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 hope to someday have my own business incorporating both writing and design.

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