Welcome to Crystal Crawford's official author blog!

My brand-new YA fantasy-mystery serial, Aubrey Lance, S.S. (Supernatural Sleuth), is now up and running! The first episode, "Episode 1: Burnt Eggs and Edgar Allan Poe," is available RIGHT NOW to read in my forum... for FREE! A new episode will be posting around 9:30 PM (Eastern Standard Time) daily, Monday through Saturday, until all 67 episodes are posted! Check out Episode 1 (and all subsequent Season 1 episodes) here: https://www.ccrawfordwriting.com/forum/aubreylance-seas

My brand-new YA fantasy-mystery serial, Aubrey Lance, S.S. (Supernatural Sleuth), is set to release ONE WEEK from today! Episodes will be going live around 9:30 PM Eastern Standard Time SIX DAYS A WEEK (Monday through Saturday) and will continue to post at that schedule until all 67 episodes have been released! Be sure to sign up as a site member at my forum now so you'll receive notifications when episodes go live (it's free to sign up!). https://www.ccrawfordwriting.com/for

I posted this message on my Facebook page and Instagram today, but wanted to post it here too, to make sure everyone has heard the update! *** For any readers who follow my stories on Kindle Vella, I just wanted to let you know that Amazon has made the decision to end Vella as of February 2025. (You can find details here: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/a/faq ) According to Amazon, any stories you have already unlocked using tokens by that date will remain in your Kindle

The contest period for the Vellys contest on Kindle Vella ends Tuesday, August 20th! If you haven't yet had a chance to check out my story, Torn Fate: Guardians of MIralore, I can use your help! Reads, Follows, and interactions on this story all count toward the first round of contest judging, but only up through Tuesday (8/20). So if any of you want to head over and read some episodes of my fantasy story and Thumbs Up, comment, interact, and FOLLOW the story using the

Hi, everyone! I just wanted to let you all know that I have a BRAND NEW Kindle Vella serial up now, and for a very specific reason: It's entered in the Vellys! The Vellys is a big contest Amazon is currently running for Kindle Vella stories, and only stories launched after June 25th can be entered. Well, I just so happened to have a YA fantasy story that's been sitting in draft form for WAY too long, so I decided to edit it and enter it! HERE'S WHERE YOU COME IN: I wanted you

Happy New Year, everyone! This rollover to a new year has been a little unusual for my family, because we are also in the middle of packing up for a big move. Lord willing, we move to Tallahassee this weekend to start a new season of our lives (and a new adventure). Amid all the moving chaos, I'm not quite feeling the usual, peaceful "fresh slate" of the new year -- but I am still so very grateful for everything that 2023 brought, and looking forward to what's to come in 2024

Right now as I'm writing this, it's the last day of September 2023... which means it's about to be Preptober! For those who aren't as familiar with NaNoWriMo (a write-a-whole-novel-in-a-month event which takes place in November), many writers use October as their prep month to get everything planned, prepared, and ready for their November writing sprints. 50,000 words (minimum!) in a month is no joke--and the planning definitely helps! But you don't have to be doing NaNoWriMo

Hello, everyone! For those who are new here, I'm sure your first question is, "Why should we listen to YOU about how to write on Kindle Vella?" Well, the briefest explanation is, I've been part of Kindle Vella since it first launched in July 2021. With a few short breaks here and there, I've been posting weekly episodes (sometimes multiple weekly episodes) for the majority of the 2+ years (and counting) since Kindle Vella first became a thing. I've got 2 completed serials on

Fate Rising (the next installment in the Leyward Stones story world) is now available on Kindle Vella! There are now 5, brand-new episodes available to read, and new episodes will be posting to Vella every Tuesday and Saturday! This new serial can be read independently of the first serial/the first Leyward Stones trilogy, but if you've read the previous Leyward stories, you'll notice some fun cameos and crossovers! Blurb for Fate Rising: When Lena befriends the mysterious new

Fae Curses, Dark Kings, and Other Things That Must Fall (The Leyward Stones, Book 3) is now officially available! The paperback and hardback versions of this book actually (quietly) released over a week ago, due to processing happening more quickly than expected... but today the e-book version is also released, and the entire Trilogy 1 of The Leyward Stones is now available in all formats! If you haven't purchased Book 3 yet, you can get it now on the retailer of your choice:

LeyGuards, Faespells, and Other Things That Happen at Midnight (The Leyward Stones, Book 2) is now available in e-book, paperback, and hardback! Get it now on the retailer of your choice: http://books2read.com/leyguards I truly hope you all enjoy this book! You won't have to wait long for the next installment, either... Book 3 (the conclusion of the trilogy) will be releasing in two weeks! My July newsletter email goes out tomorrow, so if you're an email subscriber, I'll be i

Book 1 of The Leyward Stones is now available in e-book, paperback, and hardcover!

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

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

The nonfiction book I've been (semi)secretly co-writing for the past year is now officially released! 🙂 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BMSZSVJJ This is a memoir of one of the top-performing personal injury attorneys in the Tampa Bay, FL area... but with the focus of showing his heart behind practicing law, and changing the perception that all lawyers are just out to make money. It tells the story of how he went from being a (self-proclaimed) redneck from the orange groves of Br

UPDATE: The PirateCat website has now been assimilated into this website! You can access my serial fiction and other Clean YA Fiction available online to read RIGHT HERE in my Story Subscribers portal! ------------------- Original post: The PirateCat Publishing portal live! Our goal with PirateCat was to create a fun, interactive online reading portal where we can truly build a COMMUNITY around Clean YA fiction. We're so excited to officially launch! We've got chat group

UPDATE: The PirateCat website has now been assimilated into this website! You can access my serial fiction and other Clean YA Fiction available online to read RIGHT HERE in my Story Subscribers portal! ___________________ Original post: What if there were a place where you could… ...access an entire website full of clean YA books that are actually appropriate for 12-18 year olds? ...interact on those books, commenting on chapters and chatting back and forth with other reade

Hi, everyone! I am working on... a secret project. But for the website portion of it, I need some help from people who have read my books or stories, especially my YA (Young Adult) ones. I need testimonials about my books! They can be about my writing in general, or about a particular book, series, or short story... the form explains the rest. A super-huge THANK YOU in advance to anyone willing to contribute one! https://forms.gle/TJeCJCxqcTcwRDT16

So, I'd seen a few other of my author friends do this, and it seemed like a good way to take stock of what I'd accomplished this year, writing-wise, so... I thought I'd just make a brief post with a run-down of my word counts and various writing achievements for 2021! Novels & Novellas 86,548 words of Macchiatos, Faerie Princes, and Other Things That Happen at Midnight -- Book 1 completed! 26,213 words toward the first draft of Fate Rising 2,611 words toward the first draft o

Episode 20 of Macchiatos, Faerie Princes, and Other Things That Happen at Midnight just went live on Kindle Vella today! I've been having such a blast writing this story and hearing readers' reactions! I'm speeding toward the end of this Season, but it's not too late to catch up... First 3 episodes are free on Vella, and new readers even get 200 free tokens! Read it here!: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0995RNGSR