Author Archives: CrissyMoss

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About CrissyMoss

I've been writing as long as I can remember.

Fiction Tells Truths.

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We will be recording our next episode of The Bradbury Challenge in two days. It will be episode 11. That means 11 short stories should have been written. Currently I’m at five finished. Five out of 11, and one novel finished, and a few really close to being finished, seems to be a great place to be right now.
That’s right, I finished writing Witch’s Stand. witchs stand

I’m satisfied with the cover yet, so I can’t revel it at this moment, but it’s getting there.

So what’s in store now that Witch’s Stand is finished? Editing, lots of editing. Plus I have more time to spend writing short stories for the Bradbury Challenge, and I have a few other projects I’m writing plot-lines for right now. I am going to try doing one of them in a complete plotter mode. I haven’t tried doing a really detailed plot-line before, but I think it might help my true goal, getting faster.

As for the stories…
I said at the beginning of this thing that I would write a short story every week and send it to my newsletter. Excuses aside, I didn’t do that. It bothers me that I didn’t do that. More importantly, it bothers me that I haven’t been keeping some sort of writing schedule and getting books out there. What kind of a career can I have if I don’t actually publish anything? Not much of one.

So, no promises. I should promise anything I can’t deliver on. But I am promising to do better.

However, I have written SIX stories, and I am sending the FIFTH story to the list today. I have one story that I never sent out. This was partly because I have been neglecting my news letter, and partly because it’s a really darn long story. All of the other stories have been about 2-3k words. “The Scarab Necklace”, the one I haven’t sent yet, is over 8000 words.

I am also planning on publishing Scarab. I still need to do a final edit, and make sure everything is in order before doing so, but I do want to have it up in a month. So I will probably be sending it as a freebie to my list at some time, and not including it in my regular mailings. I haven’t decided. Let me know if you think of something else that might be more fair.

On to tonight’s story.

I don’t want to tell you much about this story before I share it with you. Let’s just say, I was thinking about the future, and the past. That, combined with a few interesting news articles about biology, lead to this story. Cryptic enough for you?  Read on.

***********

A Child

“I want to have a baby,” Nancy said.

There was no emotion on her face  just a simple statement of truth. I knew this day would come. I saw the signs a long time ago, and chose to ignore them for the sake of her companionship. I loved her, I loved being with her. But you couldn’t stop nature. For decades she had been working in child care, learning about horticulture, and taking night classes for advancement. She was putting herself in the perfect place to have a child.

“Have you already applied?” I asked her.

“No, you’re my husband,” she said, “I wanted to talk to you about it first.” But she was looking down when she said it. She had looked into it even if she hadn’t applied.

“First? Then your mind is set,” I said. “You’ve decided.”

“I have. I would prefer to take this step with you.”

“That’s asking a lot. I’ve always loved you, and stood by you in everything you’ve done. But this is huge.”

(To read more please sign up for the newsletter here.)

I did it!

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I finished the third, and final novel in the Witch’s Trilogy: Witch’s Stand.

It feels so great to be done with the first part,  the writing. Now I have to re-read the second half and make sure all the pieces fit together before I can send it off to the editor. (I’ve already done this for the first half.)

Now I’m trying to figure out what to write next. I have lots of half finished pieces, or plots that are just waiting for my attention. I also have the Bradbury Challenge that I am doing with Maya and Gerald. I will be taking a short break from writing novels, I think, so that I can finish up the editing on Witch’s Stand and get it out as soon as possible. During that time I have a few short stories to finish, and a couple to polish so I can get them published as well.

Once the novel is off to the editor I have two series to write. One, a continuation of my urban fantasy, Eternal Tapestry. Two, a paranormal mystery series with lots of secrets, weird things balding, and someone out to get them. It should be a lot of fun to write. No idea which I’ll go with first.

