how would that come about? And then I kind of this story idea just sort of started to percolate and sort of wrote itself. When I've when I start my started my first few books, I knew where to begin, where to end, and approximately what needs to happen in the middle. As I've dived deeper into my series, there's a lot more details that need to come through. I'm turning more into a plotter than a pantser. So I'm plotting more in depth as I go. And but it's really it's a story about, and I had to have a reader point it out to me. So my series is about self-acceptance, the importance of family friends, learning your strengths and accepting your weaknesses, you know, growing up and finding your place in this world. And I had a reader tell me that my my series arc mirrors my journey with autism a lot. I hadn't I hadn't thought about that. I had to have a reader point it out to me.

SPEAKER_00: 13:11

Well, as I also in how to write about what you know, fictionalize things, and indeed, of course, fantasy is in. And most myths have at least some grain of truth to them, or they wouldn't have been created as a myth, right? We're discovering more and more historically the roots of the myths of how they type like Merlin, right? He wasn't a complete segment of somebody's imagination, he existed. What his actual abilities were is arguable and debatable, right?

SPEAKER_01: 13:55

Yeah, and where his you know, the details of his life and stuff as we know it from the Arthurian tales may not necessarily be exact, but there might be some truths that people have woven fiction into. Yeah, fairy tales are people trying to life.

SPEAKER_00: 14:12

Yeah, it's like one of my latest books, The Book of Kennedy, I'm wearing the shirt. I wrote this about life and living, and indeed, you know, trying to get through in this fallen world. It's right not fantasy world-based, but you know, fiction about that. And I also just recently released a kind of companion book with a male lead rather than a female lead called a short story, a lasting legacy question mark. Kind of the same though, about life and living and the contemplations. And in it, I I say on the back, it is a boy genius wordy more or less, and ask more or less questions about life and why we're here and those sorts of things. But I mention a lasting legacy book because I write in journal style, right? I take snapshots of what I say are from his journal, and I say that to say this, as you said about Merlin, we don't really know because it's not as if he kept a diary or a journal that we could base memoirs or a biography from to really know his inner self. And exactly, and fantasy deals with reality, but trying to remove some of the hang-ups of this particular world by putting it in a fictional fantasy land, you can deal in the nitty-gritty of the details of the subplot you want while in part distracting people with the other fantasy stuff that that did, they don't get hung up on the, oh, this person's living in Detroit or Toronto or Vancouver, British Columbia, and all of a sudden, if they have ADHD or OCD, they're they're picturing the space needles and hung up on all that other stuff, yes.

SPEAKER_01: 16:31

Well, we like to place ourselves in something familiar and see something familiar in what we're reading as well. And I know I focus a lot on like characters and making them as real as possible and the emotions that I present in not just my human characters, because mine is a high fantasy, but also in my, you know, mythological creatures, you know, they have a lot, they have human emotions too, so we can understand how they feel, but they also have different traditions, different cultures, different, you know, religious beliefs, different, you know, ideologies and thoughts and understandings that would differ from us as well. But the emotions are the same and people can connect to the emotions.

SPEAKER_00: 17:10

Yeah, you're you're kind of making my point about the reality aspects in a way hit home more, register more, because those are the things that really hit connectivity-wise, while the fantasy stuff they uh indulge in, and oh, that's great, that's wonderful, but there's no dragon in the next city over, right? So focusing on those main aspects that are the core important pieces of your subplot and the morals to your story, yes?

SPEAKER_01: 17:52

Absolutely. But I mean, like people don't want to listen to wholesome messages, they don't want to listen to life lessons and those kind of things. But if you place them in an adventure setting that keeps them entertained and stuff, they can still get those lessons and be entertained. And going back to you know, you use the dragon example, and and I'm gonna layer that with the emotion example as well. I don't know what it feels like to fly on a dragon, but I know what it, I know what feeling scared of heights is, and and I can express that. I can imagine it, and I think that that's what connects the readers to the fantasy is that we want to see something beyond the mundane of our own lives.

