Josh Sundquist, author Just Don't Fall, showcases his many talents and life as an amputee with a rap video:

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As I explained in my first and second posts, I decided to write my memoir from a child's perspective. But since the book covers a period of my life from age nine, when I was diagnosed with cancer, to age twenty-one, when I competed in the Paralympics, I also felt that the voice needed to mature along with me as the story progressed.

So I divided the book into four different voices, four different maturity levels. The differences between them are subtle, and deliberately so because I wanted the changes to happen slowly enough that you only notice them in retrospect, like when you look at a photo of yourself from a few years ago and realize that you've aged. But behind what I hope is a smooth progression in narration style is a carefully planned set of rules for each voice. Here are the four stages as I outlined them before writing the book:

Voice One: Early childhood
(Age six to ten)
Plot events: Cancer diagnosis, leg amputation, chemotherapy treatments
Characteristics of voice:

• Limited vocabulary. Avoid medical terminology like "diagnose" and "amputate." Instead, use childlike phrases such as "found the cancer" and "cut off my leg."

Josh Sundquist, author Just Don't Fall, has created this vlog to give everyone a look at his prosthetic leg. Also, find out why he doesn't really wear it anymore:

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In my previous post I explained why I chose to write my memoir from a child's perspective. Today, I'd like to discuss why I decided this voice would work best if I told my story in the present tense.

The convention in storytelling, of course, is to use the past tense. But in the last few years the present tense has come into vogue for both memoirs and novels, especially those that can be described as literary.

Let me confess something right of the bat. Part of the reason why I chose the present tense was because of its popularity among what we might call the literati of my generation. My secret hope was that using the present tense would therefore increase the likelihood that my fantasy would come to pass, namely that Dave Eggers and/or Jonathan Safran Foer would read my memoir and be impressed with how incredibly hip and post-modern I am, and perhaps we'd all get together to sip lattes and chuckle at New Yorker cartoons in a swanky coffee shop.

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I've got some good news and some bad news for storytellers.

I'll start with the good news: Technology has lowered the barriers to entry.

Let's take the would-be novelist as an example. Not long ago, the only outlet for her work was to find a home for her manuscript at a mainstream publishing house in New York City.

And then technology happened.

Today, a novelist without a publisher can find her audience through a self-published, digitally printed-on-demand book with little setup cost and no warehousing expenses. This book can find an enthusiastic audience on Amazon and sell plenty of copies through BookSurge. (In fact, in doing so she may end up with a nice book deal after all.)

So that's the new world in which we live. We've had a revolution of sorts, and that revolution isn't limited to novelists. Technology now allows you to share a story through a Twitter feed, on YouTube, or in a Podcast. Alternatively, if you are the type of crafty fiction writer who can create particularly frightening urban legends about seductive internal-organ thieves or HIV infected needles on movie theater seats, you can send your story in an email that will eventually reach my mother, who will in turn forward it to everyone in her address book.

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Josh Sundquist is one of our guest bloggers during the week of January 18th. If you have any questions for Josh Sundquist, add a comment to any of his posts. Here is some more information about Just Don't Fall:

A remarkable odyssey that John le Carre calls "inspiring, courageous, sometimes heartbreaking"

Josh Sundquist was an energetic and inquisitive nine-year-old when he was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, a virulent cancer that eventually claimed his left leg. His extraordinary journey takes him from his small southern town-with his father, an aspiring pastor questioning his faith, and his mother, a rigidly conservative homeschool teacher- through a dizzying array of hospitals, on to high school, and then to the mountains, where Josh learns to ski.

On the slopes, Josh's world bursts wide open and he finds within him the drive to become a champion skier, despite his disability. While he navigates the dramas of high school and an unstable home life, Josh keeps his eyes on the prize-the 2006 Paralympics in Turin, Italy.