It’s a full docket of writing and publishing, but I am so excited! I wrote two books in a year! I didn’t think I could do that. In fact if you include the first one I will have written a novel every six months, plus some short stories. That’s not as insane as other authors I know, but it’s a lot faster than I’ve ever done before.

This gives me encouragement. I’m learning to write faster, and I think better. Time will tell.

I will also be at NorWesCon this month, so if you are going please send me a tweet. I would love to meet you!

Geeky Goodness

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There are a lot of things filled with geeky goodness going on right now. Like Adam Savage doing a recreation of the space suit from the Martian. And check out this awesome photo of the crescent moon, Venus and a two tailed comet all in the same shot.

So I thought I’d share a few of my favorite geeky things from this week.

I’ve been playing a lot of Stardew Valley lately. It’s a farm sim with a mystery hiding under the layers. While the game has a simple pixel graphic look and feel to it, there are a lot of things to find and places to explore. (But if you play it read this article first. It will save you some headaches.)

And on the subject of games, No Man’s Sky is coming out in June! I’ve been looking forward to this game for a while. It is a (sort of multiplayer) universe simulator. You can fly around in your space ship, or land and discover new planets, and resources. Then you can run like hell from the centennials trying to make sure you don’t destroy planets. I will definitely be getting this game. It is one of the few $60 games I will get.

Then, on a sad note, the final episode of Mythbusters is going up, but they are going out with a bang. Their also sending Buster off with a show stopping bang as well. (I just hope this means the newer seasons will be available on Netflix eventually.)

Deadpool was AWESOME, by the way. I’m also looking forward to Batman vs Superman and Captain America Civil War. But there are A LOT of superhero movies coming out this year. TMNT, Suicide Squad, and a new Independence Day movie… Ya, it’s a good year for movies.

 

Ghostbuster Reboot?

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ghost_10I’ve watched the Ghostbuster reboot trailer a couple of times now and I have a very…meh…response to it.

First of all, I absolutely LOVED the original movie. The second Ghostbusters was okay, but the original one is a movie I have watched dozens upon dozens of times because I loved it.

The reboot seems to start in the same library as the original, but with four women instead of men. I’d just like to say now that the gender swap aspect doesn’t bother me. I hate that I have to point this out, but the gender of an actor doesn’t matter as much to me as their skill in their performance. But the thing that sets a performance off the most is the writing of the script, the directors direction in performance, and the editing. You can have a marvelous performance by an actor/actress, but if the edit cuts it together wrong that performance will still suck. You can have a brilliant script, but if the director has the actors/actresses stand in weird spots, or he camera crew capture it from weird angles, it’s not going to look good in post. All of the elements have to work together to produce a good movie.

Now, from what I’ve seen of the trailer: The CGI was interesting. I loved the ghost on stilts, and the librarian ghost looked awesome. Some of the set pieces, like the new ghost trap, were kind of a cool take on the original movie. And they had Slimer.

What I did not like: The stereotypical loud, sassy, black chick. Really? Aren’t we past that yet? Sure, it can be funny sometimes, but the original Winston was not a stereotype, he was an everyday man just looking for a job. That was the beauty of his character, and they turned him into… that. Ug.

The rest of the plot-line that they showed seemed to revolve around one liners and cheap rips, or “girl power-esk” BS. They were suppose to be three scientists and they made them look stupid! How is that empowering for women?

And it bothers me slightly that they made this a reboot instead of a sequel. Why? Why would they do that? Not only are they rebooting it, but they are completely redoing it, and, if the trailer is to be believed, making it more campy then the original one was. And I want to point out that I would feel the exact same way if it was men playing the parts instead of women.

They could have done this well, and made tons of money to boot, if they had just made it a sequel. A passing of the torch to the next generation, and treated it with the same quirky but smart humor that the original had. Instead we get campy, stupid humor on par with an Adam Sandler movie. If you can’t tell I really don’t like most Adam Sandler movies.

