The short, factual version…
Jill D. Block was born in Buffalo, NY, raised in Titusville, NJ, and spent her formative years in New York City. She attended Stuyvesant High School, Clark University and Brooklyn Law School.
A voracious reader, Jill is a partner at a global law firm, practicing real estate law. In between billable hours, she writes the kind of fiction she likes to read.
In 2015, Jill published her first short story. Since then, her stories have appeared in Title Magazine (Australia) and the anthologies Dark City Lights, In Sunlight or in Shadow and Alive in Shape and Color. The Truth About Parallel Lines is her first novel.
The longer, more interesting version…
I am one of three daughters, the middle child. My early years were spent on a decidedly non-working farm in New Jersey, not far from where George Washington crossed the Delaware. (I once asked my mother if he’d crossed the long way or the short way. It took us about a minute and a half to drive across the bridge to New Hope, Pennsylvania; it didn’t seem like it would have been such a big deal, even in a boat.) My parents divorced when I was 11. I figured that next up, my mother would meet a fellow with three boys of his own, and we would wind up in a split ranch in California with a live-in housekeeper. Instead, my mother, my sisters and I moved to New York City (cue the theme song from One Day at a Time – and yes, I know they were Logansport, IN, but you get my point). Eventually, each of my parents remarried, giving me the two best step-parents you could ask for, and showing me what happily ever after looks like.
Having survived the New York City public school system, I ended up at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. After that, I went to Brooklyn Law School and became a lawyer. (Nine law firms later, it turns out it is nothing like L.A. Law or Ally McBeal.) And that was 30 years ago. Time flies.
Three years ago, my father asked if I’d like to write a short story for an anthology he was editing. I said yes, without hesitation. I forgot about it for a month, panicked for a month, procrastinated for a month and then I sat down and wrote a story. Since then, I’ve had four stories published, and I wrote a novel. It feels like this is the beginning.