SPEAKER_00: 18:30

Yeah, I I think you and I both share, I uh and I don't want to use fear of heights, but an antipathy. I don't know if that's actually the right word to use here, and being antagonized by being up high. I'm usually okay if I'm locked in, like the stratosphere in Vegas, 110 floors up. As long as I'm in the restaurant standing at the glass, I'm okay. But the minute I go up to the roof, trying or the Renaissance Center in Detroit, which is in the background behind me, I was on the rooftop once for a Fourth of July display in downtown Detroit, and being a hundred plus floors up outside, there's people sitting on the edge with their legs over the edge, a hundred plus stories up. And it's like, and I'm trying to crawl to the edge to look down on it. I can't do it. I and now they're talking about airplanes with glass bottoms so you can see out while you're flying. No way I could do that.

SPEAKER_01: 19:47

I'm terrified. I I I literally I really am terrified of heights, even just the thought of I I'm scared of flying. I didn't fly until until oh gosh, 2013 was the first time I ever flew, and I was terrified the entire time.

SPEAKER_00: 20:01

Where'd you go to? You went from Alberta from Alberta to Ontario. Ah, okay. So you were kind of out my way a little bit. What part of Ontario were you? Most this will lose most people, but saying I used to vacation on Sparrow Light by Aurelia, aka uh, you know, home of Native Sun, R. I P Gordon Lightfoot. So where did you go in Ontario? You flew into Toronto, but where did you go?

SPEAKER_01: 20:33

Yeah, we went to London, Ontario. We went to Niagara Falls. Uh, we did make a trip to Toronto. I'm not a big fan of big, big cities. So I live near Calgary in Alberta, and that's about as big a city as I ever want to see.

SPEAKER_00: 20:46

Are you a rodeo girl? Is there rodeo stories in your fantasy? Is there like a rodeo of dragons? That'd be an interesting theme.

SPEAKER_01: 20:55

I'm a very big fan of like nature and I love hiking, I love biking, but I, you know, I I I don't like the typical, like, I guess what you know, in my time they would have called them girl activities. Nowadays are just activities, but I I like airsoft, I like martial arts, I like paintballs, I like I'm a personal, you know, I trained to be a personal trainer because you know, it was cheaper to become one than it was to ever pay one. You know, those are the kind of things that I like. And I I take those interests and I put it into my story. I also worked in healthcare and I see people at their worst, and it gives me an understanding of human nature and my interest also. I was studying in psychology before I became a mom and kind of side, you know, side railed my my career at the time or my education towards a career at that time.

SPEAKER_00: 21:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 21:47

You know, it's it's uh all these little life lessons that I learn, I apply to my writing.

SPEAKER_00: 21:52

Well, a key in podcasting is repetition. So again, I'm talking to JMJ Jennifer, JM Shaw, a Kanuka Standinglander, Callum Walker and the Ascension, Callum Walker and the Convergence, Callum Walker and the Fractured Veil, and now Callum Walker and the Forsaken Souls. I take it, is the fourth. You said you're working on a fifth, but I want to pivot to the when were you diagnosed and how is it dealing with? I I I would I shouldn't say this, but right, don't judge a book by its cover. But I dare say you seem low on the autism scale. When were you diagnosed? And or is it your husband that is, or your it was my sons who were diagnosed, and I I tend to hide it a lot.

SPEAKER_01: 22:54

I don't know if you know much about the girls, they tend to hide it a lot, and that's why it's a lot harder for women to become diagnosed. But when we were going through the ADOS assessment with the registered psychologist for both of my boys, and we were looking at what they consider to be red flags, and I was like, those are red flags? That's what you're I've done that my whole life. I mean, my my like, yeah, exactly. Like, I learned to hide a lot of things. I count license plate numbers, I count steps, I count cars.

SPEAKER_00: 23:24

My that's also considered autism, but I so OCD is kind of in the autism spectrum.

