SION SMITH is the artist behind the cover of THE GIRL IN THE BASEMENT. Here’s his full bio:

I was born in North Wales at the back end of the sixties and wrote stories at school that got me in trouble but when school was through with me, I figured I might prefer to be Paul Stanley or maybe Alice Cooper. After ten years as vocalist and songwriter in my glam-rock band, Baby Dynamite, I turned around to find my band had got jobs or got married. I was the last man standing but it sure didn’t smell much like success even when I carried on writing as a solo artist.

Then, in 2003 – after many years of dreaming and scheming – I launched and edited two pop culture lifestyle magazines. One called Burn and the other, Zero – the tale of which is told in Black Dye White Noise. It was here that I honed my observational writing style.

Across all of those years, I stored everything I had ever created in a large wooden trunk. There were dozens upon dozens of notebooks in it – or at least there was until a fire used my house as fuel and then, I no longer had any of them.

Nor anything else come to that.

That kind of thing changes the way you look at life. Trust me.

If you’re interested in my reading habits, you’ll find my shelves littered with work ranging from Charles Bukowski, George Orwell, Raymond Carver, Poe Ballantine, Jack Kerouac, Donald Ray Pollack, Chuck Klosterman and Roberto Bolaño across to the likes of Susanna Clarke, Graham Joyce, Karen Maitland and Michael Chabon who are simply my recommendations to passers-by out of a collection of thousands.

I don’t own an awful lot these days aside from a growing collection of vinyl, some art from guys like Brian Ewing and Richey Beckett and a 12 string acoustic that I’ve started to play and write songs on again. If you feel like diving into my extensive music collection that I replaced digitally, here’s a link to my account over at rdio.com. I also like to travel. A lot.

Finally, if you’re curious, Siôn is pronounced Sean – as in Connery. I’m also the editor of Skin Deep magazine, otherwise known in the context of blog posts here as ‘the day job’. Occasionally, lovely people at the BBC, CNN and The Times like to play with me.

If you’re looking for social sharing other than twitter, your luck just ran out but there is a mailing list here where you can subscribe and only ever get mail when Something Very Important Happens.

To enquire about the possibility of Sion working on your book, email books@badhare.co.uk or visit his book design company www.badhare.co.uk.