Special Interests and Writing (AKA How I Got The Ideas For My Books)

 I mentioned in my first post that my stories are largely inspired by my own life. This post digs a little deeper into that. I am mainly inspired by my special interests to write.  Not always, but a large chunk of my writing stems from my special interests. Here's a little delve into the world of my books...

Rainbow Balloons

Hoo where to start with this one??? Like the story itself, my relationship with balloons and balloon fetishism is a long and complicated one. Basically, my special interest was balloons. I say 'was' because it's a minuscule part of my life at the moment. When I was sixteen, I did a Google search for balloons for the first time. What came up was literally dozens of balloon fetish sites. This caused a lot of upset in my family and, long story short, I ended up moving away.

Fast forward to 2014 and I was wondering what to do with my life. As mentioned before, I had tried many things but nothing seemed to work for me. So I turned to writing. They say 'write what you know' and that's exactly what I did for Rainbow Balloons. It follows Anna, an at the time eighteen year old autistic woman with a passion for balloons. Anna's autism makes her very naive, and she unknowingly goes to work for a balloon fetish website. The story was very loosely based on my own experiences (and I say 'very' loosely as I've never met a 'looner' (balloon fetishist) in real life before.) Poor Anna goes through a lot during the series, and some of the contents within the books may be triggering, but if you want to read it I'll leave a link here.

The Fan

The Fan series was a lot of fun to write, mainly because it is inspired by one of my biggest special interests. I've been obsessed with the children's character Basil Brush since I was ten years old, and honestly the obsession has never gone away. (It's more than okay to like things meant for younger people!) Anyway, as I got older and I found him on Twitter, we've built up quite a friendship. I'm very lucky to have him. 

So The Fan follows Amber as she travels halfway across the world to find her idol, Jonas James. Jonas isn't very popular at the start of the series, and Amber helps him find his way back into the spotlight. Jonas and Amber eventually begin a relationship (every fan's dream right?) I love this series and it's become something so much bigger than what it first was. The link for the first book in the series is here

First Post - About Me/My Writing Story

 Welcome to my new blog. I hope you like it here. I had a blog before but it kind of got abandoned, so I thought I'd start a new one. For this first post I thought I would explain a little more about me.

 My name is Asten. My pronouns are she/her and I live in the UK. I got diagnosed autistic when I was four, but didn't find out personally until I was nine. 

I started writing properly about seven years ago (as of 2021). I haven't always been good at writing, and in primary school I would get very frustrated in English class for not being able to come up with an idea for a story. 

When I left school I went to college and took an Art and Design course (I've always enjoyed being creative). I got my Level 2 but in the second year I had some health problems and had to go into a mental health hospital for two and a half months. It ultimately led to me being withdrawn from the course.

When I got out of hospital I moved into a care home, which was about seventy miles away from my home in Suffolk. I attempted college three more times while I lived there. I always failed though and so I was at a time in my life where I was kind of stuck.

I knew of a few people online who had self published their own books. I decided this was the route I wanted to go down. I took some creative writing courses (home study) and really honed in on my writing skills. Then in 2014 I wrote my first book, Rainbow Balloons. It was loosely based on my own experiences. I have since written two more entries in the Rainbow Balloons series and am currently working on a fourth.

In 2018 I got an idea for another book. It was called The Fan. I also wrote a few sequels to this book and again, I am currently working on another (I'm not crazy I swear!)

My books tend to be based on my own real life, or at least inspired by it in some way. I think it makes writing more fun, and realistic.

This blog will feature musings about being autistic, being an author, (or a combination of both), and general life updates.

Hope you like the blog,

Asten xxx