LILY AND THE OCTOPUS

A sweet and sad debut novel in the tradition of uplifting literary bestsellers with an animal bent, such as "The Life of Pi".

Script writer Steven Rowley was inspired to write this novel after the death of his dog Lily whom he had raised since she was 12 weeks old. Her brain tumor was causing her increasingly ferocious seizures and ultimately won. Six months later, Rowley sat down and tried to break his writer's block by jotting down some happy memories of his dog. The meals they shared. The naps they took. The talks they had. The boys they thought were cute. These will, weird and harrowing memories formed a short story called "The Octopus". Then, Rowley wrote every day for one hundred days to strive for the emotional truth. No matter where the story ran; no matter how weird (or octopine) it got, no matter how vulnerable it made the author appear - in the end he had the first draft of LILY AND THE OCTOPUS.

Steven Rowley is 43 and was planning to self-publish the novel when S&S took it on in a deal that is the stuff of publishing fairy tales.