Mark interviews Riley Odell, an autistic writer of horror, humor, and bizarro stories. As an autism/neurodiversity advocate, Riley is working on a speculative fiction anthology about neurodiverse characters written by neurodiverse writers called Divergent Realms: Speculative Stories About Neurodiversity.

Prior to the interview, Mark shares a personal update and a word from this episode's sponsor.

You can learn more about how you can get your audiobooks distributed to retailers and library systems around the world at starkreflections.ca/Findaway.

During their conversation, Mark and Riley talk about:

How Riley first started off writing by creating silly comic strips back in the third grade, moving to prose fiction by the time he was about twelve years old, and has pretty much been writing ever since
Years of working on various unfinished projects, but having found a groove just a few years ago
The ways in which his wife has helped Riley with his writing
Riley's two short story collections (Vile Visions and Odd Ordeals) and his novella entitled My Weird Nightmare Baby
How landing on the title Vile Visions felt perfect
Being drawing to writing speculative fiction because Riley has long been a reader of those genres
Inspiration from the world for writing horror and the types of horror that appear in Vile Visions
How comedy and horror work on two different sides of the same coin
The anthology Riley is reading for and publishing, Divergent Realms, and how it was inspired
Why a call for neuro-divergent writers only is important
The honor system for submissions that include a cover letter explaining how neurodiversion applies to them
The types of stories Riley is hoping to receive for the anthology
The submission window (June 1, 2023 until the last day of August 2023), the story length requested (2000 to 5000 words)
Where, online more can be found out about this anthology (horrortree.com) and the email to send submissions to (divergentrealmsanthology@gmail.com) and what payment will be offered for submissions
Riley's connection to the Odell Brewery in Fort Collins, CO (which Mark nerds out on)
How Riley will be doing a bit of work with Melissa Dalton-Martinez of The Book Break
The expected timeline for the release of the anthology, which is spring 2024
How writing with Autism and ADHD is never made easier, but can sometimes be made easier, including strategies like taking a lot of basic writing advice with a grain of salt
How forcing yourself to write when you're not ready to write can create a negative association with writing which makes things worse
Advice Riley would offer to other writers
And more...

After the interview Mark reflects on Riley taking a solid DIY ethic to fix a hole in the publishing world, as well as the importance of adapting advice into something that works best for YOU in your particular situation.

Links of Interest:

RIley Odell is an autistic writer of horror, humor, bizarro and stories about autism. He is the author of the books Vile Visions, Odd Ordeals and My Weird Nightmare Baby. As an autism/neurodiversity advocate, Riley is working on a speculative fiction anthology about neurodiverse characters written by neurodiverse writers called Divergent Realms: Speculative Stories About Neurodiversity.

The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast ("Laser Groove") was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Love Cares