Blog Archives
Raising Awareness
Jackdaw Affliction follows Billy from a rough-edged 1980s English childhood into adulthood, where grief, love, and the advancing grip of ataxia turn survival, dignity, and endurance into the heart of the story. What drew you to tell Billy’s story across such a long emotional and physical arc?
My desire in writing this novel was to keep things real and plausible. I have lived experience of Ataxia and strong connections with peers across a wide range of disabilities. To stay truthful to what many folk experience, it was necessary to have an arc where Billy loses everything. Or at least perceives he loses everything.
The beginning of the novel – Youth – is about the growth and making of the man. The second half of the novel is about diminishing abilities and the effects on the mind. The frightening thing about ataxia and all degenerative conditions is that they slowly chip away at you until there is nothing left. Often, the mental health side of this is not explicitly discussed. I wanted to change that.
How did you balance the intimacy of Billy’s voice with the wider family-saga feel of the novel?
I wrote this book with the aim of raising awareness of a rare condition. But also, I wanted to give readers an insight into the mind of someone who slowly loses all that made them who they are. Mental health is a real and delicate thing. It is for me, and it is for many people with debilitating conditions.
The book was always about Billy’s story. Always predominantly his narration. After my first draft, it became apparent that I needed more structure and readability. This is when the vignettes from his family members came in. Both to tell the story from other perspectives, but also to offer some unquestionable truth and reliability to the manuscript. The family was always a vital cog in Billy’s wider story, even when they were no longer present in his life.
Music feels like a quiet current running through the book. What role did it play for you while writing?
Music helps set the theme, feel, and time stamp this story. Almost by chance, I had found myself listening to certain tracks whilst writing and developing the book. Each track helped me set the scenes and characters to a specific point in time. Whilst not a historical novel, it is set over 35 years, so being accurate on the recent past was a necessity.
Also, if you pay really close attention to each song in the book, you can almost see a story told by the track listings.
As important as music is, it was also important to have an absence of music during Billy’s darker times. For this reason, almost all of part 4 is devoid of music.
When writing Billy’s experience of ataxia, how did you approach portraying disability, humiliation, and endurance without slipping into sentimentality?
The aim from the outset was to portray a plausible, real character. Inspiration porn was not the goal. By this I mean it was important that all characters made mistakes, had flaws, and had mischievous thoughts, rather than paint them as some kind of saint or martyr. Hopefully, the book balances vulnerability with agency. The idea was not to have characters as symbols or lessons, but to present flawed, authentic human beings. As mentioned, it was great to draw on my experiences and those of my peers to keep the story feeling as genuine as possible.
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From bike rides through the suburbs of 1980s Hampshire to the claustrophobic grind of adulthood, Billy Cooper’s life is shaped by loss, fractured family ties, and the creeping onset of a degenerative disease. As his body betrays him and grief corrodes what remains, Billy turns inward—into recollections that blur, narratives that contradict, and personas that may never have existed.
Jackdaw Affliction is a descent into memory’s labyrinth, where trauma, illness, and longing distort the line between truth and invention. Told with brutal honesty, warped humour and hallucinatory edge, S. G. Hyde’s novel explores what it means to live when the ground of reality keeps shifting beneath your feet.
At once harrowing and tender, it is a story of survival through imagination, self-deception, and the desperate human need to stitch meaning out of chaos. A haunting meditation on identity, illness, and loss, sprinkled with dark comedy, this is fiction at its most unsettling and raw.
Responsibility to Protect
Life Lessons of Lucy Lu: Lucy Lu Gets Adopted follows a young puppy who is abandoned at an animal shelter and learns how to be a good dog and get adopted. What was the inspiration for your story?
