Welcome to Crystal Crawford's official author blog!

Some days, when I sit down to journal, I'm full of thoughts and realizations. Other days, I'm full of questions. Reading Genesis 2-3 was a questions day, and maybe you can relate? This is such a seemingly simple passage of scripture, and one I've read thousands of times, but when I stop and look at it, there are still a lot of tiny questions. Some of these, I'm often sure I know the answer to, only to see things from a different angle the next time I read, and question my own

If you're following the writing landscape much these days, you've probably heard about ChatGPT... and you've probably also heard people freaking out about it. I wanted to understand more about what ChatGPT actually is and how it works, and whether or not it is bringing about the end of writing and publishing as we know it like so many are worried it is (or possibly the impending doom of civilization, depending on whom you're listening to). So I decided to play around with it

Fantasy literature has been popular for centuries, captivating readers with its magical and imaginative elements. While some people view fantasy books as mere escapism, the truth is that reading fantasy can have numerous benefits, particularly for teenagers. While many of these benefits are true of reading in general, there are some benefits that I believe are somewhat unique to the fantasy genre (as opposed to other genres of books) because of the way it immerses readers in

First, an explanation for this new category of blog posts on my site... I know this is not my usual topic of writing tips, etc., but lately I've been doing morning Bible reading combined with journaling. I started in Genesis, and I've simply been reading though at least one chapter each morning, then intentionally going to my computer and typing out anything that stood out to me, as a form of processing what I read. Starting my morning this way was one of my goals for 2023, a

If you're an avid reader or a writer, you may have heard of Kindle Vella, Amazon's (relatively) new reading platform for serialized fiction. Kindle Vella first opened to authors around April 2021 to begin preloading content, and officially launched to readers in July 2021. (I was one of the authors who had content preloaded when it launched, and have been with the platform ever since.) Although Kindle Vella has been around nearly two years, by the time of this post, it's sti

Reading fiction can offer numerous benefits for teenagers. Find out more in this post!