SPEAKER_01: 23:32

There's a lot of crossover in a lot of different things. I also did a lot of stimming behaviors, and stimming are repetitive behaviors that you do to calm yourself down. I'm stimming now, but you can't tell because my hands are down here. So I'm like turning my ring or I figure with my ring all the time. Yes, yes, yes. I I used to hook my my feet around my my chair, chair legs when I was a kid, so I wasn't like tapping my knees and my legs and stuff. Because, you know, I just I didn't want people to know I was different. I never struggled in school. So when I was a kid, unless you had learning disabilities, they didn't care, they didn't really notice, you know, unless you were disruptive, it wasn't really you weren't didn't weren't really given a lot of attention. I never struggled in school. I excelled actually when it came to math and science.

SPEAKER_00: 24:22

Um the rain man, right? My O C D A D Rain Man movie comes to mind, right? Yeah, the the autistic genius in a sense, yeah. Unless if you're on that part of the obvious scale or learning disabled part of the scale, or indeed the disruptive portion of the scale, like you said, it kind of gets glossed over.

SPEAKER_01: 24:51

Yeah, and I know I come up with my own strategies to adjust, like I didn't know how to talk to kids. I I was terrified, I didn't know how to start a conversation. So I would take notebooks and I'd write down. I was like, okay, so-and-so said this. Oh, this was the answer. Somebody smiled. That must be what I need to say when somebody says this to me. I made my own script in to communicate with other kids. I remember eye contact was difficult for me. I felt like if I'm looking at somebody in the eyes, they're peering into my soul. It was very uncomfortable. But I would force myself to do that. And it be it became more of a game in my mind, like a challenge kind of thing where okay, I one 1000, two, one thousand, three, one thousand, okay, look away.

SPEAKER_00: 25:34

Right. Yeah. Too short is you're inattentive. Too long, you've become a stalker.

SPEAKER_01: 25:42

Yeah, you're a little yeah, you're starting to come off as a little creepy, yeah. There were kids, I mean, socializing was hard with with with kids because as you get older, it becomes a lot more challenging. You know, there's a lot more dynamics to social interactions and stuff, and it became a lot harder to use my script, so I had to adjust. But all these things that I learned how to do for myself, I was helping my boys, teaching them how to interact with other kids. And my oldest was really bad with you know, not knowing how to start conversations. He wanted to have friends, and he would walk up to kids in the park and just sort of stall right there, right in their face. Like, I want an action to happen. I want to talk, but I don't know how to start it. Or there'd be two kids talking, he'd come and stand right between them. And, you know, they can't not see him. So I had to start telling them it's like, okay, when you go up to a kid, you say, Hi, my name is I want to play. Do you want to play? Or you start, you know, the script. We, you know, I learned to develop my own script. I helped him to develop his.

SPEAKER_00: 26:39

Be actor and act a role. So yeah, yeah, yeah. You want them to be themselves, but not quite be themselves. I I know it's it's it's a difficult thing. Uh, what are your thoughts on Maha? And would you like to see it come to Canada? Because now we're starting to talk about a particular drug that might, if not cure, at least help symptom-wise with autism. And indeed, this we don't need to push so many vaccines. When I was a kid, we got a dozen vaccines. Uh, now it's like four dozen, and a lot of those things are well, it's not relevant to your sexually active. You don't need that at six years old going into kindergarten. That can wait, because the mercury in some of these, we need to move to a different preservative. And I understand the reasons why they originally put it in there, but all these years later, mercury's gotta go. Something else has to go in it to protect the vials and the vaccines and spread these things out. If it isn't a cause, it is certainly not helping.

SPEAKER_01: 28:06

I would be reluctant if even if it was something that was guaranteed to be safe. I don't want to change who I am. This is me, this is my brain, this is how it works. And I'm I've tried really hard not to look at autism and ADHD as a disability. It's a different brain, you know, your brain works differently, but it also allows me to think differently. And I I think in what ifs and I imagine scenarios, and they there's somebody I can't remember who it was that was said, but that people on the spectrum are the ultimate out-of-the-box thinkers. And I know something that's in, you know, that's definitely with me.

SPEAKER_00: 28:43

I was desperately looking around for the behind the scenes video people to grab a box as a prop. Exactly. Outside the box, yes.

