Interview With Author Ash Gray
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I am a lesbian living in California. Right now I think have forty or so books published, but I’ve written more than that. I write lesfic, which is lesbian fiction written for and about lesbians exclusively.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
The series is called Geek Witch Xim and I randomly started writing longhand in a notebook one day when I was sitting at the park. I don’t know why, but I started having ideas about this nerdy witch who had to save the world. It’s taken me a long time just to publish the first book because I kept rewriting the entire thing. It wound up being much shorter than it was originally (some characters were cut and/or whittled down) but most of the time, the first book in my series are short because they’re marked down (0.99) as a lead-in.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
No. I just get up and write everyday.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
I have grown up reading fantasy. I loved Mercedes Lackey and Ursula Le Guin and the other fantasy classic greats as a child.
What are you working on now?
I’m in the middle of writing my series Fallen Stars, which is about an ancient cyborg soldier woman who is in love with a human woman during the apocalypse after robots destroyed the world. I’m having fun writing it and I hope people will take an interest in it.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I typically try to focus on promoting to lesbians since they’re the people I write for and they’re the people who would want to read what I’m writing and/or understand my perspective as a lesbian. I try to promote once a month and I also try to keep publishing and stay active.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Write a series with a 99 cent lead-in. It’s basically the only way to make money writing fiction these days. Oh, and a nice cover matters.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Your inner world is reflected in your outer world. Once I understood what that I meant, I committed myself to meditating everyday and keeping my inner world peaceful, and it has made my life more bearable, at least.
What are you reading now?
I just finished re-reading the Harry Potter series for the first time in years and decided to pick up The Wheel of Time series.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Continue writing my books and striving to make a living from them.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Frankenstein, Pema Chodron’s pocketbook of quotes, a collection of English Romantic poetry, a book on how to survive on a desert island.
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