Jerilyn Marler is the author of Lily Hates Goodbyes for young children coping with separation from a loved one, and Helping Your Young Child Cope with a Parent's Deployment, a handbook for adults helping milkids cope.

In 2010, her Navy officer son was on deployment and her 3-year-old granddaughter was distraught by his absence. Jerilyn wrote Lily Hates Goodbyes as a Word document with personal photos intended just for Lily. The book helped Lily talk about her feelings, develop healthy ways to cope with those feelings, and connect with her daddy despite the distance between them. The book helped Lily so much that Jerilyn hired Nathan Stoltenberg, a Seattle-based graphic artist and illustrator, and self-published it for all young children who suffer through long separations from a loved one. Lily Hates Goodbyes was first released in January 2011. A new release was published in August 2011 through Jerilyn’s new publishing company, Quincy Companion Books, an imprint of Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing. Daddy wears a Navy officer uniform in the original book. Many parents from other branches of the military asked for a branch-specific Lily book. That was beyond Jerilyn's capacity, but she rehired Nathan Stoltenberg to create a version of Daddy in a generic BDU, which has served well. It is by far the more popular version.

Her 40-year creative path wove through writing educational materials for Alaska elementary schools; writing three books about WordPerfect for an imprint of Henry Holt Publishers; editing dozens of books for technical publishers; editing a children’s book, a medical text book, and a book on divorce at the same time; and writing/editing end user documentation for more products than she can count. Jerilyn worked in major high technology companies and tiny start-ups; she’s been a real estate agent, programmer, project manager, program manager, and user interface designer. Her name is on two patents held by Intel Corporation, where she worked for nearly 15 years. The persistent thread through all of her work has been communication: it always comes back to words.

From sixth grade through her junior year of high school Jerilyn attended Kodaikanal International School, a boarding school in the mountains of southern India. Memories of her long, painful separations from her parents -- as well as being a military child, wife, and mother -- helped her relate to Lily’s experience 46 years later.

Jerilyn is happily retired now and lives with her husband Dan in Beaverton, a few miles from Portland, Oregon.