This book will show you what it's like to live with Synaesthesia.
Videos coming soon,
Synaesthesia?
Synaesthesia is a condition in which one sensation (for example, touch) is transformed into another inside the brain (for example, sound). I experience audio-visual and visual-audio synaesthesia mostly, but scratching and scraping feelings can also cause flashes of light to show up in my vision.
Synaesthesia is not treated as a disability, and yet having it can impact our lives in profound ways. I can't read properly when a loud noise triggers a visual disturbance, and yet I'm a novelist.
Why write this book?
To make you laugh, and to raise awareness of a misunderstood neurodivergence. This book is for anyone who sees things differently, who stood out but didn't know why at first, who finds lights too loud and music too bright. It is for anyone who wants to be understood, or who wants to understand the world a little better.
And for those of you without synaesthesia, this book has a noble, lofty goal: To give you synaesthesia for a day. I have plans to make that happen. This is not going to be a block of words, it is going to be an interdisciplinary masterpiece of art, colour, poetry, comedy and dreamscapes that will rewire your mind to better understand the way I, and many other synaesthetes, see the world.
Some good news already.
My work on Synaesthesia has already got the attention of two leading disability writers.
What do supporters get out of this project?
Depending on what you pick, you can get an eBook, a Hardback, stickers, bookmarks, a special thanks in the inner cover, and other things which will be announced shortly. All the merch shall attempt to add to the synaesthetic experience.
In all the tiers, you get to be one of the first people in the world to have supported this weird book. You will be helping to raise awareness of Synaesthesia so that hopefullly, more people out there might realise they have it. I didn't notice I wasn't normal until I was 23.
Weird title.
I know, but when I was younger I did not know the word synaesthete. I called myself a Synaesthenoid because I wanted to anchor myself to something. I spent my childhood wondering if there was anyone else like me in the world. So today I am writing this book so more people don't feel alone. I want the world to understand us.
Who is writing it?
Hi, I'm Phillip. I write Comedy and Science Fiction. Two of my most popular characters, Stephanie and Lax, both have their own unique forms of synaesthesia. It has informed my work since before I knew it wasn't 'normal'. When I was studying Writing at university, I sometimes struggled to concentrate in class, and I never knew why until I graduated and began researching Synaesthesia. But don't worry, this book won't be dry and boring. Like I said earlier, its noble goal is to show you what Synaesthesia is like, in book form.
In fact, I already tried this once before with my multidisciplinary sci-fi-comedy-poetry book WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? which became a bestseller on Amazon in 2022. That book was a collection of 47 short stories that, read in different orders, gave the reader a different feeling or conclusion about the end of the universe. It was my first attempt at truly synaesthetic fiction. It was funny, dark, and weird. I have also written poems about synaesthesia before, and the best of these will show up in Synaesthesioid.
Hello to my old fans.
To those who know me from my comedy or my fiction, hi again. I've got a lot of interest for this project from people in all sorts of places, so Synaesthesioid is becoming my main thing for a while. I'm querying some of my other projects. But because Synaesthesioid so new, so unusual, and about a topic many people don't know about, I am self-publishing here with the help of the brilliant people behind Crowdfundr. I was very careful when selecting which platform to use, and I believe Crowdfundr are the best people for this book.
Raising awareness.
If funded, I will be taking this book to literature festivals and performing speeches to raise awareness of synaesthesia. I would also like to use a scan of my brain as the author photo inside the dustjacket.