SPEAKER_01: 28:55

I I certainly wouldn't be as creative, and I've certainly I probably wouldn't have come up with, you know, I mean, junior high and high school is hard enough as it is, unless, you know, now it adds some anxiety extra anxiety and social communication issues and stimming behaviors and emotional dysregulation to it, it becomes much harder. And but creativity was my saving grace. If I like I started writing during the time when I was getting picked on, I was getting, you know, really badly bullied and authardic.

SPEAKER_00: 29:26

Yes, absolutely. I I use that in the a short story, a lasting legacy sentence journal entries. I want, you know, that's a a tool that's been used by endless writers, but it's the first time I ever used it as a creative tool, and I indeed express that. Indeed, you know, this can be cathartic for you, even if no, you never make use of that journal ever, other than cathartic to work things through to treat that journal almost. In fact, I joke about it in the book, dear journal, right? Is this silly? You can't respond, but it is still at least cathartic for me to vent these things.

SPEAKER_01: 30:15

Oh, yes. So that, yeah, that, and that's exactly that's why I. Started writing. I mean, I was going through a period of life where I was I was heading into teenagerhood and I had lots of questions. My parents were getting divorced at the time. I was stuck, you know, babysitting brothers all the time because my, you know, some my mom, we were living with my mom. My mom had to work, I was the oldest. And I wrote because I needed to understand life. If I was getting picked on in school, I didn't necessarily know what to do. So I would live vicariously through my characters and how did they deal with it?

SPEAKER_00: 30:47

I never intended to care because in my the book of Kennedy, Life and Living about There Too. Also, I I talk about how Kennedy, the female lead, comes across Bullseye the Clown, and also the rapper DPB in his song Peer Pressure, both to introduce the point of bullying, and there's a character, Natasha, who bullied Kennedy when she was younger, and she, you know, where is she now? And those sorts of things. And you wouldn't be you. I I I am hesitant to say this, but I'm sorry. Bullying is kind. I had a bully, you know, it's kind of a part of life in a way. And without that, you wouldn't be you and who you are. You see in them who you don't want to be.

SPEAKER_01: 31:48

Yes. Well, and it's not so much the bullying, it's how you deal with it that changes who you are. And writing was my was my escape. My mom, I started writing actually in a typewriter because I'm that old.

SPEAKER_00: 32:01

And yeah, you know, I'm I turned 63 this year. You're nowhere near my age yet, but I know I didn't know. I'm not asking you to out your age, but never ask a woman her age or her weight, right?

SPEAKER_01: 32:16

That's a smart philosophy. Yeah, no, I did a presentation for grade five class, and I told them I started on a typewriter. And after an hour of going through like what's a typewriter? That was the problem I was asking. It was a five hands went up. What's a typewriter? Oh yeah, you stuck on that, did you? Yeah. But that's how I started. And before that, it was notebooks, and I would just jot down scenes and and little stories and stuff like that. And then in 2019 was when I was diagnosed. And I thought, maybe writing is my special interest. I don't know if you know, like on the spectrum, everybody has like their special interest, something that's like, you know, they excel at that, you know, it's something that they hyperfecture. Exactly. So I thought writing, maybe that's it. So I got brave and I had sent, I just finished the ascension and I said, I'm gonna get brave. I'm gonna send it to an editor. The worst they can say is it sucks. And if they do, then I know I'll write for myself. But they came back and they said, This doesn't suck. You should publish. So two years later, I did.

SPEAKER_00: 33:43

That's good. That's good. All right, let's let's pivot to the ADHD, expound, and then we obviously got to get back. We're get God knows how many minutes in, according to the uh like 20 minutes in, and we haven't really spoken a whole lot about the books, but a lot of what gravitated me to want to talk to you was the autism and the ADHD thing because people need to know they're not alone, people need to hear these things. So expound on the ADHD thing.

SPEAKER_01: 34:17

ADHD has a lot of similarities with autism, and I I don't know how much truth there is, but I was told by somebody that it's now on the DSM V along with autism. Um I don't know. DSM Vlad a category of certain uh of different uh neurodiversities that go along with autism or similar to autism or have enough crossovers that they consider them part of that.

