It has been an excellent month for blog content on AmeriCymru and we would like to congratulate all our contributors and our Top Blogger winners. We are not awarding discretionary points this month because we feel there has been little to distinguish our winners in terms of the quality and frequency of their postings. Diolch everyone and happy Fourth of July

So without further ado here are this months winners:-

1. Gillian Morgan 81 points ( 81 ranking points View Gillian's blog on AC here )

2. Swansea Jack 42 points ( 42 ranking points. View SJ's blog on AC here )

3. Margo Lloyd Beckham 31 points ( 31 ranking points. View Margoo's blog on AC here )

Fabulous digital prizes will be awarded to our three winners today and Gillian is entitled to receive a copy of Jonathan Hicks', The Dead of Mametz . See next months Top Blogger prize below. To view the current weekly leaderboard and peruse the rules of the competition go to this page

If you would like to congratulate our winners please feel free to do so in comments on this page

Author Biography:

Jayne Joso is passionate about writing both fiction and drama. Her first play was commissioned in celebration of Chinas Childrens Day, and her first novel, Soothing Music for Stray Cats, published by Alcemi in 2009, was predicted by the Times Literary Supplement to be one of the great, eccentric London novels'. She is also author of the childrens book How do you Feel?, and has recently finished working on a new play for adults called I Fed the Birds. Joso has a huge fascination with Architecture which developed largely from her time living in Japan and China; she has written for publications such as Architecture Today magazine and German publisher, Prestel Art; she draws on her encounters with the world of the star architect for this, her second novel.

Further Information:

"A work of stunning orginality and deftness of prose in which Jayne Joso explores what becomes of the broken hearted with delicate skill and rare empathy." Cathi Unsworth

Set in the dazzling and eccentric world of star architects, Perfect Architect follows the journey of Gaia Ore, the widow of one of the worlds most famous and successful architects. Following her husbands death, Gaia finds a bundle of letters from another woman, Seline, and determines to find out more about her. This however, unwittingly opens out Gaias route to recovery from grief and from what she will later acknowledge was an empty and fruitless marriage. Through her friendship with an older woman she gradually regains her confidence and eventually decides to build her own dream home. Out of her own respect and passion for the work of great architects, Gaia embarks on a competition and invites a small number of her late husbands adversaries to bid for this commission.

Through the competition, the novel opens out onto a broad tapestry of architectural styles and cultures; we see each candidate designing in their home county, allowing the novel to flow between Spain, Italy, the US and the UK, and their own and varied influences: Oriental, Greek, Modern European. There is an intricately interwoven subplot involving Gaias postman Tom, who appears to have been one of the only close friends of her late, and highly misanthropic husband. Tom's family provides the necessary counter to the extraordinary lives of the Alpha male architects and adds to an already vivid array of characters, voices, and warmth. As Gaia finds her way to recovery, she enters her new vigorous role as architect of this grand competition. She finally emerges with her intellectual strength renewed and her faith restored in friendship and the kindness of others, most notably Tom, the older woman, and a particular architect with enough charisma for several.

By the end, and with the competition at its climax, a rather shy and unassuming Gaia is architect again of her own life, now mapping out a fresh curiosity and confidence in both the romantic and erotic.

With controlled shifting viewpoints not unlike Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, this novel moves towards an uplifting and celebratory ending. A life-affirming read filled with warmth, great characterisation and humour, about the nature of erotic and artistic obsession and the quest to find the right place, be that geographical, physical, material or psychological.

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