In 2022, my combined book sales were nearing half a million copies, with the majority of those on the topic of neurodiversity, both in fiction and non-fiction.  I had translations into about 15 different languages (21 languages now, in 2025) and I was winning literary awards in the US, UK and Australia. My publisher, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, approached me to see if I had any thoughts about merchandising my brand.  Although I had a few ideas, I reached out to Tony Attwood and Michelle Garnett (from Attwood and Garnett Events) whom I had known for many years, and together we came up with the concept of a card deck based around images from my books.  Naively, I thought it would be a relatively simple process. After all, Tony and Michelle are internationally recognised experts in autism, with a combined knowledge and experience of over 80 years as clinical psychologists, authors, researchers and consultants. They have loads of letters after their names and are really lovely people to work with.  I had much to contribute as well, having spent the previous twenty-two years immersed in research for my books.  This shouldn’t take too long, I thought. We decided to focus on four areas of neurodiversity – autism, ADHD, PDA and Anxiety and we signed the contract with Jessica Kingsley Publishers in October 2022. One month later, I was diagnosed with cancer, and everything was put on hold. I had an operation and six months of chemo. Despite serious chemo brain-fog, I felt ready to get back to work by mid 2023.  Tony and Michelle had already started on the project and now we had three people with different styles and ideas trying to unify one hundred different cards. We were just starting to get into the flow, when in early 2024, my cancer returned and everything was put on hold again! Add in there, Tony and Michelle’s hectic schedule running their Attwood Garnett Events in Australia and overseas, it’s amazing the cards were ever finished. However, undaunted, we soldiered on and a rough draft of the cards was finally completed.

And then came the editing!

We needed to unify language and style, make all suggestions declarative, and cut our long-winded explanations to no more than 100 words a card. Each card had to be colour-coded with dots (blue for Autism, red for ADHD, green for PDA and yellow for Anxiety, with numerous cards having more than one coloured dot) and the accompanying handbook needed to be written. As difficult as all that was, it really was a pleasure to work with Tony and Michelle as we recognised how much each of us brought to the project and how the three of us created something wonderful that none of us could have done alone.

Pleased with what we had done, towards the end of 2024, we sent the drafts to Jessica Kingsley, into the gifted hands of editor, Lynda Cooper, who guided us in yet more edits to create the final text for the cards. Even then the journey was not complete.  It took a team of creatives to format everything , and a huge shout out goes to the talented Adam Peacock whose eye for detail and for little touches shines through every card.  

To say this project was a team effort is an understatement.  We are thrilled with the quality and know these cards will be enormously helpful in affirming neurodivergence and assisting with challenges. On top of that, they will be so much fun to use!  Enjoy!