Jenny Ashford was born in Daytona Beach, Florida in 1972, and fell in love with ghosts, witches and monsters as soon as she was able to read stories about them. Much of her childhood was spent watching The Addams Family, listening to goth rock, and scouring thrift shops for black lace dresses and veils.

After making a fruitless attempt at a writing career after high school, she gave up and went to college to be a graphic designer. The writing bug, however, never went away, and Jenny kept writing scary stories in her off hours.

Her first published story was Jacks Black Shadow, which was a runner-up in her local newspapers Halloween story contest. Later stories appeared on the DeviantLit webzine, and even later ones appeared in actual anthologies like ChimeraWorld #3, ChimeraWorld #4 (both from Chimericana Books), History Is Dead (Permuted Press), Crossings (Drollerie Press), and 2012 AD(Severed Press).

Now Jenny has a published book of short stories called Hopeful Monsters, has a novel called Bellwether that came out in December 2010, and has several dozen more unpublished short stories and nine or ten more novels waiting in the wings, and has a notebook crammed with a gazillion more story ideas.

She is also an artist, working in ad design as a day job (on the night shift), making horror-themed stationery, soap, perfume and playing cards, and doing bizarre pop-art paintings and Photoshop collages in any spare moments.

She loves old school punk and deathrock, Mystery Science Theater 3000, books about evolution, David Lynch movies, and coffee.

About the book:
Just when you thought home renovation couldn't be a bigger headache, along comes s haunting and a crazy supernatural cult.

Martin, Chloe, Ivan, and Olivia are four arty friends who have bought and renovated an old house once owned by a magician who disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

No sooner have they slapped on the last lick of paint than trouble starts brewing: First come nightmares, suggesting something lurks behind the walls that isn't insulation. Then comes the parade of strange, empty-eyed people who want to get into the house.

The nightmares get worse, finally leading to a bizarre discovery in the bowels of the house. The strange people multiply, threatening the lives and sanity of the four heroes and their friends. It all leads up to a confrontation between the dueling forces plaguing the house from within and without — but who are the good guys when both sides are evil?

"Quarantine" appears in the anthology Crossings (Drollerie Press). This ghost story anthology includes stories by Jenny Ashford, “Quarantine” Scott Nicholson, “She Climbs A Winding Stair” AJ Kirby, “Hand Me Down” BD Wilson, “Ghostlines” Tim Mulcahy, “Literary Visit”s N. K. Kingston, “Seeds” Emma Eshleman, “Spooked” Kristen Marie Hannum, “Hale’iwa Remains” Suzanne J. Willis, “Memory Lane” Thomas J. Barlow, “Take It Like a Man” Die Booth, “The Ghost Bride”
Available from Drollerie Press

"The Anatomy Lesson" appeared in the anthology History Is Dead.
A collection of gruesome tales from throughout the ages, the ravenous undead shamble through bloody battlefields, plague-ridden cities, genteel country estates, and dusty frontier towns. They emerge from foggy cemeteries, frozen barrows, loamy bogs, cursed mines, and gore-spattered operating rooms to prey on the living. But these zombies don't just eat people. They help painters and writers save their faltering careers. They unwittingly push humankind on the quest for fire. They topple evil capitalists and their corporate empires. They fight crime. They fall in love.
Available on Amazon and at the Permuted Press book store