Space Autistic Author’s Puzzling Innerverse follows the narrator living in the “Innerverse,” aboard a spaceship called the Endoprise as he faces his daily challenges, represented through a series of whimsical, bizarre, and clever puzzles. I think this original idea is intriguing. How did you come up with this idea and develop it into a story?

I’m so glad you enjoyed it. When I was around 11 years old, just out of my early life autistic fog, I obtained James Razzi’s Star Trek Puzzle Manual. It was a new experience for me, introducing the idea of putting puzzles into the context of an already interesting universe. The timing was perfect. Right when I was feeling my confusing differences and isolation, my autistic brain was catching up. It’s a highly impressionable age anyway, but the simple immersion that Razzi did with his puzzles hit my brain like that beam of light from another galaxy you mentioned. Before then, puzzles tended not to hold my attention for very long, but that immersion changed everything. It accelerated my development and expanded my mind.

In 2024, I was suddenly overcome by a need to “pay that forward” to kids around that age. To be frank, the development process that followed was almost subconscious. My inner child told me what it would like to see in such a book, updated for the modern world, and a few months later Puzzling Innerverse was born. That made it a deeply honest process.

In fairness, though, the basic idea of my “Innerverse” was already something I had developed for my indie-cross-promotion, garage-animated entertainment series Space Autistic Author on YouTube. It was the natural choice for the “world” in which this more-than-a-puzzle-book would be based. But I didn’t just use it for immersion — there’s a thread, full-spectrum engagement, and, best of all, transformation.

What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?

I knew the puzzles could not be boring, standalone, busywork diversions, they had to have a purpose and had to have educational content, especially in the realms of “how to think,” “how to approach a problem,” and especially “don’t get intimidated by a first glance at a seemingly scary puzzle.” I can’t stand ‘dumbing down,’ both as a reader and a writer. I also knew I wanted to include compound puzzles, which provide a greater sense of accomplishment if you commit to helping “X.” get through his day (i.e. payback for being a decent person).

What were some goals you set for yourself as a writer in this book?

The basic idea of this book was almost entirely out of my wheelhouse. I’m not trained in education. For this book, my approach came from my inner child’s perspective rather than from an educator’s perspective. At my age, that’s a long reach back.

Also, aside from the intellectual goals mentioned above, which are tricky to implement, I knew that I had to bring the user along on a personal transformation arc. Vulnerability and emotional honesty aren’t enough, I wanted to show the user a transformative experience. It was crucial not to simply present random puzzles with a world as a passive backdrop. I knew I had to use the world immersion to truly enable both intellectual and emotional payback.

Will there be a follow-up novel to this story? If so, what aspects of the story will the next book cover?

I have no plans to create a novel as a follow-up to Puzzling Innerverse. Some day, I might find myself creating a Puzzling Innerverse follow-on, but who knows?

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