Hey Joy, I got Phangs on a whim after years of struggling to Do Novels and i guess adhd decided it liked this one and ANYWAY. You've written a character I didnt know I needed in Nathan - the way he responds to disability, and his family's response to said disability, is so intimately familiar to my own struggles as the Gifted Child with late diagnosis ADHD, I cant thank you enough - I don't know if it was intentional, but you've given me a protagonist that's like me. Thank you.
Hngl. It’s amusing me no end the sheer number of people with ADHD/some flavor of neurodivergence, telling me this is the first book they’ve been able to read in years. It’s almost like the overwhelmingly neurotypical landscape of publishing is inaccessible to us, or something.
And as much as I like to joke that I put most of my ADHD personality into Vlad... Nathan is my lived experience with disability. His arc was intentional and important for me to show because I have never read anyone like me either.*
At least, not in a way that wasn’t in some way fetishizing or tragic. And... yeah.
Nathan is important to me. And it means the world to know he resonates with so many people. Thank you for letting me know. It means a lot.
*Spoilers under cut*