After moving to the US from Canada, I was naive to how severe the pet overpopulation was until a friend opened up that world to me. I also did not realize that black dogs and cats are adopted the least. When my Eddy passed away, somehow, and it was quite a strange turn of events, I ended up getting an email about a dog needing a home but since she was a terrier mix, I had reservations. I had no experience with that breed. I said I would visit her but made no promises. She was being walked down the hallway to be euthanized when they got the call that I was interested. I was hooked from the minute I saw her. She had previously been abused with a broken leg that did not heal correctly. It would be her nemesis. As I drove up, she was in the yard, that little leg stretched out behind her. Heart tug. I took her home and decided to educate myself on the terrier breeds which I soon learned are very misunderstood. Lucy Lu became the love of my life, and I vowed then to help animals – particularly shelter dogs, black dogs, and terriers or terrier mixes. I grew up with animals but never had I met a dog with such a personality as Lucy Lu. She was divinely intelligent. I now volunteer at the local animal shelter where I have personally seen things I don’t ever want to repeat, volunteer with Georgia SPOT Society who help spay/neuter, and I volunteer with another animal coalition group against dog fighting, abuse, and neglect which is on a much higher level.
I saw a need to educate children because they are the next generation that needs to learn to love animals and not hurt them; to protect them and not use them for a human’s entertainment or income stream. Children can relate to animals, so if a child is suffering they can understand how the animal is feeling. I saw that not enough emphasis was being placed on change and that creating no-kill shelters only puts a bandaid on the big issue. On the life lesson side, children need to learn that the sky is wide open to them. Moreso than ever, you can be whatever you want to be. You can have dreams and achieve them, too. I grew up with just the essentials. There was no money for luxuries, yet here I am today writing books. Lucy Lu was such an inspiration to me in so many areas of my life, the biggest in finding my soul’s purpose. I now understand what I was sent here to do.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
It was important to me to drive home the problems we face in this country with shelter animals. We use animals for entertainment, we use them for punching bags, we use them for sources of income and this is not right. As stewards of this earth, it is our responsibility to protect those that cannot protect themselves, and animals are one such group that needs us all. Generational patterns can form if a child is not subjected to other ways of thinking or acting so this book was meant to help the child’s development as much as an animal. Children need to know they have opportunities, to never give up on their dreams, and to stay positive with hope. I’m hoping they can apply as much to their own life as they can to the animals. I wanted a book that would blend both human and animal issues together. I wanted it to educate children not only for themselves but for animals as well. I wanted a book that would spark something in a child’s parent to hopefully do more and maybe even effect change there.
The art in this book is fantastic. What was the art collaboration process like with illustrator Leo Brown?
After searching for an illustrator for what seemed like an eternity, I found Leo Brown through a Facebook group. I was not sure how we would fit together but after a few conversations, I realized that he was the one. He lives in England, so although we do things slightly differently, for the most part, it was smooth sailing. I do wish I had pushed for a few things differently, but since this was my first time working with an illustrator, I pretty much let him take the wheel and drive. I already had the idea for the cover–I wanted Lucy’s sweet face to stand out with a star around it because she was a superstar, and I think he nailed it!
When will book 2 be available? Can you give us an idea of where that book will take readers?
I am hoping to have book 2 available in the first half of 2024. All books in her series will teach a life lesson that we can all learn from. I have six stories written so far, but I think the one I will use for my next book will talk about how sometimes we can hurt someone’s feelings and we don’t even realize it. It is the adage of do unto others as you would like done unto you. It will encourage us to act in a loving way and from a loving heart. This happens when Lucy Lu is in the backyard and meets up with some butterflies! You will be introduced to some new characters that she becomes friends with who will carry forward into the rest of the stories. Of course, there may be some sad moments in the beginning, but it will end on a high note with a happy ending.
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OH, NO! Even though Lucy Lu was an adorable, happy puppy who loved to be with people, her Mama abandoned her at an animal shelter! After a cold and scary night outside at the shelter, Lucy Lu was welcomed in by the nice lady that worked there, and she met a new dog friend that taught her how to be a good dog and get adopted. But Lucy Lu was still very afraid that she would have to live in a kennel forever… and she wouldn’t find a family to love and play with!
And then one beautiful day, finally, a happy, kind woman named Gracie visited Lucy Lu at the shelter…
Life Lessons of Lucy Lu is a beautifully illustrated dog book for kids and a great gift for any dog lover. Even reluctant readers will want to find out who rescues the cute talking dogs from the animal shelter! This empowering book for children also teaches kindergarten and elementary school-aged children to be caring, take care of abandoned animals, and make a difference in the lives of people and animals!
“Oh, Lucy Lu,” Gracie said. “You are perfect. You are the one. I would love to adopt you and be your new Mama. Would you like that?”
