Welcome to Crystal Crawford's official author blog!

The Mountain Kingdom

I grabbed my spare holster and leather jacket from my locker in the supply room and slammed the locker door shut. “Same trainees today?”

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

Frank wasn’t my first dead body.

Blurb for Fate Rising:

Fate Rising

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!

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!

“Jay? Jay, wake up!”

He was pale, and bruised, but her father was here. In the flesh. Alive. Or as close to it as Jay ever could have hoped.

Jay glanced at Ryan and Kyle as she said the combination number, but only the briefest flicker in Kyle’s gaze as it locked on hers revealed that he’d just caught up to her plan.

The mob stopped just in front of the shed in Jay’s backyard.

Jay marched across her front yard toward the shimmering mob of ghosts with Kyle and Ryan in tow, but she stopped shy of the curb. The others couldn’t come onto her property—and there was no way she was going out into the street with them unless she had a reason to. Kyle and Ryan as backup were reassuring, but not that reassuring. She would rather avoid a full-on altercation with the ghosts if at all possible.