SPEAKER_00: 34:42

And that's where the term scale comes from. Yes, different classifications in your X low end, middle, or high end of the scale and the spectrum.

SPEAKER_01: 34:54

Yeah, I know what I know that I have a lot of people say, well, aren't we all a little on the spectrum? And that kind of, you know, that's that's kind of frustrating because you know, if we're driving down a highway and one of us is in a truck, the other one is in a on a motorcycle or a bicycle, you know, we're technically both drivers, but we're gonna have different challenges, you know, to see very well put. Yeah. So, you know, it's it's like, yes, we're both drivers, right?

SPEAKER_00: 35:21

That's that's that's the way my brain goes right now. I'm here, I'm going off the rails again. Like I like to joke. Good analogy, a good metaphor. Although I like to joke, I'm too clever for metaphors, I use meta sixes, but I'm bumped. Anyway, yeah, drivers, yeah. A bicycle, a car, a motorcycle, a truck, 18-wheeler driver. Those were flying cars, they're different.

SPEAKER_01: 35:54

Yeah, but we're all drivers. But when our challenges begin to impact our lives, making it difficult for us to function on a daily basis, that's when it's different. That's when we're not the same. And I know that a lot of people on the spectrum and with ADHD, you know, we struggle a lot more with like anxieties because we don't understand the world around us. Can you imagine being in a conversation where, you know, you're only catching like every other word, but you're you're listening to this conversation, but you're also hearing the fan in the corner or you're feeling a scratchy tag in the back, and you're feeling every single sensation that you can possibly feel. You can't filter any of it out, it's gonna cause you a lot of anxiety.

SPEAKER_00: 36:32

Yeah, oh, I'm glad you mentioned right. Like my sister runs a fan, she loves it to help her sleep. It's like, are you kidding? I'd be obsessed at the sound of the fan all night. I would never get to sleep.

SPEAKER_01: 36:49

I need silence. And you see, I'm I'm I use the white noise because I have two very, very loud boys. One of my sensory issues is if there's a lot of extra noise, it causes me a lot of anxiety. You know that nails on a chalkboard that people, you know, when you just say that, people say, sometimes there's there's certain sounds or smells, or you know, like the blue LAD Christmas lights and their afterglow. That's my nails on a chalkboard. And it causes a physical sensation. And you know, so it's not just uh, oh, it's annoying, it's I'm literally feeling sick.

SPEAKER_00: 37:28

So the fan is is not great, you'd rather not need it, but it helps distract from the other things that would be worse.

SPEAKER_01: 37:39

Yes, yes, exactly. So I mean it's not a it's a band-aid, you know. But I can't, I'm not gonna, you know, I can't quiet my boys sometimes.

SPEAKER_00: 37:47

So, you know, hey, you're right, kids, kids and my own point. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 37:54

Telling my so I I explained to my boys what autism is because both of my sons have autism. My husband has not been diagnosed, but we suspect that he may be on the spectrum somewhere because he presents a lot like me. So I think that's probably why we get together.

unknown: 38:09

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 38:10

But I know I tried to explain it to my boys what autism and ADHD is, and I've kind of coined the term. It's like it's like it's almost like a superpower, you know. We don't miss anything, it's like our computer with every single possible program open.

SPEAKER_00: 38:22

If you imagine you're you're a web browser and you've got hundreds of tabs, there's mine, those are I I've got five browsers, not just one browser with a dozen tabs. I've got five all with a dozen tabs open. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 38:38

Ultimate multitasker, you're not doing one thing well, you're doing a million things subpar, you know. But then eventually, you know, it can be very overwhelming because you're trying to, you know, you can't shut any of it out. You can't, you know, imagine the the little X in the corner is gone. You can't turn any of it off. And eventually your computer is gonna have to, you know, blue screen, squirrely wheel of death, you know, and that's that's when you you just basically have to reset.

SPEAKER_00: 39:04

But oh do I knew all know all this? And as a former IT guy, I I again I love the meta six. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 39:13

I'm trying to use examples for my kids that they would understand. And they're, you know, they're of nine and eleven now, so they're starting to get into computers, and they understand that you know, you overload your computer or you click too many times, then it will freeze up on you and stuff. And our brains are just like computers if you think about it, and there's you know, so much capacity.