It’s kind of sad too. I would have liked a new Ghostbusters movie to share with my kids. At this point I’m just going to have to wait to see reviews, and probably catch it on Netflix when it finally makes its way out of the movie theater.

Clouds are on the horizon!

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Hello, it’s been a while.

The Bradbury Challenge started eight weeks ago, and I’ve learned a lot about myself in the last month and a half. I mean, that’s what this challenge is about, right? Learning about yourself.

I learned that i make a lot of excuses. Not contentiously, mind you. I don’t sit down and say “I’d rather do this than write.” It’s more subtle than that. I get to the computer and think “I’ll just play this game for a few minutes then get to writing.” Then an hour later I’m still playing a game and no writing has taken place. Or I think I will just check Reddit, or twitter, or whatever.

I’ve learned that social media is something I need to limit from now on. Half an hour for everything, and that’s it. And Reddit is not my friend. Reddit is a trap of meme’s, news stories, and interesting anecdotes that will suck me in and keep me there for a long time if I’m not careful.

I’ve learned that I need to stop making excuses about the small things so that when the larger things happen I don’t feel so guilty. It’s okay to take a sick day, but it feels so bad if you’re behind on work and you’re just adding one more excuse to the top of a growing pile.

I’ve learned that I need to take self imposed deadlines a lot more seriously. I’m not sure how to do this yet, but that’s part of what this challenge is about. And no, I can’t say “I’ll do better next week.” I have to do better THIS week, because each week I put it off just makes things that much worse.

So for the past eight weeks of the challenge I finished four stories. I just finished the final draft one the fourth one this morning. That’s an average of two weeks per story. Not horrible, but not great either.

“Cloud,” the story you’re getting today, was conceived on the road to RadCon. Gregg and I were passing through the mountains and talking about the desolate area. We were in the middle of no where with nothing for miles, and the mountains up ahead. A lot of my story ideas come from discussions I have with Gregg.

For next week I’ll be finishing “The Deep,” which is my story in regards to the story prompt I gave a few weeks ago about finding something unusual in the ocean.

I also know that while the stories I send you are completed first drafts, they aren’t finished. I generally like my short stories to be at least 3000 words before I publish them. This isn’t always possible since some stories just have a naturally shorter length, but often I find that I have to go back in and add description, or little details that will make the story flow better. That’s the case with this one as well. The bones are there, and it’s a good basic story, but there is a little bit of brushing up to make it GOOD that needs to happen before I can publish it. This one, I feel, also might need a new name.

But for now…

**********

Cloud
Lisa shifted in the passenger seat, the rough upholstery grating against her arms as she tried, in vein, to get comfortable. Beside her Zach snorted. Her brother never had an issue sleeping, no matter where they were. Hotel rooms, camping on rocky ground, or sleeping in the camped front seat of a Honda Civic, Zach dozed off within seconds of closing his eyes. Lisa hated him for it, and envied it, especially right then.

They had been traveling for nearly a week, gathering photos and articles about various little towns in the Midwest for their blog. In a few months they’d be right back out on the road heading to the east coast. But for now they were headed home to their computers and equipment, a warm cup of coffee, and her own bed where she could finally fall asleep.

She dreamed of her bed with the five fluffy pillows and three thick comforters laid out on top of it as she hitched her jacket back up on her shoulders. She was only vaguely aware of the rolling hills sliding past them just outside the window. They would be in the mountains soon, with snow and towering trees all around them. The rolling of the car across hilly roads should have lulled her to sleep, instead it just annoyed her.

She concentrated on the lull of the car, rocking back and forth. The soft sound of tires over black top. The sway as the road curved gently to the left, then back right, following along the stream below them.

Sleep drifted closer…then was ripped away by a bright light blazing through her eye lids, followed by the sudden jerk of the car to the right as it careened into the shoulder and came to a sudden stop.

