Greetings. My name is Matt Stafford. No relation to the football player.  You'd be shocked how often I get that.

I'm a new writer for Wattpad and other sites. I'm a bit unusual in the fact that I am disabled. I have cerebral palsy and epilepsy. I'm also a disability rights activist and a member of ADAPT. Look us up. We're awesome. Onto what brings me here.

As a kid, I wondered where the disabled characters were in the media I consumed. People like me were hard to find in books, TV, movies, and so on. The most we got was a "Very Special Episode" where a disabled character shows up for a heartwarming episode and then never appears again. 

And of course, the disabled characters tend to be played by able-bodied people and written by able-bodied people. 

Suffice to say that it's fair to wonder if anyone involved in these things has ever met a disabled person.

And I thought, "Y'know, somebody should write more disabled characters that don't suck and don't feature able-bodied people pretending they're us or writers who have clearly no idea what they're doing."

Then I thought, "Hey! I'm a somebody! I'm a writer! Let's do it!"

So here we are. I will be writing stories featuring disabled characters in new situations that are relegated to the able-bodied. I want to show the world that we can be heroes as well. People, both disabled and able-bodied need to see us in these roles.  Too many people have stereotypical ideas about disability and the media shapes these ideas for good or ill.

So I will do my part to shape them for good. And I hope that you will join me and consider becoming a Patreon Sponsor!

If I get enough, my stories could go into paperback.