SPEAKER_00: 39:31

They're organic, yeah, cray supercomputers, yes.

SPEAKER_01: 39:36

Wiring and stuff, but you know, there's this, it's basically what the autism and and the ADHD is our brains cannot filter, we cannot shut things out. If there's some noise that's annoying us, we cannot not focus on it. If you're in a mall and you have hundreds of people around, they're all talking at once. You can't focus on that person sitting right in front of you. You're hearing and seeing, and and some of those things are causing you physical reactions like the nails on a chalkboard, you know. So it it becomes very overwhelming. And I think that's that's that is what causes, at least in my opinion, in my experience, that's what causes a lot of meltdowns in um you see in bingo, like at the top of the show.

SPEAKER_00: 40:16

My A C D O C D A D H D led to the stress breakdown and the immune system shut down. And yeah, exactly. Okay, now that we're drawing nearer time to conclude, let's actually get to the books. I digress a lot, so go ahead and so I I mean you kind of already explained, and I like the idea, and again, how to write a book and get it published. Everybody's got a story. You yeah, you know, John Doe doesn't want to write a memoir. Nobody cares about John Doe, but if John Doe writes a fictional story based on things in his life dramatized and fictionalized, it can help others. There's markets for that, it's just whether the person giving it and the person needing it come together. So, your point and purpose for writing these is great and wonderful. How how are you on the marketing and promotion end of the getting the well that person could really benefit from my book, but how do I make sure they know about it in the Talem Walker series with the fourth now being Forsaken Souls? How's that going?

SPEAKER_01: 41:49

It's going good. I mean, I started out right off the bat by saying, I don't like that word marketing, it's terrifying. I don't know what it means, I don't really understand it. I'm not a marketer, I'm a branding.

SPEAKER_00: 42:00

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 42:01

And instead of saying marketing, I saying show the world I exist. And so this is where I'm going from, from this mindset. And so I'm presenting, you know, like I have my Instagram, I got my Facebook. I'm telling people about my books. I'm doing book signings. I love connecting to them. I'm doing talks at schools. My books are available on Amazon. I have a website, you know, and I'm reaching out to the world to tell them that my books exist.

SPEAKER_00: 42:24

Getting to that point, the obvious last question is do you have a website? You already said, what is the website?

SPEAKER_01: 42:34

www.jmshawauthor.com. There's my books are all there. You can read about them. I have links to them to find them online. They're available as a print on Amazon, on Kindle, on Cobalt. The first two are on Barnes and Noble ebook if you're in the US.

SPEAKER_00: 42:51

Nook. Yeah. Barnes and Noble is a nook for the ebook. Yeah. Yeah. As opposed to Amazon ebook is the Kindle, and Apple ebook is the Apple books. Yeah, of course, everybody's gotta have their own term. Part of their branding and marketing. So indeed, yeah, jmshaw author.com. I mean, a lot of authors do that with their name for their site. Like I have Joseph M Leonard.us instead of Joseph M. Leonard author, josephm. Leonard dot us, and I have terror strikes, a book specific terror strikes.info. Is there a calamwalker.info or a book specific site? It's all through jmshaw author.com.

SPEAKER_01: 43:49

Yeah. Yeah, I know I use my initials, JM Shaw, because there are a lot of female authors in the fantasy genre that write romanticy. And I don't write spicy romance. I have elements of romance, but my books are young adult, new adult crossover. So teens and twenties, magic fantasy, action adventure, some supernatural suspense kind of all sprinkled in for good measure.

SPEAKER_00: 44:09

Yeah. You know, and that's always a concern, right? Before you publish your first book, you have to look. Is somebody with the same name as me already writing? I right? Whereas like I am Joseph M. Leonard. It looks French. It's not Leonard, it's Leonard without an O, but I have to use my middle initial because there is a Joseph Leonard, who is also a Christian author out of South Carolina. Had I published my Terror Strikes book in 2006 when it was first conceived, I could have just been Joseph Leonard, but he beat me to that. Gotta put the middle name in there because he first published in 2010, I think it was.