She shot up in her seat, mind snapping to full alertness as Zach fought to gain control of the car. A shock wave washed over them, a grumble that grew in the air, pressing down on them with a tremendous force as trees and rocks sailed across the road in front of them.

“What the hell is going on?” Lisa cried.

“I don’t know,” Zach said, struggling to pull the car to a stop.

“I saw light? Was it a car?”

 

To read the rest of “Cloud” subscribe to my newsletter. You will also get a free copy of “Witch’s Sacrifice”. 

Excuses

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Today Gregg came home and I was playing Minecraft. I love Minecraft, I find it relaxing. I usually listen to podcasts while I’m playing, or catch up on the news.

But then he asked how my writing was going. I was honest, as I always am (even when it hurts) with him. I had been writing earlier and I’d get back to it soon.

Then he hit me with the hard question, after stressing that he wasn’t trying to be judgmental or anything, he was just honestly curious…And I mostly believe him, but the question cut through me a little deeper than any other question he’s asked me.

I’m just curious if you make more excuses to write, or not to write.

Ouch. There I was, playing a game when I knew I should be finishing up that novel I’ve been trying to complete, and he was cutting to the quick of it, yet again. It hurt, but he was entirely right. I had been making excuses just like I usually do, and letting myself get away with it.

Excuses are insidious things. I use to think of them as the things I did to get out of an assignment, like washing dishes, or cleaning the lint trap. ANYTHING to get out of doing something I dreaded. But I love writing, right? So I wouldn’t be making excuses to get out of that. WRONG.

Writing is fun, just like painting or playing music, or making a vase. But when you try to shift from doing art for joy to doing art for a living you realize you have to do this thing all the time instead of just when the mood hits you. You realize it’s not always going to be fun anymore. Sometimes it’s going to be a slough and you’re going to have to do it anyway.

Oh I love my stories. I love creating worlds with fantastic creatures roaming through dark woods, and witches flinging spells across wide oceans, and men being cursed to live as hawks. I love the fact that all of these mystical and magical worlds that lived inside of me for decades now get to be seen by others. And I love that they will live on beyond me.

But that only happens if I actually write them. They only have a life of their own if I put in the work.

And, lets face it, playing a video game is fun. It can be mindless entertainment. It can be a complete distraction from everything else around you, including the art you want to create.

Substitute TV shows, books, train rides, sky diving or whatever in there. If we are using these little distractions as an excuse not to seek out our creative fulfillment then we are just hurting ourselves.

Now…I have a book to go write.

Tales from Radcon 2016 and a Question

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2016-02-13 12.20.50Now that I’m getting over the con-crud I thought it was time to share what happened at RadCon with everyone, and what I took away for myself from it.

First: Radcon was amazing! So many amazing things happened, so many new friends, so much new information. Gregg and I had to take some time to process it all. It’s been a week and the excitement of RadCon wore off a little bit, but the knowledge and encouragement are still working.

For Gregg this was a moment of validation. He won the best in fantasy for the masquerade, then he was invited to stand up at a panel and talk about his armor, and the road to it’s completion. He had several of the speakers (men and women currently working in prop/armor making for TV and movies) there oh-ing and ah-ing over his armor. Then they invited him to be on a panel next year as a full member. It was overwhelming. Gregg might have done a happy dance a few times, and then just collapsed from sheer joy.

It was so amazing to watch him transform from the unsure, self critical person he had been into this massive beast of a man walking through the crowds with his head held high, clad head to toe in red and black armor that he made with his own two hands. The pride, the smile, the final moment when he could say “I did something great!”

Sure, there are still little imperfections that bother him, little things that stand out as “I need to fix that.” Every creator has that little voice in the back of their mind saying those things, and we wouldn’t want to make our stuff better if we didn’t. But…as one of the panelists (a man who works on Grimm) said “There is only one person who sees all the little mistakes, and that’s you. Everyone else just looks at the overall piece.” (paraphrased, of course.)

