Author Ashley Ladd Likens Writing to Breathing

Today, I'm happy to give you romance author Ashley Ladd, pontificating on why she puts pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard...

Why I Write
By Ashley Ladd

That's like asking why I breathe? I can't not write. If no one else was ever to read another word I write, if I was never to earn another dime writing, I'd still write. I'm an obsessed writer.

I also write to get the voices out of my head - oops! Don't tell the men in the white coats I said that.

Seriously, many characters live in my head who struggle to get out, who demand their stories be told. Sometimes their voices are louder than my own.

Writing is also cathartic. I've worked out issues in my life, I've struggled with them, I've inspired myself. A few years ago I wrote an erotic romance Civil Affairs in which I lost a lot of weight as the heroine of my story did. In another story, "Sorry Charlie" in the Friction anthology, my hero is trying to reconcile with his father, something I've also gone through. I'm getting ready to start writing another story that will help me to exorcise a demon and to come to grips with something in my life.

I also live vicariously through my characters. I'll probably never captain a starship in the twenty-third century but when I create a starship captain, I become that person; I live the life of my dreams. I'll never get to time travel to the Wild Wild West or jump into a cartoon in real life or become a vampire or fight with crazy ghosts in real life or have a verbal battle with my cat, but I get to do all these amazingly miraculous things and more when I'm writing.

Bio

Ashley Ladd is an Air Force vet who longs to captain a starship, travel through time, fall deeply in love, and converse with cats, not necessarily in that order. She writes M/M, MMF, and MF erotic romance. Upcoming releases include "Crazy In Love", "Bad Conduct", and "Carnal Lust" from Total-E-Bound.com. She loves to talk to her readers and fellow writers at her blog.