Do you see (or think of) the alphabet as a rainbow of colours, even when it’s printed in black and white? Do numbers have genders or personalities to you? When you think about the months of the calendar, do you imagine them floating in space around your body? . If so, you may have synaesthesia — the same sensory phenomenon that’s shaped the life of Alison Jeffries, the narrator of my YA paranormal thriller ULTRAVIOLET. . I first learned about synaesthesia thanks to Peter Himmelman’s song by that name, which intrigued me with its line “I hear the colours and I taste the sounds.” The idea of having cross-wired senses was fascinating to me, so I started looking into it and discovered that it wasn’t just a kind of poetic metaphor as I’d thought, but a real neurological condition that affects approximately 4% of people worldwide. There’s even a theory that all infants are born with synaesthesia and lose it gradually as they grow older, which to me makes a lot of sense because babies are very easily overstimulated! . Alison’s perceptions and symptoms in the book are unusually acute for a synaesthete, for reasons that become clearer over the course of ULTRAVIOLET and its sequel/companion novel QUICKSILVER. And though her extraordinary perceptions add colour and richness to her life, they can also cause her to lash out in panic at bright lights and loud noises. That’s how she ends up in a psychiatric institution for teens, desperately trying to prove her sanity and regain her freedom while secretly worrying that she might not be as sane — or safe — as she wants to believe. . For more details about ULTRAVIOLET, you can check out @tara.k.ross’s feed for her brand-new post about it, or see the F and Z posts of #mybookalphabet. And if you have some form of synaesthesia, or even just share my fascination with it, please tell me about it in the comments! . . . #ultravioletbook #rjandersonwriter #paranormalbooks #thrillerbooks #synesthesia #synaesthesia #bookish #yabookstagram #yabookstagrammer #booksarelife #bookobsessed #readmorebooks #yalit #yaliterature https://www.instagram.com/p/CCbz3f8AYOI/?igshid=vw7yiql7ely0
