Interview with Ashley Cooley

Published 2014-05-25.
What is your e-reading device of choice?
I absolutely adore my Kobo.
What book marketing techniques have been most effective for you?
Taking control of social media, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger. Contacting book bloggers and having a team of passionate fans, friends and family helping to spread the word when they can.
Describe your desk
Cluttered :)
I don't normally write at my desk other than for the first drafts of things, so during that inbetween time it serves as a place to put things, like my ps3 and my tv, and random notes on characters and such.
The only organized thing in my writing life is my documents folder on my laptop.
When did you first start writing?
When did I first start writing? That's a hard one because I can't really remember. I would like to say once I had a basic grasp of the alphabet, I wrote my first 300-plus page novel when I was seven (it had unicorns and owls crossed with griffins and dragons at one point...), but I remember writing short stories before that (about a puppy and a kitten named Pal and Oha respectively). Even before I was writing, I was telling stories verbally. So, it's a little hard to answer :)
What's the story behind your latest book?
Along the River Styx is about the teenage daughter of Thanatos, the god of Death and a mortal who lives in the mortal world and as inherited her father's ability to kill people with a single touch. Delphi gets into a little trouble when she kills her highschool quarterback Dale Henrys, but run ins with Dale don't stop there. Dale Henrys comes back as a Reaper with a grudge and an agenda; item number one: Control the underworld.
What motivated you to become an indie author?
For a long time I was dead set on being a traditionally published author, and I spent five years trying to do so. Eventually, I realized that what I really wanted was just to get my writing out there and have people reading and enjoying (or hating) it. So, this was a natural progression.
What is the greatest joy of writing for you?
It takes me on a journey. For a little while I get out of my life and get to follow someone else around, write their story, live in my head for a bit.
What do your fans mean to you?
Everything. Honestly, I owe even getting to the point of publishing to some of my earliest fans of the early drafts. If I could hug each one of you, I totally would.
What are you working on next?
At the moment I'm playing with a few ideas, one is for a novella set before the events in Along the River Styx, one is a creepy short story, and the last one I'm not exactly sure what to classify it as yet, but it has novel potential.
Who are your favorite authors?
Ah, another hard one. You'd think that this one would be easy but I have so many favourite authors that it's going to be hard to list them all, but here are a few: J.K.Rowling, Keira Cass, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Rachel Hawkins, Amanda Hocking, Rachel Vincent, Wendy Higgins, and so many more.
When you're not writing, how do you spend your time?
Gaming mostly. I am a huge gamer, but I'm one of those completion gamers so I have to get every collectible and every Easter egg.
I also enjoy doing crafts too. I make clay figures occasionally, and I work on seeing just how full I can get my Smashbooks. I bake and decorate what I bake. And then of course, I read.
How do you discover the ebooks you read?
Through friends and family, or Twitter/Facebook, and books that get recommended to me by Kobo
Do you remember the first story you ever wrote?
Yep. I mentioned it in an earlier question. It was called Mystic, and I was seven and it was....interesting and ultimately unreadable because I couldn't spell worth anything. (I'm talking "wat" instead of "what" and "there" for "their" and "were" for "where"...it was just bad, trust me.)
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