New Website, Debut Novel, and the Loneliness of Creating

For so long, I hoped to one day say, ‘my novel comes out this year.’ And now I get to, because…

My debut novel comes out this year.

My YA fantasy novel The Space Between You and Me releases in print and ebook on November 14th with Amazon and other major retailers. You can preorder the ebook now!

Here’s the cover made by real live cover designer Andrew Davis (no relation) who has designed covers of other books on real live best seller lists

So what’s my book about?

Well, it’s about magic, coming of age, family, and best friends finding love in a world that wants to tear them apart.

Since kissing his best friend and setting fire to their friendship, Apollo has been slumming it with the outliers of his magical community.

Jonah has determinedly not been thinking about his ex-best friend and the kiss they shared. But it’s impossible to forget said ex-best friend when he is also your Kindred.

Though their magic only stirs to life when they touch, Jonah and Apollo would be separated for the safety of the community if anyone found out they were Kindred.

When they uncover a plot targeting the orphaned members of their clan for experimentation, they must decide: Keep their secret and stay together or sacrifice their bond to save their clan?

It is my sincere hope that this magical book evokes best friend and first crush nostalgia against the backdrop of a neon-colored night, all tinged with the unsettling threat of an enemy that reminds you of how you felt watching Stranger Things for the first time.

Publishing this novel had been an idea marinating in my brain after a friend who read it asked if I wanted to write anything for a queer book box project she was working on. While out sick from work last year, I finally decided to take the plunge. Turns out having an additional eight hours free per day gives one time to think about all kinds of other facets of one’s life.

Given that the indie publishing track kind of goes hand-in-hand with building your own platform, I’ve decided to buy a domain after nearly two decades of supporting my writing habit with my day job. You can visit my website, and what will be my main home base, here. I will keep this old girl alive for now, but please bookmark my new internet home. If you’re feeling extra bold, sign up for my newsletter; I give subscribers access to the first 99 pages of my upcoming novel.

After reading Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, I’ve been thinking a lot about art. About supporting my art rather than asking it to support me. So instead of going into this with the expectation that this book will sell enough to one day hit the NY Times Bestseller list and Jimmy Fallon might want to talk to me (Who am I kidding? I could NEVER go on a talk show. Instead of fantasizing about interviews or awards ceremonies, I fantasize about how I’m going to duck out of them Cormac McCarthy style), I will focus on building the biodome for my book to fly in and hopefully land with someone.

But the process of creation is weird. You make yourself completely vulnerable by putting an entire novel carved from your heart into a public space, all with the fervent hope that it resonates with someone else. When people refer to the loneliness of any creative art, I don’t think they’re talking about the actual creating; sure, you are alone, but one is rarely lonely in the company of stories and art. I think people are actually referring to the years spent honing your craft, performing the admin that sucks up all your time to be creative, continuously looking at the creation from every angle until you’re sick of looking at it and then, still, sharpening it further, being the sole proponent of your work, screaming on a hill and hoping someone hears you while you spiral in a fomo-hazed depression, eating bag after bag of Tapatio Doritos while watching other authors find success. That’s the lonely part.

I’m currently in the thick of that part, in case you haven’t gathered that. Here’s the call to action, ya’ll. Indie authors usually don’t have the backing that publishing houses can provide, so people spreading the word is the #1 way our work can find its way into the hands of readers. This has all been done out of my love of what I do (read: my own pocket), so here I am, just a girl, standing in front of you, asking you to love me (and link bombing you).

Interested in my book and ready to take action?

Preorder The Space Between You and Me

Add The Space Between You and Me to Goodreads

Sign up to be considered for an ARC of The Space Between You and Me

Need to know more first?

(I feel like this could double as a personality test…)

Check out my story board on Pinterest

Check out my novel’s playlist on Spotify

Check out my website

Follow me on Amazon

So there’s the haps. Thank you to everyone reading–new followers, old followers, random lurkers–for following me on this journey. I hope you will meet me at my next stop.

7 Books You Want Your Kids to Read

Let’s face it, the bookstore and library are saturated with children’s books. How do you know what to choose?

For me, if a book has dense paragraphs of prose per picture, I almost always put it back down, no matter how skilled/beautiful/cute the illustrations. My six-year-olds respond better to a decent balance between prose and pictures. They’re more engaged, and these are usually more concisely told stories that utilize language more effectively and, so, are more fun to read.

