About

I’m Ashley B. Davis. I write poetry and fiction in multiple genres. You can read my work by visiting my Published Works. For short stories, I tend to write in the contemporary and/or horror genre. With novels, it’s anything that works for the characters’ stories I have to tell.

Some of my influences are Salvador Dali, Edgar Allan Poe, Chuck Palahniuk, Margaret Atwood, J.D. Salinger, Maynard James Keenan, Bret Easton Ellis, Rainbow Rowell, Charlotte Brontë, Sharon Shinn, Maggie Stiefvater, and Sharon Olds.

A little more about me…

I didn’t always know I wanted to be a writer. I always ‘knew’ I wanted to be an artist since I could hold a crayon and safety scissors to drawing fighter jets and the vibrant fish in my grandmother’s saltwater tank. I was a storyteller in those days though; I loved telling horror stories in serial installments when my sisters’ or my friends came over.

After delving into drawing my favorite anime characters, I discovered fanfiction. I tried my hand at it for a while. Stories with someone else’s characters poured out of me. Then I drew my own characters one day, and my storytelling reared up as this inner voice narrating plot and the relationships between characters. I started writing those stories down. Finally, I let go of the art side of it all together and got “serious” about writing a novel sometime in high school. After a period of obsessing over a screenplay which pretty much plagiarized Blade, I wrote my own vampire story. I did so many revisions, my sisters—begrudging fans of my premature work—got mad at me. And then I kept writing, in the computer lab at the community college, in the pages of my philosophy and linguistics notebooks at university, and on post-its at work. Even then, I didn’t think of myself as a writer, let alone that I could do it for a living. I just knew that I had to write. Now, writing finds its way into the in-between moments of this full-time-job-mom-to-twins-life.

Personal

I work as a property manager in Southern California. In 2013, I graduated from California State University with a Master’s in English and minor in philosophy. I wrote my thesis on Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.

I was already a mom to two rescue kitties I found,

but six years ago I cloned myself…twice became a mother of twins, and I am excited to see how that transforms my writer identity.

Every day, I am inspired by my partner’s creative genius, music, thoughtfulness, and wit (one time I wrote a poem about my love for him, and he wrote a much better one back). He takes care of our daughters, supports me in so many ways, and patiently listens to my writing woes despite having no idea what I am talking about most of the time.

He is not always a zombie. Photo Credit: Rob Bejil

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Edvard and I go way back

Thank you for stopping by to learn more about me. I post new blogs quarterly(ish) on reading, writing, mom guilt, and/or my religious awe of libraries. Please sign up to follow my blog on the right. I hope to learn more about you through your comments. You can find me sending felt-funny-might-delete-later tweets into the twittersphere from @shleybdavis

 [Self-conscious aside: I feel like there is too much of my face on this page. Is there too much of my face on this page?]