Hello! My name is Imogene Ashton (pronounced Im-oh-jean, not Im-oh-gin). I was born and raised in Christchurch, New Zealand and I have lived here my whole life. I have three older sisters, an older brother and one younger sister. I graduated from the University of Canterbury in 2011, with a Bachelor of Arts, in English and History. I graduated from Ara, Polytechnic Institute of Technology in 2021 with a Diploma in Veterinary Nursing. (I love animals)
About my writing: This may sound rather cliche, but the idea for my first novel, came to me in a dream. I dreamed I was locked in a tower with my two sisters while a crazy man with a painted face flew around the tower on a flying motorbike trying to kill us.
My favourite thing to do is write. My ideas seem to come to me when I'm at work, or when I'm driving down the road, when I'm about to sleep, or even when I'm at church. When I'm not writing, I'm reading. I am very passionate about animals (hence the change of career) and the environment. I volunteer at Willowbank Wildlife Reserve (that is a kea on my shoulder. A parrot native to New Zealand and the only Alpine parrot in the world. They have the intelligence of an eight-year-old child). I also volunteered at Orana Wildlife Park for two and a half years and in 2016, I spent a month in Bolivia volunteering at a wildlife sanctuary (mainly birds and monkeys - which I now have the utmost respect for) and also in 2016, I spent a week volunteering with the Department of Conservation on Codfish Island, helping out with their Kakapo Recovery Program. (the Kakapo is a flightless parrot native to NZ. It has the title of the heaviest parrot in the world).