Gia de Cadenet is a native Floridian but now lives in France with her children, one of the most inspirational cities for her romance novels featuring characters with mediaeval hobbies like blacksmithing and archery. Her stories are grounded in inclusivity, with a deep commitment to creating diverse, relatable characters who reflect the richness of real life. Passionate about amplifying underrepresented voices, she pays particular attention to the neurodivergent community, crafting love stories that are guaranteed to give readers all the feels.

How in the world can I write an article about neurodiverse characters in a romance novel when it seems like the world is burning? From Palestine to Ukraine to the United States, to Sudan, there’s so much that’s so heavy going on right now, and I know that you, my dear, dear readers, are feeling weighed down and worried. In such serious times, how can I promote a book about falling in love?

By being honest.

One of the first things that authoritarian power demands is that we lose part of ourselves, we ignore our individual humanity in pursuit of its goals. And one place that we find our humanity is in the arts. We nourish that which we truly are through the arts, particularly for those of us who love books. In finding just the right story, in discovering a new author, reading about someone with a different perspective from our own can take us temporarily out of a chaotic world and give us time to be still and quiet and just be.

And that still and quiet with a dose of familiarity is often a key need of neurodiverse people in a neurotypical world.

When I sat down to write Give Me A Shot, Mo was my initial focus. He has never been officially diagnosed with Sensory Processing Syndrome (the scientific term used to describe Highly Sensitive People, or HSPs), but through his own research, he learned that accepting that identity made sense for him and the way that he needs to move through the world. In a way, I had a cheat code to write Mo’s story: I’m an HSP. And I suspect that my father and my son are, too.

A number of Mo’s “quirks” – his difficulty with bright sunlight or loud sounds, the fact that he feels the emotions of others within his own body, his desperate need for time alone so that he can calm and reset his central nervous system – welcome to the world of Gia de Cadenet!

I’d hoped, as I was writing, that my readers might see Mo in other people in their lives and understand those people better. And maybe right now, with everything that’s going on in the world, we could all take a page from Mo’s book, step away from too much stimulation and give ourselves the opportunity to reset.

Writing Jess was a little more difficult. While Jess is driven, intelligent, has always had a specific plan for her life and was unafraid to work hard to attain it, she learned early that who she was and how she moved in the world was not okay. As the ill-favored daughter, her only source of family, of stability in the world, was her sister Cassandra. And when Cassandra passed away suddenly, Jess’s entire world was shaken.

While Jess is not neurodivergent, one could argue that she leaned into some similar characteristics to cope: hyperfocus on her interests, withdrawing into a smaller, less social world in order to calm her own central nervous system. A touch of black and white thinking and what might be viewed as emotional rigidity concerning herself. It wasn’t until the physical messages from her body became impossible to ignore that she could allow herself to begin to face the grief that she was hiding from.

So in some ways, I hope that my characters in Give Me A Shot have a message for all of us: neurodivergent or neurotypical.

Right now, like Jess, we want to maintain our hope in the plans that we’ve made based on the institutions that we have grown up with and become accustomed to. We want to keep our faith in the culture that has allowed us to create our own sense of identity. But just like for people in societies in flux like Palestine or Ukraine or Sudan, more and more people in the United States are lost and confused and angry.

Like Mo, we may be feeling overstimulated or subsumed by our empathy for others.

Like Jess, we might be outraged by the changes we see but overwhelmed by what we can do with our anger.

It is my hope that in reading Give Me A Shot, book lovers can take a step back, allow themselves the calm and the space to settle their central nervous systems. To fight back against the demand of authoritarianism that we respond to change from a place of fear, anger or desperation. Mo would tend quietly to his plants. While seeming not to respond, he would be deeply processing information coming in and evaluating the utility of what he might choose to say, along with the potential impact of his words on those around him. Jess would be focusing on what her history studies had taught her and discussing her thoughts and concerns with her closest friends before acting on them in the outside world.

No matter what your approach might be, I ask that you do one thing: Reject the demand of authoritarianism and embrace the arts. Our very first act of resistance comes from within. We cultivate that act by embracing who we truly are. And it is in the arts – literature, music, painting, even fashion – that we safeguard the beautiful facets of our neurodivergent or neurotypical shared humanity.

Give Me A Shot by Gia de Cadenet

After losing her sister, the outspoken professor and amateur archer Jess is looking for a way to start over and rediscover herself. Then she meets Mo, a plant-loving blacksmith instructor at the local Folk School who avoids any drama, especially when it comes to co-parenting his child. When news breaks that the beloved school is set to close, Jess and Mo team up to organize a Renaissance Festival in a last-ditch effort to save it. As they throw themselves into planning jousts, crafts, and games for the event, the sparks between them grow stronger. But with walls built high around both their hearts, they each must decide if this is just a fling forged in crisis or something worth fighting for?

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