I watched his transformation with pride, and happiness…and maybe a little jealousy. I realized that I needed that same transformation for myself. The same validation that yes, I am a good writer, and yes I’m on the right path. And I realized that I didn’t know how to get there. For me…it was a moment to realize that I need to get my shit together and figure out what the hell I’m doing.

So for the past week, while I’ve been battling con-sars, I’ve been thinking about my writing career, where it’s going, and what pieces I want or need to change.

First of all, The Bradbury Challenge has been a fantastic thing for me to do. NaNoWriMo has it’s good points, especially in learning to write faster and let go of the inner critic, but the Bradbury Challenge focuses on finishing things, and really need that emphasis on getting things done.

I haven’t been doing well. It’s been seven weeks and I’ve completed three stories. That’s not a story a week. This week I had a good excuse. First the convention, then a horrible head cold that knocked me out for three days, and left me incapable of writing. But what about all the other weeks? What excuse did I have then? And were they really good enough?

Now the truth is I have written almost every day since November first, and accomplishment in itself. I put down 6.4 thousand words on my novel last month, getting it closer to publication. I wrote 11k more on the short stories I worked on. But I didn’t finish all of the Bradbury stories. I didn’t send them to my newsletter as I promised. And this month I’ve only written 5k so far.

I should at least be continuing with a story if I fail to finish it the week previously. Instead I have come up with new stories every week since January first, and written plots and paragraphs for all of them. I LOVE the idea phase of a story a thousand percent more then actually finishing a story. Brainstorming is second nature to me, and if I get an awesome idea for a novel I have no problem jotting down 3-5000 words in a couple hours on that idea.

But ideas don’t make a career. Ideas are just that…ideas. They have no form, no function, and no monetary value. If all of my stories stay ideas I get nowhere. I get no actual career.

This, I think, is what I saw with Gregg and his armor. At the end he was sleep deprived and his body was screaming for relief. He kept telling me about pains in muscles he didn’t know existed, or his hands cramping, or being surprised he didn’t break something when he hit his hand with a mallet. But he kept going. He wanted to finish that armor. Not just a few pieces, he wanted the whole set.

Do I want my writing career even half as much as he wanted that?

It is no surprise that they invited him back to speak at the conference. It is no surprise that he had many people in his industry talking to him, encouraging him, and telling him how truly awesome he was, and is. Because he is amazing! He has persistence, and he has a passion, a real hunger, for his craft.

Do I? Or is this more of a hobby that I just enjoy when I’m not playing video games? I don’t think it’s a hobby, but then again, where are the finished products?

That’s the question I’m going to be asking myself the next couple of weeks as I am working on my short stories, and finishing things. I’m not at 100% yet, still recovering from this sickness, and still very, VERY, tired. But that’s nothing but an excuse, and I know it.

So are my passions bigger than my excuses? Time to put up or shut up, I think.

The Price of Admission

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We got back from Radcon a few days ago, and then I came down with a horrible sickness. For me being sick means I need to sleep, and sleep a lot, to the point where it’s almost impossible to stay awake.

So for the past two days I’ve been barely able to speak, an d stay awake. I’ve been awake now for a couple hours so I think I’m on the mend, but even as I type this I can tell I need to go back to sleep. YAY CONCRUD!

But it was so worth it! The convention was amazing, and Gregg was impressive. You can see a lot of pictures from the convention over on his instagram, and a bunch more on my instagram.

I started writing a blog post about the experience and everything that happened. I’ll have to come back tomorrow and finish that. For right now I think it’s time to go take another stab at writing a short story before crashing again.

But here are two photo’s to wet your whistle. Me, as Velma, posing with a furry Scooby Doo, and Gregg in the awesome red armor that he made getting compliments from Dragon Dronet. More on that later.

2016-02-13 16.13.232016-02-13 15.20.49

A new platform?

