Some people say “you never forget your first.” In writing? I kinda wish I could… but I can’t, because mine was called Rainbow Balloons. 🎈
Yep. That was the name of my first ever story. And listen — I love her, I do. She was colourful, dramatic, full of feelings and Very Big Themes. But if I’m honest, I sometimes wish Amber and Jonas had been my first instead.
Here’s why.
🧠 It came from me, not from pressure.
When I wrote Rainbow Balloons, I’d already been diagnosed — but I was still trying to make sense of it all. I was figuring out who I was, and honestly? I was still trying to be what other people expected. Polished. Pleasant. “Normal.”
Amber and Jonas came from a different place. It wasn’t about performing or fitting into any box. It came from joy. From hyperfixation. From a Basil Brush spiral that turned into a world that made sense in all the ways real life didn’t.
No one told me what it should be. I followed the characters. And it became something real — and something mine.
💛 It holds my voice.
Not the polished, trying-to-sound-clever voice I used to chase in my early writing. But my actual voice — stims, slang, softness, chaos and all.
Amber’s quiet anxiety. Jonas’s gentleness. Daisy’s utterly feral vibes. They’re all different, but they all carry pieces of me — autistic me, disabled me, nostalgic me, creative me.
This world doesn’t try to hide the weird. It lets it take centre stage. And I wish I’d learned to do that sooner.
🌀 It was healing.
I didn’t expect Amber and Jonas to become therapy — but in some ways, it was.
It helped me process love, fear, identity, friendship, memory, grief… and the version of myself I used to keep tucked away.
If this had been my first work, maybe I would’ve believed sooner that writing could be more than escape — it could be expression. Healing. Home.
🎈 And what about Rainbow Balloons?
She walked so Amber and Jonas could sprint in platform boots.
Rainbow Balloons was about an autistic young adult who — unknowingly — went to work for a balloon fetish website. Yep. That was the plot. It was weird, messy, kind of genius, and way more emotional than it had any right to be.
Looking back, I was clearly exploring identity, boundaries, naivety, and the bizarre intersections between disability and adulthood — I just didn’t fully realise that’s what I was doing. But that version of me had guts. And I still love her for writing it.
📝 What I know now:
Maybe Amber and Jonas wasn’t my first —
But it was the first thing I wrote that felt like home.
And honestly? That matters more.
🌈 Daisy’s Corner
“Okay, but if I’d been in Rainbow Balloons I would’ve caused a plot twist so intense the book would’ve combusted. Still, respect to your OG work. Now please never make me wear rainbow dungarees in a flashback.”
Actually Asten 
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