Doing it alone is overwhelming-especially when that loved one is a child. I never thought about all the experiences I had as a child being significant, but it turns out they all helped turn me into the writer and storyteller I am today.Ĭaring for a loved one with cancer is tough. With Love Comes Around, I pulled on what I learned from a childhood friend whose parents died and he was raised by relatives. When I was writing Love Means… No Boundaries, I listened to violin music over and over, blind folded so I could in some way feel what Robbie felt. Early on I wrote a character who raised sheep and goats for wool and milk.

Actors often have methods to get into character, I do the same when I’m writing. You must be able to place yourself in someone else’s shoes, at least for a while.

I do research, but as a writer, one characteristic that’s essential is empathy. I’m told over and over that I must do a great deal of research because I get the details right. I myself am not blind, deaf, mute, or in a wheelchair and I’m asked repeatedly how I can write characters that seem so real. Everyone deserves to find a great love, someone who will care for them above all others, regardless of outward appearances for challenges. And I hope that attitude comes through in my stories. I think it was that experience that showed me very early in life that people are people and a difference (I hate the term disability) is largely irrelevant to the person inside. We had fun and figured out our own ways of playing. I was young and can barely remember him, but I do remember that it didn’t matter. He could read lips and we played together as children sometimes. One of her friends had a grandson who was deaf. She was a successful career woman at a time when women rarely worked outside the home. My grandmother was a very progressive woman. As a kid and a writer to be, I was blessed with family friends who had survived polio, but got around using wheelchairs or braces and crutches. This means gay men who are blind, deaf, in wheelchairs, and mute to name a few examples. However I feel it’s equally important that other members of our community are represented. There are plenty of gay romances that show gay men in every profession possible.

One theme that is very important to me is that everyone deserves to seethemselves in a book. The first three in audio versions and book 4 in ebook format.Īndrew Grey talks about Inclusion in his Books Details below.īethany will post her review of ‘Love Comes Silently’ (Senses 1) today and will post the review of another book in the ‘Senses’ series each Wednesday for the next three weeks. Read Andrew Grey’s Guest Post about Inclusion and win an eBook of his ‘Senses’ series.

Love Comes Home by Andrew Grey