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There’s too much social media out there? Blogs, twitter, facebook, tumbler… the list goes on and on and ON!

I’ve tried to limit my time on social media. I do use several of them for different things. I post my book reviews and book reads on Goodreads, and some for booktube on youtube, I have a Facebook and a tumbler but I just push things to them, I don’t really interact there much. I have a G+ that I use to use a lot, but less so lately as my feed has gotten more like facebook and less like the community I loved. Twitter is where I tend to communicate with people, and my blog is where I share things, behind the scenes and such.

So why did I just get into Medium?

My blog is fun, and I love it, but it is a catch all. I use my blog to sometimes discuss things that are incredibly important to me, like welfare, or politics, or TPP. I also use it to talk about things that bother me, and the trouble I have with writers block, or even just the twit that cut me off while driving the other day. It’s a place to be me! I chat, I show who I really am, and I share it with you.

But if I am doing all of those things at once then anything I have to say that is remotely important get’s lost in the background. It quickly gets pushed down under mini rants and questions of “what the heck was that.” And I actually love essay writing. Argumentative, evaluation, comparative, and descriptive. That’s basically what article writing is: an essay.

So when I saw Medium articles posted by some of my favorite people on twitter and youtube I thought I’d check it out. Then I decided it was a perfect place for me to share my essays and articles without them getting lost under my more personal writing here.

So…the first article is up. It’s called “Where do ideas come from?” I probably won’t add articles there very often, but I might go back through my old posts on here and pull out the best ones to be updated and used as articles over there.

 

Formatting Matters

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I have been doing a lot of reformatting lately. Adding in better back matter, adding in a little notice about the news letter and a offer of a free book. Little things here and there that take forever, but they go a long way to making a book look professional.

It’s amazing how much my ideas of a “finished” book have changed over the last two years. Even my covers have improved dramatically. But none so much as my print books.

IMAG1817When I first printed the original print editions of my various books I did okay, got the right page size and put the beginning chapter on the right side of the book. I even added a page of reviews so anyone picking it up might see that I had at least some accreditation. They looked good.

When I got to “Witch’s Sacrifice” I did everything the same way, or so I thought, and ordered the proof. The text was itty bitty and could barely be read. I adjusted, sent a new one and found that I forgot to add the front matter. Tried again, upped the font size and added the front matter. Adjusted the table of contents since that always changes when you adjust the font. This version was readable, but I still wasn’t quite happy with it.

It turns out I was using the wrong sized pages when creating the print files for “Witch’s Sacrifice.” That meant when it was shrunk down by Create Space the font shrank with it. When it printed the text ended up being off in every way, as did the page numbers, maps, and everything else.

I didn’t bother changing it after the last time. The text wasn’t too small, so it didn’t look horrible, but it wasn’t exactly what I wanted either, but I knew that I’d have to get to it eventually along with all the other little things. Last week I finally took a few days to start reformatting.

IMAG1820It is amazing how big a difference it is just to have everything the correct size. It’s about a one hundred page difference. After adjusting the size of the page and putting in the correct size text made the book feel more substantial, like a real novel.

I got the new and improved version of “Witch’s Sacrifice” today, and it’s beautiful. It’s everything I wanted it to be, and now I know how to format the other two.

BTW!

“Witch’s Stand”, the final book in the series, will be going to the editor next week! I will also be getting the cover done at the end of the month. That means I will finally have a finished trilogy! SQWEEEEEEE!

There is one more story in the Witch’s Trilogy, and that’s a short story about Salvia, the little mother, and how she learns that she is a witch. I haven’t decided if I will be giving this away for perma-free, or just sharing this with my newsletter (though my newsletter will get it long before anyone else does.) However, once that is done I will be putting out a combo pack that has all four stories in it. I will hopefully have the other print books out as well, and might also get a print book of all four together depending on how long it ends up being.

But right now we’re getting ready for RadCon. If you’re there let me know, I’d love to meet you.