My dear readers,

I hope you enjoyed Into the Dark! This is a story of my heart in so many ways. The characters have become like friends, and I hope it will be the same for you.

Dani Novak and her brothers, Deacon and Greg, have Waardenburg syndrome, just as I do. I didn’t realize that I was subconsciously writing the syndrome into Deacon’s character until it was time to write his book, and then his white hair and unusual eyes suddenly made all the sense in the world!

FYI, Waardenburg syndrome is a genetic condition that primarily impacts hearing and pigmentation (in hair, eyes, and skin). It is hereditary, with a worldwide incidence of about one in forty thousand. It is carried by the women in my family, although in some families, it’s carried by the men.

Dani Novak has dark hair with white streaks and she’s deaf in one ear, just like me. She has a blue and a brown eye, just like my aunt and uncle do. (My cousin’s eyes are bicolored, similar to Deacon’s.) Dani’s brother Greg is completely deaf, like my own daughter.

The use of sign language in Into the Dark is based upon my own experiences over the years. My husband and I began to study sign language when our younger daughter was only a few weeks old. We had so much to learn!

Many authors will differentiate signed dialog and spoken/“hearing” dialog with italics or special punctuation, like <<Hello>>. I chose to present the signed dialog in the same way as spoken dialog. The characters are communicating, whether their words come off their hands or from their mouths.

This is perhaps the biggest personal “aha!” moment I had while learning to sign. Language and speech are not the same. Language is the communication of concepts and ideas. Speech is merely one method of communication.

Here are some other things I learned that you’ll find useful now that you have read Into the Dark:

• Sign language is not universal. American Sign Language (ASL) evolved from French Sign Language. British Sign Language is so different from ASL that an American deaf person and a British deaf person would need an interpreter to communicate with each other.
• ASL is its own language, with its own syntax and grammatical structure.
• There are many methods of visual communication. In our family, we relied on three: ASL, Signed Exact English (SEE), and Pidgin Signed English (PSE). SEE is useful when signing and speaking at the same time, as it associates a sign with each of the English words. (It’s very useful when teaching someone to read English.) However, SEE is a bit cumbersome, so we usually used Pidgin Signed English. PSE is a bit of ASL, a bit of SEE, and a bit of family/local sign. When Dani and Diesel sign to Michael and Greg in Into the Dark, they’re usually using PSE.
• Not all parents of deaf children learn to sign. Studies show that over ninety percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents. Less than twenty percent of those parents learn to sign, less than ten percent with any fluency. Many people are shocked by this. I certainly was. There are a number of reasons for this statistic, however.
• First and foremost, many doctors tell parents of a deaf child that if they use sign language at home, their child will never speak and will never be “normal.”
• Doctors often urge the use of a cochlear implant, a device that converts sound to digital pulses the brain can interpret. Importantly, CI is not a “cure” for deafness. It is an aid, much like a wheelchair or a cane. When a CI user takes off their processor, they are still deaf.
• Some parents don’t have the means or opportunity to take ASL classes.
• Some, like Michael’s mother in Into the Dark, simply don’t care to learn, or they only learn the “discipline” signs—no, bad, stop, go, come, bed.
• Not all deaf people speech read or “read lips.” It’s a learned skill, and some are better at it than others. Don’t assume a deaf person can speech read.

There are so many topics I didn’t even touch on in this book, the biggest of which is Deaf culture. That’s a book all in itself! If you’d like to learn more about these topics and others, I recommend the book For Hearing People Only: Answers to Some of the Most Commonly Asked Questions about the Deaf Community, Its Culture, and “Deaf Reality,” by Matthew Moore and Linda Levitan.

All the best, and thank you for reading Into the Dark,

Karen