Characters with Disabilities as Part of the Narrative

Think about it. How many people in your life live with mental illness (depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia) physical impairments, hearing impairments, vision impairments...

I'll bet you don't live a life peopled with only able bodied individuals, and yet, that's the ableist narrative, the cultural story, the stigma people with disabilities face.

I've set out to write mystery and suspense novels that include characters with disabilities who are part of the narrative. In other words, the disabilities are not the main point of the plot, the characters are not evil because of how they appear, and they are not heroes simply because they are alive. Oh yes, and they don't get cured so we can all feel like this is a perfect world with no problems.

Narrative fiction is flooded with able bodied people and stereotypical characters with disabilities.

I am recovering from depression and addiction, and I live a very full life. I worked, I raised a family, a have relationships with partners and friends. I did experience functional limitations to my life at various times, but because my disability was hidden, most people never noticed. So, in a way, I passed as non disabled. But that didn't work until I acknowledged to myself that I was experiencing a functional limitation, and I needed to accept that and not try to pass in my own brain.

I actually remember the place where it happened and how shocked I was to understand it. I didn't accept my own limitations.

I wanted to change fiction -- no literary fiction but popular fiction, romance and mystery fiction, to include characters with disabilities.

No Way Out, my soon to be released suspense novel features Molly Donovan, a hard-charging fraud investigator and her new romantic interest PI Miguel Alvarez. Molly lost the use of her left arm in a rare stroke suffered in high school. She uses brains, brawn and her unaffected arm to . Miguel is a recovering addict, who navigates a maze of old friends and old habits. The two make a connection. A peripheral characters fight the notion that his disability makes him evil.

And Cotton Lee Penn, in the southern mysteries Gone on Sunday and Premonition, fights the same cultural attitudes in the 1970s -- along with the idea that disabled people shouldn't have sex.

Let's change the habit of eliminating half our friends and lovers from our fiction.

Thanks remain as always: mysterious in New Mexico...

Cover Reveal Suspense Novel: No Way Out

My first traditionally published book (http://www.solsticeempire.com), first cover...so much fun. And so is the book...locked in an Espanola adobe, nearly drowned in Cochiti Lake...what next? 

If anything happens to me…

That phrase from Gloria’s email haunts Molly as she bounces around half-conscious in a dark space. Later, she opens her eyes in a small house with all the windows bricked shut and the door boarded from the outside. Her kidnapper has taken her keys, her cell phone, and her purse. Molly scrambles through the house, looking for any sign of life, any hope of escape, but the house is abandoned and she sees no way out.

The kidnapping of former fraud investigator Molly Donovan follows Gloria’s murder, an event witnessed by Molly and PI Miguel Alvarez. Gloria’s mysterious email throws the two investigators together in a frantic search for the perp. A stranger traps Molly inside the abandoned house while an old friend sucks Miguel into his troubled past. Molly trusts Miguel until a series of notes incriminates him and leaves Molly on her own to investigate a sex cult, missing money, and jaded love.

***

After so much time, it's great to have the recognition of a traditional publisher. I enjoyed publishing through my small company eiffeltowerpublishers, but I wanted to try writing out in the real world. I started submitting to agents, but those folks are beyond busy. So I tried publishers who accept unagented manuscripts and that crowd is way more friendly. And I think my writing got a fair hearing from the publishers. Plus, of course, the manuscript was accepted by the Summer Solstice imprint of Solstice Publishing. 

Editing is next. I hire an editors and beta readers for my independently published works, but now I'm working for someone else. I'll let you know how it goes. Generally, I love editing my works, but we'll see. I'm as vain as the next writer.

And it's still...mysterious in New Mexico.

Lightning Bolt Romance is back! (With a little suspense...)

How Did You Meet? by Tower Lowe

Office Delia Gonzales spotted a blue Toyota SUV in the ditch on Acequia Madre. Both passengers doors were wide open. A man about her age squatted by the rear wheel well. Muscles bulged in his thighs as he rose up and aimed a bottomless brown-eyed gaze at her body. Delia meant to be offended, but she got side-tracked by pheromones or the smell of pipe tobacco, she never knew which.

"My name is Ramon." He took too strides in her direction, put his hands on her waist and dented her skin with his fingers. Delia's right hand searched for her gun.

"I'm your cousin," Ramon said. "Don't you remember me?"

"No." Delia touched the cool steel of the police revolver. Ramon was close enough to breathe warm spearmint into her face.

"We played soldiers in the dirt out back of your house. You had a dog named Scruffy."

"I don't know you." Delia felt sweat drip between her breasts. "I never had a dog."

A line grew between his brows. "Then love me anyway, the way I love you."

His lips touched her cold mouth, her hand removed the gun from her holster and Officer Delia was seconds away from firing into Ramon's belly.

"Daddy. What are you doing?" It was a toddler in dark curls and a yellow jumpsuit.

Ramon backed off. Delia kept her gun pointed at him.

"Is that lady going to kill you, Daddy?"

Ramon opened both arms to grab the girl and lifted her into his arms, covering his belly and chest, making it impossible for Delia to fire without hitting the child.

"I want her to be your Mommy," Ramon said.

"Now?" the girl asked.

"No, not now. But in a little while."

Delia put away the gun.

***

No Way Out, a romantic suspense, is under contract to be published soon.

Follow me on Bookbub to get the release date!