About · the writer behind the work
About.
Sam Alameh is AuDHD, diagnosed in his early fifties after decades of building workarounds nobody called workarounds. He is a coach, writer, and the creator of The Manual Method.
The writing began as a private survival document and turned into a body of work. Four books published so far: The Coin You Can't Flip, a field guide for parents, teachers, and partners on the most common misreadings of autism; The Manual That Never Came and Man. You. Well., the first two volumes of The Manual Series, with further volumes in progress; and Small Lights for Long Nights, Journal One in an open-ended journal series, with the next volume in progress.
Outside the books, Sam has spent more than two decades as a software engineer and platform architect, mostly in the Salesforce ecosystem, alongside twenty years of coaching experience. Earlier in his career, he worked for four years as a financial counsellor. Three different vantage points on systems and the people inside them. The engineer documents architectures. The counsellor sat with people in the worst hours of their lives. The coach helps clients write their own technical documentation. The books are written by all three.
The Manual Method, the coaching practice underneath the Manual Series, is built on the ODIM framework: Orientation, Documentation, Integration, Maintenance. The output of an engagement is a Personal Operating Document, a living reference the client owns and updates for the rest of their life.
Sam is Lebanese-Australian, based in Melbourne. He has three children and a Bullmastiff-Beagle cross named Cherub. His partner is from the Ngarrindjeri people. He coined the phrase Autistic Intelligence to describe a way of thinking that gets pathologised when it could be read instead as a different and accurate kind of accuracy.
The surname Alameh carries connotations of knowledge and learning in Arabic. He inherited it. The work is an attempt to live up to it.
Most books about neurodivergence are written for the people who do not have it. These are written for the people who do.