On Writing a Disabled Author Into a Fantasy World

I need to talk

about something that took me a long time to know how to say.

I have cerebral palsy. I have spent a significant portion of my life navigating a world that was not designed with me in mind — and I have spent a significant portion of my imagination in fantasy worlds, which, historically, also were not designed with me in mind.

Magic fixes things, in a lot of fantasy. Disability disappears. Difference becomes power and then gets resolved. The message, usually unintentional, is: this story doesn't have space for bodies that work differently. The magic will take care of it.

I didn't want to write that book.

Nova doesn't have cerebral palsy. Echo's Song is not an allegory for disability. But Nova does have a body that is failing her in a way that is visible, time-sensitive, and public — scale sickness, the illness that will take her life if she doesn't bond with her dragon before her twelfth birthday. And the people around her respond the way people respond to visible suffering: with careful looks and gentle voices and a collective held breath that is kind and also quietly suffocating.

I know that feeling.

What I tried to give Nova — what I think I was actually writing toward, even when I didn't have the words for it — was the experience of carrying something that doesn't go away when you decide to be braver. The things you carry don't vanish because you're trying hard enough. The body is still the body.

What I wanted to write was not a cure. It was a witness.

I write for the readers who know what it means to have a body with its own agenda. Who know what it means to be seen, not in spite of what you're carrying, but alongside it. Who know that the most powerful thing isn't the magic — it's the person who stays anyway.

It's the bond that cannot be forced, only accepted.

I'm still learning how to accept what's mine. Echo's Song is part of that learning.

I'm glad you're here for it.

Echo's Song: The Dragon Curse Saga Book One releases October 24th, 2026. Pre-order now at moonlightdreamsbooks.com/books.