way sms: Before & After: Ashley Hope Perez

In her words:

When I’m not reading, writing, or teaching, I am hanging out with our little boy, Liam Miguel. He keeps me very, very busy. In the scraps of time that remain, I also like to run (I did the Houston Marathon in 2007 and the Chicago Marathon in 2009), bake (but let’s don’t revive the “Cookie Girl” nickname, please), watch movies, work in my garden, and destroy my mom in long-distance games of Scrabble. My husband is a hard-core Metallica fan who’s also addicted to Vicente Fernández’s soulful ballads, which means I also get plenty of exposure to an eclectic mix of music. Our household also includes a very sweet-natured cat, Sugar Mama, who would like the world to know that she was here before Liam.

Learn more about Ashley at www.ashleyperez.com!

I was mostly busy using up the book advance on a termite treatment for our house and furniture for our (then brand-new) baby boy, Liam Miguel. Oh yeah, I also stalked lots of authors online to see how they “behaved” on blogs and in their comments because the whole Internet community was new to me. Also... explaining to relatives and former students for the ga-zillionth time why they (still) couldn’t buy the book yet. And maybe I set up a google alert so I could now the MINUTE something new about me or about What Can’t Wait came up.

On the release date, I drove to all the bookstores in my town to make sure they had What Can’t Wait. One store has it in the window, and I still drive by obsessively to check that it’s there. The best thing about life after publication is hearing from readers, especially students. I went on a mini book tour in Houston and did half a dozen school visits, which left me jonesing for my teaching days. I still write with my students in mind. In fact, I have another bun—ahem, book—in the oven: The Knife and the Butterfly. It’s in revision and will be out in 2012. I’m slowly gathering the ingredients for my third, top-secret, novel.

Reviews for What Can't Wait
Forever Young Adult
The Book Memoirs
Writing YA

**Also, check out a guest post Ashley did on Diversity in YA here.