I admit that I've been a Greg Lilly fan since I read his earlier novel, Fingering the Family Jewels. His writing is tight, fast-paced and elegant. His newest, Devil's Bridge, is about love, but this isn't your typical love story.

The short version is this: Myra, the female protagonist, is in an abusive marriage; her husband Gil controls her with his violence because he can't deal with her growing independence, and she has no self-esteem left.

Topher, the male protagonist, has been her best friend since high school. He is in love with a man, Alex, who controls him through manipulation, and allowing this makes him doubt himself. Neither Topher nor Myra see that their lives run parallel to each others', but they both agree that the only way to save themselves is to leave their homes in Charlotte, North Carolina - together.

This becomes a journey of growth and self-discovery, of friendship and the rediscovery of personal value. And a story about unconditional love. This is a novel that will make its author a household name.

Was it autobiographical? "I think an author puts a bit of him or herself in every first novel," says Lilly mysteriously.

Lilly hails from Charlotte, where he wrote technical manuals for a large family-owned corporation. "I would do a lot of training sessions," he says. "And afterwards, I had to write up some sort of report about it. It turned out that the reports had plots - sort of a story line - which training reports aren't supposed to have. I got reprimanded more than once for that. So I started writing little stories and passing them over the walls of my partition to my co-workers. They liked them. Not long after, I joined a writing group. The focus was supposed to be on the short story. Well, one by one, the writers in the group would start working on a novel. For me, that was just too great a commitment, so I stuck with the short story. Finally, I was the last one in the group to be still writing short stories. One day I went through all I had written and I realized that with all the stories I had, I might just as well have written a novel. So I made the leap and treated each chapter as if it were a short story. I think that's what kept me from feeling overwhelmed."

Lilly builds his characters with great humanity. They become people you care about.

"They have elements of people I know or have known," admits Lilly. His geographies are accurate, like Sedona's Devil's Bridge where the climax of the story takes place.

"I think it's easier to talk about a real place than to make one up," he explains. Another of his great strengths is pacing. Lilly's novels are beautifully crafted. They don't meander; they don't slow down. Scenes build upon each other like fine architecture.

Lilly, who is gay, seems to be creating a new - and much needed - niche. "Most gay novels tend to dwell on the pain of being 'different' and the angst of coming out," says the author. But Lilly treats his gay characters as people, no different from anyone else, with the same concerns and the same kinds of everydayness. "Being gay isn't what defines anyone," he says. "It's the content of your character that tells others who you are." Lilly's characters don't know where they'll end up - anywhere far away from Charlotte is their goal. But once they see Sedona, they know they're home. "It was like that for me," says Lilly. "I came to Sedona once as a side trip en route to the Grand Canyon. It was supposed to be just one day, but we stayed for the rest of our vacation; and every time we had vacation time, we'd come back. I worked in the corporate sector for a long time, and like many others, I figured I'd work there forever, retire, and then maybe move to Sedona. After 9/11, a lot of companies started outsourcing and I realized I needed to take a good look at my life. Corporate entities no longer equaled job security. That was when I decided that rather than have a job and build my life around it, I'd prefer to build a life and fit a job into that. I wanted to be in Sedona."

At this writing, Lilly is sixty pages into his next novel - another Derek Mason Mystery that began with Fingering the Family Jewels. "This one is set in Sedona. Ruby retires to Sedona and Derek comes too. Of course Myra and Topher are already here, and Sedona isn't all that big. They'll join up and probably appear as characters in each others' stories."

For more information, see www.GregLilly.com.

>> Get the Book

Until next time !