From my extensive hunt for optimal reading material for my feral kids, I’ve compiled a list of 7 tried-and-true children’s books you will love reading with your child.

Books about feelings

Bear with me here. I am still learning to express my own feelings, let alone teach my kids how to do so. But these reads assist them in understanding the range of and often conflicting emotions they can experience.

Both In My Heart: A Book of Feelings by Jo Witek & Christine Roussey and I’m Happy-Sad Today by Lory Britain & Matthew Rivera feature beautiful, bright colors and accessible discussions about feelings.

Bonus features: I’m Happy-Sad Today has helpful instructions at the end of the book for experiencing this book with your children and fun cut-outs for sensory-sensitive kids in In My Heart.

Books about socializing

Be Kind by Pat Zietlow Miller & Jen Hill combines soft, skillful watercolors and sweet, rhythmic prose in an important story that demonstrates that how you behave toward others, even the smallest gestures, makes a big impact.

Sad books

Sometimes you just need to get up in your feels with a book. Oh wait, that’s me. Sometimes kids need a bittersweet read to prepare them for the bittersweet moments of life. I mean, that is the only way I can justify why our parents allowed The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein to be a seminal book of our childhoods. I’m only half-joking. It’s a classic, it’s beautiful, and it hits like 70% cacao.

Books that encourage

Oh, The Places You’ll Go by Dr. Suess delivers powerful life lessons with all of the fun wordplay and quirky story-telling Suess is known for. It handles ambition, achievement, and the inevitable failures of life.

Books with counting

Stack the Cats by Susan Ghahremani–I mean, you saw the picture, right? And the rest of it is just as freaking adorable.

Wordless books

Some of our favorites have been Journey by Aaron Becker, The Conductor by Laëtitia Devernay, and Wolf in the Snow by Matthew Cordell.

Interestingly enough, I almost added Instructions by Neil Gaiman & Charles Vess even though it has words. I didn’t remember that, because I was looking for books that make you think outside of the box to find the line of the story. And Instructions kind of does that by dropping the reader into a setting/story without context.

I love the questions my kids ask when reading these illustration-only stories. It’s important for them to stretch their story-telling muscles and co-write the story with their interpretation.

A plain good story…

This is my favorite children’s book ever. It is like a warm hug. The colors and illustration are gorgeous, and the story is sweet with the good lived-in feel of a folk tale, like an old favorite sweater. A Mouse Called Julian by this same author is also a great read.

We are always on the hunt for new favorites. What are some of your favorite children’s books?

How Audiobooks Killed My Muse

Let me tell you a story.

Two days ago, I wouldn’t have uttered those words, let alone written them. I’d been too afraid to commit to telling any kind of tale; every idea that entered my head felt too fleeting, too flimsy.

After coming out of edits on two books over the last couple years, and writing a mere…

34,525 words to a new book during National Novel Writing Month, I felt like a shriveled husk of creativity. I’ve got my bag of excuses of course–kids, work, Netflix, life. However, behind the scenes, I have been filling every spare moment with reading. Paper books, ebooks, and audiobooks. Every moment my hands are busy but my brain is free, I found myself plugged into an audiobook (currently: Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune). This is because I have always felt that books provide knowledge and inspiration, the most important food groups for the writing kind. Thus, I find myself in an addictive relationship in which I feel if I can just read–well, everything, then I’ll be a better writer and a better human. I mean, yeah, it’s partially true, but at one point, you have to set the book down (and unplug the headphones) and live. Or in this case, daydream.

So after a veritable Mojave-like dryness of inspiration and drive, I happened to be washing dishes like a normie (i.e. no book being narrated directly into my earballs), and ideas for my November novel came pouring in. Are they genius ideas? No, just little snippets of scenes, glimpses at the characters’ minds, but this is the bread and butter of keeping a story alive in my imagination.

I realized I couldn’t expect to keep on filling every empty space with someone else’s words and have the work of daydreaming do itself. I was living in someone else’s final vision of the daydreaming into which they’d poured countless hours, days, months, maybe even years. I needed to give myself the breathing room to settle into the completely free-to-wander headspace I remember being able to call upon with ease as a child. Good old-fashioned staring into space fertilizes the ground to be struck with inspiration.

Next time I’m doing the dishes or checking the mail, I won’t take my phone with me, because I know now that my muse needs to run through empty fields.

Of course reading inspires, but do you think is it possible to read too much as a creative? What’s the first thing you change when the ideas stop coming?

