The house
About the Author
A.R. Pullins writes stories with a pulse.
She is the pen name of Ashley Pullins, an independent author whose work moves between psychological thrillers that refuse to let go and memoir style humor that finds light in the wreckage. Her voice is Southern and feminine, observant and unafraid, and it has carried her from a blank page to a publishing house of her own making.
A mother of four, Pullins built her literary world from the ground up. No gatekeepers, no permission slips. She built the room, then walked into it.
Our mission
On a mission to help Black women creatives own their work outright and get paid fairly for it.
I founded AR Pullins Creative House, a collaboration house for writers and creatives who are tired of building alone. Members form small project rooms, sign clear agreements before work starts, track every contribution, and split profits fairly, with everyone signing off before a single dollar moves.
I published my own books and learned the whole road from zero: design, editing, formatting, print. Now I teach that road in The Blueprint and The Golden Ticket classrooms.
I write psychological thrillers that bite and stories that don't hold back. Still Water Has Teeth is my flagship.
What I believe:
Rooms open when women stop waiting for permission.
Credit is permanent, and pay is never withheld.
A story told honestly can change the woman telling it.
Each of her books carries a different rhythm. Still Water Has Teeth is a psychological urban thriller about the quiet places where danger hides. By Any Means Necessary is a story of revenge, power, and what both of them cost. All This, Plus Tax is a hilarious and painfully honest account of motherhood, burnout, bills, and the art of bouncing back.
She publishes one story at a time. She answers to her readers first.
The Library
Step into the library. Stay a while. There is always another story coming.
My Story
I am Ashley Pullins, and I write as A.R. Pullins. I was born in Jesup, Georgia, a small South Georgia town that had no idea what I would become. Before the books, before the publishing company, before the brand, there was just Ashley. My story did not start easy. Let me tell you where it went.
Life started younger than twelve. But twelve is when I started to understand things. I was raised in a very strange household. The whole household was abused, not just me. We prayed. We stood up in the middle of the night holding hands singing. We got beat over the dumbest stuff. I watched my mom get beat by an abusive drunk father. I lived a life no child should ever have to live. But that girl grew up. She is the reason I fight the way I fight today. And if you were that girl too, I need you to know she grows up.
At fifteen, I moved to Brunswick, Georgia. Those years forced me to grow up fast. I got into everything I could so I would not feel anything. While I was in school, living a life no parent should want for their kids, I became a young mother and then a single parent. As a teenager I ran. I ran the streets and I sold drugs. I did things just to blur all the images from my mind. The abuse. The molestation. The moving around. Anything other than pain, hurt, and chaos. Even through all of that, that teenager survived. She is the reason I do not scare easy. If you can resonate with this, your teenage self is surviving too.
I carried everything into my adult years. I walked in already tired. It felt like life had dealt me a bad card while everybody else played with a full deck. I moved through Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, across Georgia and Florida. Savannah became the place where my creative heart lives. Through a lot of those years I was told to be quiet. So I learned to watch instead. I watched how people speak and how they change under pressure. That watching became my gift. I studied film because I wanted the eye. Now when I write, I see the whole scene before I write a single word.
Then came October 2013. I had four babies depending on me with nowhere to go. My sister put me out. The day after, her husband called just to talk down to me like I was nothing. We bounced from hotel to hotel. Me and my kids, plus my little cousin who was like my fifth child. We took Party City trips to make it feel normal when nothing was normal. I worked at that hotel cleaning rooms. My manager saw me showing up every day with my world falling apart. He gave us two free weeks. Two whole weeks. Because he saw a mother trying, and he made room for us.
That October, I looked at my entire life. All the way back to Jesup. All the way back to that twelve year old girl. I got tired of the story repeating. So I picked up the pen. I decided the voice they tried to quiet all those years was mine, and I was going to use it. I am telling you this because the voice they tried to take from you is yours too.
So I wrote. The twelve year old went on the page. The teenager went on the page. The woman who learned that people can love you and still cause you harm went on the page. Years of that writing became Still Water Has Teeth. Four years of work. My urban psychological thriller about what people hide, what they protect, and what they fear losing. Because stillness does not mean safety. I know that because I lived it.
And I did not stop at one book. So look at me now. I built AR Pullins Creative House from nothing. Novelist and designer and publisher. I design my own covers in rich black and deep burgundy and metallic gold and warm cream. Multiple books on the shelf. A Classroom where I teach other women how to take their story and turn it into something that feeds their family. All of it with no money and no car and no investors and no permission. Just me and the refusal to quit. From a twelve year old nobody protected to a woman who built an empire with her words. That is what is up. I am not special. I am just decided. And you can decide too.
My four kids watched all of it. They saw the hotel bathroom tears. They watched me build while life was still happening. Because I did not wait until it was easy. What I am teaching them with my life, and not just my mouth, is that your story is not over because one chapter was hard.
That is why the Classroom exists. For the woman in her October. For the twelve year old in the house that does not feel safe. For the sixteen year old running the streets, trying to feel something other than pain. For the young mother being told to be quiet. She needs to hear from somebody who lived all of that and made it all the way to the other side. I am standing on the other side telling you it is real. And your other side is waiting on you too.
The girl from Jesup did not get to choose what happened to her. But the woman she became chose what to do with it. And that choice changed everything.
Everyone has a story. This one is mine. Now tell yours. Because somebody needs to hear it. And the chapter you are standing in right now, the hard one, that is the one they will need to hear about the most.