I don’t know if anyone here is interested, but I’ve been quite busy online in places that are not, actually, here and are borderline queer at best. Before I go back to finding ever more hellish ways to describe Tes’s adventures in a cobweb-enshrouded gnome-inhabited tower in the hope of giving you a chapter this weekend, I thought it would be nice to talk about what else I’ve been doing. As you might have noticed, the word autistic has become fairly significant in my language and expression. In addition, the nature of exactly how I am queer without gender (although still assuredly genderless) has changed and evolved. These things and a little less depression have given me all manner of new things to talk about!

I spend a lot of time on Tumblr these days. It’s interactive, one of my best friends is on it and the autistic community is amazing. My personal Tumblr is me talking about me, by and large. Mostly rants, crafts and random asides interspersed by rants. If you’re interested in me when I’m not trying to be vaguely psuedo-philosophical or writing fiction, well, here I am. There’s a lot of hate for Tumblr’s hate of the word queer and photos of things I make. I only update when I have something to talk about (quite like this blog) so I won’t spam your dashboard.

Because my personal Tumblr feels like a diary and I wanted somewhere to reblog cool and thought-provoking things that aren’t mine, I made a Tumblr blog just for reblogging. If you’re not interested in me but you are interested in what I find interesting, this is the place for you. Mostly queer, disability and autism things ranging from discourse to positivity.

One of my passions – I think special interest, in the autistic sense, applies – has become stim toys. At first, it was just trying to track them down here in Australia. Then, because everything for sale on etsy stores was too international to be affordable and my life revolves around making shit – be it narrative, website headers or craft items – I had to try making them myself. Then talking about where I found stim toys and how other Aussie stimmers might get their hands on them became a thing … at which point it seemed pretty obvious that this interest needs its own space. Stim Toy Box is about collating information on finding, reviewing and making stim toys. The ever-growing tag list is an attempt to make all this information easy for other neurodivergent people to find and use. This takes most of my online time, these days, but the reception has been amazing. To have other people ask me questions or engage with the information here (both created by me and collated from other stimmers who review and discuss stim toys) is the most flattering thing.

What, you thought I was done with the absurd alliteration? As I said, I started making my own stim toys. Tumblr is good for many things, but long, image-heavy posts are not one of them. As I’d invented a toy or two of my own, and found a new way or two to make other toys, and had my friend asking me to write tutorials, I needed somewhere to do it. This isn’t like to be updated too often, but I have half a dozen tutorials in the works (read: photos sitting on my harddrive waiting for Photoshop). For those who have made it this far down the page, my first tutorial on bead ring necklaces doubles as pride jewellery, so for all those wanting to make pride accessories for those orientations and identities forgotten by crafters, you have an option! (If you can find grey pony beads. It took me months to find grey beads for my aro pride necklace.)

So that’s me. I’m probably never going to do Facebook or Twitter or all the other things writers are supposed to do. I’ve only got so many hand spoons. But I am around, doing things that involve abusing stock images, if you’re interested in who I am in spaces not here.

As for my writing, I’m trying to write Kit March and line edit (still) Great Aunty Lizzie. (It has occurred to me that Abe is pretty autistic. It has also occurred to me that Steve is autistic in the entirely opposite direction.) I’m also, sporadically, working on the first draft of What Was Meant To Be A Short Story And Is Now A Fucking Novella (Or Novel) with the working title of A Courtship of Magpies, otherwise known as The Book Where Darius And Efe Very Badly Take Down An Evil Lord And Figure Out Their Relationship. I think it’s an aro romance. (Or Darius thinking that, despite what the belt thinks, he doesn’t feel any inclination to romance … and now has to deal with a man who tries to make up for all his gaffes on the matter of Darius’s autism with grand romantic gestures. A man Darius likes … just not quite that way. Just in ways Efe thinks are quite that way but aren’t to Darius.) Writing an aro romance, though, is super fun. It’s a delight to have a character feeling everything I have in romantic situations!

Since, however, I suspect that posting two posts in a row that aren’t about Tes and fingernail-sized blood-sucking gnomes (who brought a civilisation to its knees) is a little bit cruel, I’ll hit “publish” and go back to writing about March’s inability to nail shut a door.

But not before I marvel at the fact that I’ve written a post in less than a thousand words.