This project Just Shy of Normal: Linked Stories attempts to look at the “disabled experience” through the lens of realistic literary fiction. The concept of the “disabled experience” is a complicated one, particularly when one considers that there is nothing more intimate than the way one experiences the physical body. Shared conditions do not necessarily create a commonality of experience among people who have them nor is there a consensus among people with various conditions about how to cope with or classify them. This has led many disabled writers to prefer writing memoir or poetry rather than fiction in an effort to avoid either making generalized statements about disability or inadvertently reinforcing stereotypes that already exist about disability within the context of literary fiction. However, as a creative writer who views my disability as being equal amounts of social construct and physical condition, I find it necessary in my work to try to demystify “crippledness” whenever possible.