The Worlds of Ashley Stangl

Hello, everyone! Remember me? Yes, I'm still alive. I've just been too busy to blog or to write much. But my schedule has cleared up for a while, giving me more time to blog...and to write. I've seen The Writer's Tag on plenty of blogs, and most recently saw it on Hamlette's blog . I want this blog to be more than tags, but I've been meaning to make some posts about writing, so this seems like a good way to start.  Without further ado... 1. What genres, styles, and topics do you write about? I write science fiction and fantasy, especially fairy tale retellings. I would like to write in other genres, but I find that a story idea has to have a fun worldbuilding element in order to maintain my interest. Even my contemporary ideas have a fairy tale connection for my imagination to seize upon. I write mostly in past-tense third-person-limited, but I’ve also done past-tense first-person, first-person epistolary, and a fragment of second-person future-tens...

One of my New Year's resolutions was to blog more. Since I'm making my first post of 2017 in the latter half of February, you can see how well that's going. However, Elisabeth Grace Foley is hosting a Pinterest storyboard party that invites authors to share their visual inspiration for stories they've written or hope to write. That sounds like fun, and seems like a good way to ease myself back into blogging, so I've joined in! I tend to gather images as inspiration fairly early in my writing process. (Actually, I've started saving them to my computer, rather than Pinterest--less chance of distraction that way). My storyboards are a hodge-podge of images and ideas to draw from as I plan the story, not necessarily a strictly accurate picture of the story that springs from it. That said, here are my storyboards! The first is from a high fantasy novel with the working title Star of the Sea. It revolves around an arranged marriage between a woman...

A few weeks ago, Jenelle Schmidt announced a Spooky Story Challenge for Halloween. I am the world's biggest wimp when it comes to scary stories, but I thought this sounded like a fun way to stretch some new writing muscles. I've delayed (I wrote one story and hated it, and waited a while for a better idea to come to me), but now, in the last few hours before the deadline, I've come up with this little thing. This story was partially inspired by Jenelle's prompt of It was under the bed/in the closet. Now that I've written it, part of me thinks it's too silly, and part of me thinks it's too dark, but I'm going to be brave and post it anyway. It's definitely different from anything else I've written. Enjoy! And be sure to follow the link to read the other spooky stories!                                    ...

Each of the five stories in the Five Magic Spindles collection starts with its own title page, and mine arrived today! When I wrote this story, I entertained no hope that my story about alien tomb robbers would make it into the collection of "Sleeping Beauty" retellings, but I still allowed myself to daydream about a title page. When I unexpectedly won, the title page was the prize I was most excited for. What sort of image would a publisher choose to represent my story?  Now I know, and it's surprisingly perfect. They've made Tanza, my main character, come to life. The alert, tough, no-nonsense stance, the practical clothes, the pockets bulging with supplies--that little silhouette is entirely recognizable to her author. And the plants around the border!  No spoilers, but a few key scenes involve areas with lots of plants, and I'm so delighted they made it to the cover. My biggest fear was that publishers would look at a sci-fi story and make a cover with...