The Short Version
Ava Bacchus writes everything from dark romance to romantasy, always with obsessive, morally questionable, and dangerous characters. Before writing fiction full-time, Ava accumulated an assortment of experiences that now make suspiciously convenient research material, including web development and coding, computer repair, ethical hacking, online investigation, residential construction, illustration, animation, music, and being a legit cowgirl. She also spends an unreasonable amount of time learning about psychology, technology, and history. When she isn't writing she can usually be found drawing, building something, hiking, or seeking out some random, surreal, caffeine-fueled adventure.
Favorite food: Cucumber salad
Favorite song: “The Rain” by The Cult, or “IYDKMIGTHTKY” by Type O Negative
Favorite weather: Autumn, cozy, overcast
The Longer Version
Life has taken a very meandering path for me. When I was younger, I was a very active person with many interests in horses, sports, gymnastics, dance, music, art, and computers. I was constantly on the go and an easily bored, destructive child. My family indulged me as much as they could, mostly to keep me out of trouble. By the time I was eighteen, I was a very accomplished menace to society.
After a series of accidents, botched surgery, and spectacularly bad luck left me partially paralyzed, I taught myself to code websites and program, build, and repair computers. This brought me into the worlds of ethical hacking and online investigation. Initially, I worked against white supremacy in Eastern and Central Europe, which opened the door into anti-trafficking organizations, as white supremacy and trafficking are often strange bedfellows.
Eventually, that life blew up in my face. I found myself targeted by two groups and decided to disappear. I entered college on the opposite side of the country as a non-traditional student, living in an apartment in someone else’s name. I changed majors frequently, and by the time I left school, I had studied forensic criminalistics, forensic psychology, computer animation, early childhood education, and creative writing. Apparently, not even formal education could force me to pick one thing.
More misfortune followed. Once again partially paralyzed, I decided to turn my skills in graphic and web design into an illustration career. Doing so enabled me to work from home with the medical support I needed. Over the years, I worked all over the arts, from commercial illustration for books and card games, to giftware, to matte painting for movies.
Art and I broke up in 2024 after being on the rocks for several years. The invention of AI “art” didn’t help, but more than anything it forced me to finally face some ugly truths.
Like white supremacy and trafficking were strange bedfellows, art had unsavory bedfellows of its own. The deeper I moved into the industry, the more clearly I saw how wealth, access, and gatekeeping determined whose tastes mattered and which voices were heard. When I was at the bottom of the ladder, I couldn’t see any of it. Every rung I desperately clawed my way onto only made the view clearer:
Like the Wizard of Oz, the tastemaker behind the curtain was just a fat old man. Not an artist, not anyone creative. Just some man with a lot of money, looking for what would go with everything else he already owned.
Worse, I had to reckon with the fact that I had already tailored my work to their tastes in order to compete with other artists. I no longer knew how to separate my artistic voice from that, and couldn’t “unsee” what I’d already seen.
So I quit.
In 2023, I started to seriously pursue writing. I’d just finished a grueling project for a major publisher, which would eventually be canceled and never published at all. I’d spent 2.5 years of my life on it. My health deteriorated again while I was working on it, pushing myself to the limit to finish on time. It felt like an oddly fitting goodbye.
During that time, I had the idea for a Middle Eastern romantasy-style book. I wrote 54,000 words of it for NaNoWriMo that year, and I was hooked. Keep Me Caged followed soon after.
And the rest? Well, you’re looking at it.