SPEAKER_01: 44:58

And I'm sure there's hundreds of people out there that are also named Jennifer Shaw. I actually had somebody contact me and their name, they found my book, and their name is Callum Walker. And I thought, that's so cool.

SPEAKER_00: 45:10

So, you know, I mean cool, you need to meet that person.

SPEAKER_01: 45:14

Yes, of the pond. So I think we'll someday maybe get over there, but you know, I mean, glad they come like that.

SPEAKER_00: 45:23

They're over in Canada, they need to look you up. Yeah, I've reached out to Joseph Lonard in South Carolina, he never gets back to me. And indeed, I get emails every once in a while. In this book, what did you really mean by that? Sorry, I am not he, he is not me, and you will not confuse either of us for Shakespeare. I like to joke. So uh yeah, you hinted at so have you gotten emails uh for another Jay Shaw?

SPEAKER_01: 46:00

Not for Jay Shaw. No, I haven't gotten emails saying, Oh, are you this author of this book? No, I haven't gotten that yet.

SPEAKER_00: 46:06

Okay, you know, I I but you had that great wonderful experience of a how did you come up with the name that begs the question now? If there is a Callum Walker and it's not about his life, how did you come up with that name?

SPEAKER_01: 46:23

Well, Callum was actually on my list of baby names. My family is Scottish-Irish, and I married into a Chinese family, and I wanted to have a here a name that would reflect my side of the family. So my husband didn't like Calum. So we went with Morgan and Avery, and I still love that name, so I thought I'd make a character. And then his last name, Walker, is because he's on a journey, so it just made sense. I mean, it has nothing to do with the fact that my pediatrician's last name is Walker, you know. I didn't realize that one until the end. I was like, oh, wait a minute.

SPEAKER_00: 46:55

Yeah, I I have always been partial. My ex-wife and I never did have children, but I had always thought, and I'm not one of those environmentalist wackos, I'm a conservative. I believe we need to care for the planet, but we are given dominion over the planet by God to be the caretakers and use aspects of it for our own well-being and advancements. But I I say all that because if I ever had a girl, for some reason I fell in love with the name Corine Terra. Caress, which is obvious, Corine, combining love and caress, terra, the earth, right? Corrine Terra. And I'd always meant to use it in a book, but I haven't yet. You haven't written that book yet. Right. And again, yeah, I guess maybe it's a little out of fear because if I if I do use careen terror, people will automatically think, oh my god, this is a green piece nut.

SPEAKER_01: 48:12

Not necessarily. Give it a couple decades and people will forget.

SPEAKER_00: 48:16

At any rate, thank you, Jennifer, JM Shaw, JMshaw Author.com, for coming on talking about books, writing, health issues. I appreciate that we speaking of spectrums, we covered a broad spectrum of topics. Yes. See what I did there, people, right? Very clever. I'd like to think I'm clever again to the metaphors. I'm too clever for metaphors. I use metafixes. Anyway, it was great talking to you. Thank you. Take care. God bless.

SPEAKER_01: 48:58

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00: 49:02

For tuning in to books. There will be several different books, authors, several different authors, books, authors, weeks for October of 2025. And remember, you can check out my books at Josephm Leonard.us slash shop. And again, Joseph M. Leonard, it looks French. It's French, it's not Lennard, it's Leonard without an O. And I have to put the middle initial in there because there is a Joseph Lennard, who is also a Christian author out of South Carolina. So I have to make that distinction. And going in line with books, authors, weeks, I've joked as guests on other shows. I am not he, he is not me, and neither of us will be confused for Shakespeare. And frankly, most writers out there are not going to be confused for Shakespeare. They're not trying to be. Available anywhere books are sold. If you have hopefully run bookstores still near you, they can order it for you. And let me remind, over time, the fancy high production items will come. But for now, a starter, it's just you as a very appreciated listener by me. All substance, no floor, just straight to key discussion point. A show that looks at a variety of topics, mostly politics, through a Christian U.S. Constitution plan. So again, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Take care. God bless.