By Ruth Ann Ruiz
The Post Newspaper Features Editor
Her first book, a thriller, came out in 2021 and received great reviews. Then she wrote a romance and a thriller in 2022. Her fourth book, a romance, is about to be launched, and it’s set in the Lone Star State’s capital city, Austin.
Her books are her babies, Ashley proclaimed with a smile. Ashley Winstead is a published author with four books under her belt, and she is just getting started. Her work has been translated into a dozen languages and optioned for film/television, her website says.
Ashley shared that the options for film and television translate to dollars in her bank account, even if the books optioned never make it to the big or small screen.
Making a living as a writer is a goal Ashley has had since she was growing up as the oldest of three siblings. Not only is she a widely read author, but she has also found a knack at making a living as a writer.
As a child Ashley remembers her fondness with words and language
“Writing for me manifested at an early age.” Ashley said. I felt like writing and language is how I think through life.”
Her teenage years were filled with teenage rebellion. “I ditched school a lot and drank, and technically, I even dated a felon,” shared Ashley. But in spite of her rebellious ways, Ashley maintained her studies and won awards in Florida for her literary skills and talents. She participated in lots of school clubs and was president of the literary magazine at her high school.
She’s lived in many different port cities most of her life because both her father and her mother once served in the United States Navy. Ashley recalls as she and her siblings were about to enter high school, her mother laid out the new rule for the family. They would no longer move from port city to port city but would live in the town of Port St Lucie in Florida.
Settling into a somewhat rural area of Florida as a high schooler, Ashley had her fair share of nature’s exotic experiences. She remembers huge pink spiders falling on her arm while she was out exploring in the tropical environment. She describes other creatures of the Florida marshlands, with their bright colored bodies slithering around at unexpected moments.
Her mother continues to live in the family home in Port St Lucie, but sadly, she lost her father in August 2022. He was only 57 years old when he passed on. “I was doing copywriting for this book when my father died suddenly of a heart attack,” Ashley shared.
Through her time of grieving, she kept pace with what she needed to do to meet the deadlines for her latest book. Though she had a heavy heart, as she put the finishing touches on “The Boyfriend Candidate,” the book maintains an upbeat style which allows readers to relax and enjoy a refreshing experience with her characters.
It could be her teenage years in Florida helped inspire her style in her most recent book which has a bright, colorful tone to it and a plot that swivels and curves at unexpected moments. “The Boyfriend Candidate” opens in a luxury bar, a bar with “flair” to it. It’s a place where a woman might go who is looking to have fun in style.
Alexis Stone, the main character in “The Boyfriend Candidate,” is determined to experience life as she never has before. Her one visit to the bar with a “flair” turns her life upside down. She goes from being a quiet, school librarian to being suddenly caught up in Texas politics, leading rallies and giving spontaneous speeches.
Jumping into the book, readers are quickly taken into Alexis’s mind and soul and get a clear view of all the details happening around her as she begins to live a life that only a few ever experience. Ashely shared that she had spent some time working for a political think tank which gave her a lot of material to draw from as she crafted her book, “The Boyfriend Candidate.”
Alexis Stone’s newfound boyfriend is a candidate for Governor of Texas, and while I don’t want to spoil it for her readers, let’s just say “boyfriend” is a complicated term. Nonetheless romance is flying around, and Ashley does a great job of creating teasing and tension leaving readers eager to turn the page to see if the couple share a kiss.
Knowing she was destined to be a writer is something Ashley felt since she was just a little girl. “Young Ashley was going to be a writer and live in NYC with a cat,” Ashely shared.
But like the plots of her book, the road to achieving her writing dreams has taken unexpected turns. She graduated from Vanderbilt University, then applied to Master of Fine Arts (MFA) programs across the nation. But she was not accepted into any of the MFA programs.
Feeling a bit discouraged she went off to California where she worked in the creative arts industry. Then she had enough of not chasing her dream and applied to a doctoral program at Southern Methodist University in the Dallas area, which is how she ended up in Texas.
With her doctorate degree in Contemporary American Literature finished, she married her college sweetheart from Vanderbilt. They had maintained their romance while she was in Los Angles and Dallas. He is an engineer with NASA at the Johnson Space Center. Her marriage to him brought her to Houston.
She shared that while she was settling into married life and a secure job, she was also trying to figure out how to get back to creative writing. That’s when she made up her mind, she needed to be disciplined and give up things like watching TV and just start writing.
Since she made that personal commitment, she’s been on a roll. Older Ashley — and you can tell from her photo she isn’t that old — is now a writer living in Houston and cats appear in her books.
Writing is her career these days — day and night. Writing occupies most of her time. In fact, she is so intensely drawn to her work that she says she sets an alarm on her smart phone to remind her to tend to other tasks or just to take a break.
She reports her husband and her enjoy their lives and love the richness of the community that they have found in Houston, which she reports is very supportive of literary art. Will they have children? Well, that’s not a definite yes or no—for now her books are her babies, and she is enjoying life as a dedicated writer with her husband in Texas.
