About the author

About C.J. Gryffin

I’m a special education teacher in Utah, and most of my days are spent with nonverbal and neurodivergent students. They communicate in ways the world often overlooks: through patterns, drawings, movement, and a kind of attention that’s easy to miss if you aren’t looking for it. Over the years, they changed how I listen.

The Color of Silence grew out of that work. I wanted to write the story of a child like many of the students I’ve known, set in a time before anyone had a name for what he experienced, and the story of the mother who refused to give up on him. Darius, Sadie, and Azure are fictional, but the heart of the book comes from real classrooms and real families.

I write under the pen name C.J. Gryffin to protect the privacy of the students and families who inspired this work.

The Color of Silence is the first book in the Dreamers’ Dragons series. It’s available in paperback, hardcover, and signed hardcover, with an original companion soundtrack. Audiobook is now available on Audible and coming soon to all major platforms.

Thank you for being here.