“Specimen”

February is Women in Horror Month (recently changed to March). My love for the horror genre goes way back, before I began voraciously reading. It likely developed the moment my parents told me to go back in my room as they sat down to watch Poltergeist. Instead, I did what any curious and rebellious six-year-old would: I snuck out, crawling on all fours, and watched Poltergeist, terrified from behind my dad’s recliner. Though I couldn’t sleep for a week after, I was addicted.

In a lovely bit of astrological alignment, my horror story “Specimen” came out in Trembling with Fear today. You can read it for free here. This is massive and deliciously circular to me because I remember when I was a wee babe of writing and putting my short, horror work out there, Trembling with Fear was one of the first venues I came across. It is such an honor to be included.

Here is how Editor Stephanie Ellis introduces it:

“First up this week is Specimen by Ashley B. Davis, a hauntingly atmospheric story of an abandoned naturalist on an island uninhabited by humans. His obsession with the specimens he is observing is gradually changed, roles reversing as he struggles to survive.”

Trembling with Fear

Looking for more ways to celebrate women in horror this month? Of course you are! You can read and listen to my other work by visiting my Published Works page, but here’s a quick rundown of my most recent publications. You can listen to me reading my poem “Time Consuming” at Liquid Imagination or listen to a full-blown audio production of my story “Feud” at The Grey Rooms 😱 (my story starts at 19:54). I also spoke (awkwardly) at length about my story and the horror genre with the inimitable Brooks Bigley at The Grey Rooms Podcast in my Behind the Door interview. Lastly, if you enjoyed the naturalist protagonist in “Specimen”, you can read about another scientific-minded protagonist in my story “The Wake” at Jamais Vu.

Happy reading, listening, whatever poison you choose. May your month be full of wicked female wiles and all the horror.

The Self-Anointed Artist: My Audio-Produced Story “Feud” and First Author Interview

I have been following Amie McNee, creativity coach and book doula, on Instagram for some time. McNee encourages authors and artists to claim their creator title. The messages she writes to herself and to her followers are designed to systematically restructure our sometimes debilitating inner monologues about being a creator. Even in writing that last sentence, I had originally written “Her little messages”–McNee has taught me this is how doubt, negativity, and fear of others’ perceptions can alter and minimize the self we are striving to be.

I’ve always considered myself as someone who processes life through writing. I don’t get angry at someone and then write them into a novel to then put them through horrible trials. It’s a different kind of processing I undergo when creating art. It’s like I become a sieve, where the sand of any heavy emotion falls to the bottom and all of the bigger stuff like truth rises to the top (wait, do I know how a sieve works?). Though I’ve always instinctively resorted to this act of processing/creating, whenever I have thought of myself as ‘Artist’ or ‘Author’, I would always inwardly cringe, and I certainly never proclaimed myself aloud as such.

Years ago, I started this blog as a home for my creative works, a platform for a writer. I’ve always been more comfortable with calling myself a writer, because it so tidily sits beside reader and doodler. But to call oneself an “Author” is big. It comes with a truckload of connotation and entitled-sounding opinion, but I mentioned in an old post that declaring yourself the self you want to be by living as though you already are, is part of the becoming process. Even now, I feel resistance writing this post, worrying whether it is trite or whether it will resonate with anyone. But I couldn’t honestly share this milestone without talking about about everything I’ve had to fight against to get here.

All this to say, as soon as I changed my online presence descriptors to say “Author”, as soon as I anointed myself with that whole truckload of connotation behind it, that in and of itself didn’t make things happen for me, but it gave me the power to start opening those doors that had been there all along.

Image credit: Cassie Pertiet

Last year, I’d received the acceptance from The Grey Rooms Podcast for my most recently published work, a short horror story “Feud” (click here to listen; my story starts at 19:54). Since then, I have decided to self-publish a novel (more information on that soon!), scheduled a photoshoot for my author photo(!), and have been interviewed (listen to the interview here!) for the first time as an AUTHOR (notice I removed the quotations on that one 😏). I’m not saying that acceptance made those things happen. But my decision to proclaim myself certainly gave me the power to reach out and take what I wanted.

Writing this from the place of the final pass through of edits on upcoming debut release, where I am ripping my hair out, wondering if it’s as close to done as I thought, feels a little fraudulent, but it’s time to fly!

Let’s chat in the comments. Have you ever let yourself fall into this trap of self-denial? How did you anoint yourself?