for the next couple of weeks a new Bywater author will be appearing on my blog every few days. Bywater publish Parallel Lies and Mouths of Babes in the US.

So people, make some space and welcome Jill Malone …

Jill Malone grew up in a military family, went to German kindergarten, and lived across from a bakery where they put small toys, like train engines, into chocolate, and the gummi bears were the size of mice. In the South (I’m guessing this means in the South of the US, not Sussex – Stella), she caught tree frogs, and played kickball. She has lived on the East Coast (of America, not Northumbria – Stella), and in Hawaii, and for the last fifteen years in Spokane with her son, two old dogs, and a lot of outdoor gear. She looks for any excuse to play guitar.
She took Latin from a hot professor at the University of Hawaii, and had this idea for a novel. Like most writers, she has a sketchy career path.
Red Audrey and the Roping, her first novel, was a Lambda finalist, and won the third annual Bywater Prize for Fiction. Her second novel, A Field Guide to Deception, was a finalist for the 2010 Ferro-Grumley, and won the Lambda Literary award. At present, Giraffe People, her third novel, is awaiting editorial notes. Or something. If you’re curious, read Jill’s blog.

This is Jill :

and this is A Field Guide to Deception :

and this is lovely :
Purify

When I was a sophomore in high school, I watched Gone with the Wind three times in a row, and cried myself stupid. The first time I heard The Cure’s Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, the summer after 7th grade, it was all I listened to. Back in the days when you had to rewind over and over to hear a song on repeat. I read Calvin and Hobbes obsessively, forgave him for his maudlin lapses. Art was the way I understood my feelings.
Music allowed me to reset. I still use it that way. I play guitar when I’m freaking out, and trouble falls away. That’s the thing about art, you get carried away with it; your experience becomes reflective and objective and human. You share. And you hurt.
I stall at the end of books. Run my hands over the binding. Remind myself to breathe. I’m stricken. No matter how many times I read The Little Prince, or watch High Noon, or think about Graveyard of the Fireflies. I’m reminded that I’m alive — tenuously, thrillingly alive. We’re elemental. Our bodies, our stories, our seeking. That we stumble after beauty is how we are saved.

you can get more of Jill here.