About Me

Hmm... what do you want to know? Creativity is at the heart of everything I do, be it writing, designing, or simply arranging the bookcase.

In the beginning...

I decided I wanted to be an artist at age three, when for the first time, I colored within the lines. I also decided black was my favorite color because that happened to be the color crayon I'd picked up. No matter, I'd found my calling.

I don't recall when I first started writing, but I've always loved reading and I've been making up stories for as long as I can remember. Writing short stories, poetry, and songs was a natural outlet for all the ideas swirling around in my adolescent mind.

Ahh, adolescence.

I must admit that the Sweet Valley High series really affected me. By junior high, I was the source my friends turned to for smut. PG-13 smut, but smut nonetheless. A lot of my earliest work has disappeared over the years, and I can't say I'm too upset about that.

By my junior year of high school, I was starting to panic. College was looming and I needed to narrow my focus to one or two things. As it stood, I liked writing, interior design, drawing, and a couple other creativity-based things. Fortunately my parents stumbled across the phrases "desktop publishing" and "mass communications" and a major was found.

But then life got in the way of my writing.

My creative writing ceased as design became a larger part of my life. An internship before my senior year of college confirmed for me that I was in the right field, and after a quick year working in Michigan, I moved to Chicago. I spent the majority of my time working for an advertising agency, but I also spent a couple years working as part of an in-house creative team.

It wasn't until my husband and I moved to Mexico in the beginning of 2007 that I decided to give writing another try. Over the years I'd written a few short stories and I'd even put together a rough outline for a novel, but I'd never pursued that dream. Suddenly I had all the free time in the world and I figured, why not?

Living the dream. Sort of.

Since then, I've completed a first draft of a memoir (about my experiences in Mexico), a novel about a young Mexican man trying to sneak into the United States, and now I'm working on a novel about a tragedy that strikes two families in small-town Michigan. Plus I have a couple shiny ideas up my sleeve. I'm also submitting short stories to online publications and writing non-fiction articles for Demand Studios.

Read my short story, Shipwreck, at Flashquake.org.

As for design, I taught myself how to design websites at the beginning of '09 and as of April 2010 I finally have a job that incorporates both writing and design.

Want to know more? Email me at: melanie@melanieavila.com