This month I’m excited to introduce Ash Litton. It’s fitting to start the new year with a mutli-talented, enterprising author.
Ash Litton is a writer and lover of sci-fi, fantasy, and all things fictional. She is the author of No Signal, Thoroughbred, Evening Hallow, and Comeuppance, and works on other Appalachian Dream Tales between her ongoing novel projects.
When she’s not writing, she’s drawing, and when she’s not doing either of those, she’s dreaming up new projects to work on. Born and raised in rural West Virginia, Ash has always wondered what things lay hidden in the hills around her. She attended West Virginia University, where she studied the English language before returning home to her family in rural West Virginia.
What Point of View do you prefer to write in? Is there a reason behind your choice?
Ash: I typically default to third person, because while I am the author, I am not my character. Very rarely do I write in first person POV, and if I do, it’s done for strategic purposes.
What is your favorite quote?
Ash: “Write. Finish things. Keep writing.” It’s by Neil Gaiman, and is quite possibly one of the most impressionable piece of instruction about writing. It isn’t about breaking books down into gimmicks—scenes and sequels, “writing rules”, “action, background, conflict”, and all that jazz—sure it’s good to know these things, but writing isn’t complicated. You sit down. You write. You finish what you write. You write more. The rest is just fluff.
Do you read outside your genre?
Ash: Absolutely! One of my favourite authors, Sir Terry Pratchett, was widely read, and for anyone who’s read the Discworld novels, they can see the results of his efforts. The more you read outside your own genre, the more you can pull in ideas and formulas that break from tradition and can help make for a more interesting story.
Which famous person, living or dead, would you like to meet and why?
Ash: There’s a whole bunch, to be honest. I can’t pick just one person. *deep breath* Okay, maybe if only to solve the mystery of her disappearance, I would love to meet Agatha Christie. Of course, I would pick her brain over her works, but I have always been a sucker for her greatest mystery: her disappearance and subsequent return to civilization with not a clue to her whereabouts in the meantime.
What motivated you to become an indie author?
Ash: I actually started off with the intent of going the traditional route, but then I read that agents and publishers would find me more appealing if I came in with some minor publications, proved to them that I was willing to market myself, or potentially have a small audience following me already. I started self-publishing my short stories on the side and wanted to use them to bolster my marketability to agents for my larger works later on. What I discovered was that I liked having the ultimate control over my short stories, so much in fact that it inspired me to stick with it. Currently, I still have one novel, Uncertain Heirs, which I’m still querying to agents, but for Tragedy of Ice, I’ve laid out my game plan for self-publishing.
You can follow Ash on her website, as well as Facebook and Twitter. 
The Rambling Muse 
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