“My daughter at age 16 asked for help with something I can’t even remember now. I said ‘I can try, but I’m really not that creative.’ And her response to me was, ‘But Ma...you’re writing a whole book!’ That statement changed my view about myself and what I was doing. I felt like she was proud of me.” Jay Ashlei was born and raised in Baltimore, MD. She always considered herself a strange and imaginative child, but didn’t see it as a good thing then. Privately she would write poetry, fan fiction - most of it inspired by her crush on 2Pac - and short stories. She never EVER shared what she wrote out of sheer fear of letting people into her head. When her mother died in 2016, she spent more time in her head than usual. This is when some of her ideas became stories and the characters came to life. She decided she was going to write a book simply as a challenge to herself, with no intention of publishing. Jay was motivated by friends of hers who had written and published books of their own, but even more so by her daughter’s words. Because of those two things, she decided to take her writing more seriously, and do something she, as a shy introvert, would have NEVER done; let people into her thoughts. Jay is a mother of two and works for the government, but is patiently waiting for the day when she can quit to pursue writing full time.