John Besold

Male

Wrong Side of the Hudson

SPARQE hopefully becomes an ice breaker in that it creates a path of communication for the ordinary world, through the “Superhero” characters with cool gadgets who can be used to start the dialog across chapter adventures which are built around different interests sports, archeology, geology, space exploration, fantasy, bad guys, good guys, genetics, news reporting, communications, technology, history, travel, philosophy, business, relationships, competition, medicine, psychology, biology, extraterrestrials, etc…, a variety of topics to build bridges across. I'm by choice an engineer so my interest lies in building a place useful for and enjoyable by others. When I speak of SPARQE I like to leave this thought there are Special Purpose People Responding Quickly Everywhere find them, know them, they will feed your compassion, and show you how to put aside your fear of not knowing how to engage them.
SPARQE can be said to be my attempt to offer a platform to bridge a small part of that larger fear of engagement. Thank you.

AKA POJ (Plain Old John)
When my wife, Debe, had me wheeled in to HUP in Philly, all I could move was my head. Had to learn to walk, feed myself, focus with my eyes and all the other "ordinary" physical activity. After several weeks at HUP I was released at a functional level and rehabbed at home for several months. I recovered enough to return to work. Not a journey I'd necessarily recommend but one which was at the end, life affirming. Seeing the "vision gap" that the real world presented between special needs folks and the ordinary world drove me to want to spread that curtain a bit. I thought a sci-fi type book where special needs kids used science and tools to augment their abilities and achieve cool things would open a path for the ordinary world to have a comfortable opening dialog using fictional superheroes with special needs individuals as their opening.

The seeds for SPARQE really were sewn in the early to late 80's when I was president of the Bedminster NJ Board of Education. Along with my colleagues on the Board we passed a mandatory Community Service requirement for 8th grade graduation. Students could pick from a number of community and service organizations to donate 40 hrs. to over their 8th grade year, and they had to do it in order to receive their diploma. One of the facilities they served at was the Matheny school in Peapack NJ, https://matheny.org/ , which was a town over. The results for all the kids were astounding. Hoping SPARQE has captured some of that energy.

I wrote 90% of SPARQE originally in 2000 but was rejected over and over by publishers. Finally thought that now in 2021 the world has caught up and may be open to SPARQE. Also, by self-publishing the first of four (4) planned books, I was able to remove the publishing impediment from the past and show some first mover advantage and come with some substance to portage the coming books. in the series.