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Adapted

Over the past seven years, I have written a book about my life as a disabled man living within the realms of mainstream society. Disability remains somewhat of a taboo in 21st century Britain but hopefully some of my life experiences will inspire the reader to think differently about their own perception of disability.

Below is a mock up of what a finished copy of the book could look like

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I had always wanted to write an autobiography, it was something I dreamed of from an early age. Adapted is the story of my struggle and success of adapting to mainstream life. Following my parents’ fight to have me attend mainstream school, to my mainstream schools fight to have me attend university, to my now fight of finding and keeping a reliable and strong care team to help me compete on a level with mainstream society. That’s really why the book is called Adapted… I’ve never really been forced into being ‘different’, but things have always been adapted. Growing up with an able bodied twin sister meant that I always strived to keep up. Adapting to and overcoming obstacles, challenges and barriers has always been part of my life and I like to think that’s made me a little bit of a different take on the world and probably contributed to my bad language and dark sense of humour. Adapted is a story of adversity. Adapted is a celebration. Adapted will hopefully help other people who have been dealt the same, at times, crappy hand as me because Adapted, if nothing else, is two massive fingers to everybody who said that this couldn’t be done.

So, armed only with a dream, I set about writing Adapted, my story. The process began in about 2011 and was slow at first as a result of needing my carers to act as a scribe for my uttering’s. But in 2013 I got an iPad and for the first time was able to write on my own! I’ll be honest, this was even slower than a scribe but it felt great to be able to create my own work for the first time in my life and with practice, I got faster on my iPad. I spent the next 3 years writing the book on and off whilst pursuing other ventures and had a year off whilst writing, recording and presenting my documentary Following The Money (Click here to see more). In 2017 I set about contacting some literary agents and to my delight, someone liked it! It was explained that it needed some work to get to industry standard but it was just the incentive I needed to carry on with the book. That pretty much brings us up to now. Right now, the book is done (hopefully) for now and my agent is planning where we go from here. With a bit of luck, 2018 will be the year that Adapted transforms from a dream into a reality. As a little sneak peak, here are a couple of small readings of the book… Don’t say I don’t do anything for you!

[Insert audio files here]

 

In regards to everything else – Interviews, Blogs and other projects, everything will be continuing as normal as much as possible! I am turning some of my attentions to my book to do my best to make it as good as it can be but this will not mean the end for Beyond The Title. In fact, quite the opposite! We already have some amazing names lined up to interview and I am looking at different things to blog about. We will be improving the quality of interviews as well as reaching more people than ever via social media. Click below to go to our Facebook and Twitter pages and make sure you follow! Interviews can now also be found on Youtube and iTunes by searching “Beyond The Title”.