Tag Archives: Crescent Moon Press

I Get Imaginative and Explosive With Author Ciara Knight

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I’m fairly certain that Ciara Knight and I are the same person. Well, we have different chromosomes, she’s female, I try to be male, she has three sons, I have two daughters (but it feels like three sons). She lives in the American South, I live in the American West. Okay, we might not be physically the same person, though I do have bouts of amnesia and wake up with Star Wars figures in my pocket and fried okra in my hair. But regardless, Ciara and I both are reformed pantsers, we both have huge imaginations that drive us crazy, and we both have books published by Crescent Moon Press. And we both love to write.

Ciara Knight always had a passion for storytelling. Over the past few years she has penned five novels and joined several professional writing organizations to better her craft. Ciara is happily married and enjoys family time. She has learned to embrace chaos, which is a requirement when raising three boys, and utilizes the insanity to create stories not of this world including, Fantasy, Paranormal, Sci-Fi, and Young Adult Dystopian.
For more on Ciara, check out her awesome website.

And her book? The Curse of Gremdon? Holy cow. Be careful. It will draw you in. Ciara Knight is the real deal.

She agreed to chat with me and we chatted and it made my Thursday night spectacular. Because Ciara is a spectacularly positive person. I try to be. Lord, do I try.
So, the interview. Hit me.

Aaron: We talked and you said you started writing after your kids were born and you left the corporate world. What prompted you to take up the pen and heartbreak of the writer’s life?

Ciara: The day I told my middle son he could do anything and my husband turned to me and said, “You’re a hypocrite.” Ah, my husband is so sweet and honest. 🙂 He knew I had a dream to write but was too scared to go for it. My husband knows me best and when the glove was thrown down in challenge, I had to accept.

Aaron: Like I said in the intro, we both have felt cursed by huge imaginations. With me, I still need to sleep with the lights on at times. And I get teased for being afraid of ghosts. For you, what are the drawbacks of having a relentless imagination? What are the benefits?

Ciara: Focus. I NEED to focus! My friends sometime wave their hands in front of my face and say, “You’re in Ciaraland again, aren’t you?” There are way too many characters battling for their spot on paper and it gets a little crowded in my little brain sometimes. What is great about it? I’m never bored. I can be sitting anywhere and be completely entertained.

Aaron: You gotta answer this next question because on the phone, what you said blew me away. I asked if you wrote at night or in the morning. You answered. My mind exploded, man. Totally. When and where do you write?

Ciara: I write at TKD practice, the football field, during violin lessons, and/or in carpool line. I’m a fifteen-minute writer. Give me fifteen minutes and I can give you several pages. 🙂

Aaron:As a reformed pantser, what made you change to flirt with plotting? As for me, I’ve relapsed. I just wrote a 140K rough draft for a novel I have to go back and plot. I go to meetings. It helps. Tell us about your writing style. Pantser, Plotter, or a killer mutant hybrid?

Artwork by Sarah Hartwell

Ciara: I’m definitely a killer mutant hybrid. 🙂 I start off with a detailed outline that includes POV, goals, motivation, conflict, and disaster. Then, I throw it all out the window and write the book. Yep, sometimes the characters take over and tell me I got the outline wrong. What spurred the outline in the first place? A complete rewrite in one of my books. NOT doing that again. LOL

Aaron: The Curse of Gremdon started out as a short story. How did you turn it into a novel? Was it hard? Did you plot that baby out?

Ciara: It did start off as a short story and I received a nice rejection telling me to convert it to a novel, so I did. I tackled it during Nano with no outline. [NaNoWriMo, national novel-writing month.] The book practically wrote itself. If anyone has met Tardon, the hero in The Curse of Gremdon, you know how pushy he is.

 

Aaron: The Curse of Gremdon has a distinctive world with rigid rules that have ignited an emotional fire-storm in some people. Which emotional reactions surprised you the most?

Ciara: I was shocked when I received messages about the fact Arianna wasn’t treated fairly. They didn’t like the male-dominated world. I found Arianna to be so brave for facing that world. Some disagreed and thought that women should be equal. I never expected readers to feel that passionate about the world I had created.

Aaron: How much of The Curse of Gremdon is romance? How much is high fantasy? If it were a mocha latte, how much is chocolate, how much is coffee? I don’t know what the milk could be. So we’ll ignore the milk part.

Ciara: I think it is half romance and half high fantasy. There is a big story full of twists and turns, but Tardon and Arianna’s relationship is a huge part of that. The story wouldn’t work without their love and they wouldn’t have that kind of epic love without the challenges they had to face.

Aaron: Reviews can be tough on writers, but how have you dealt with the drama? For me, I plan on never reading my reviews and making them all up in my head. Something like, “The voice of a new generation, Aaron Michael Ritchey writes with a fury that will leave readers breathless.” Yeah, my own happy little world. But how do you deal with reviews?

Ciara: I analyze them. Someone thought I was insane when I told them that, but it’s true. I feel like I will never stop learning my craft and the only way I’m going to give my readers what they want is to listen to what they have to say. I do encourage readers to write a review even if they hated the book. I can learn from that.

Aaron: What trap have you seen new writers fall into? What message of hope can you leave us with? Because we need hope. Writers need hope like addicts need dope. Even more so.

Ciara: Don’t take everything so seriously or you will go crazy. It’s a tough business full of up’s and down’s. Surround yourself with fellow writers that understand what you are going through. Let yourself cry over a bad review or call on your friends, but you are only allowed twenty minutes. After that, time’s up and you need to move on. If you dwell too long you could miss a fantastic opportunity.

Aaron: Thanks so much, Ciara. I found our conversation so empowering and I even became an optimist for about twenty minutes. A new record. Then I fell back into doubt, despair, and general angst. But only for twenty minutes, like you said. Onward! Onward! To battle!

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Mondays Are Hell Guest Post: The Demons of Addiction

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Elizabeth Cheryl

Elizabeth Cheryl is a fellow Crescent Moon Press writer and her novel The Summerland is due out this month.  I sent word out to my fellow CMP writers that I was looking for guest bloggers to write about demons and Elizabeth took me up on the offer.  What she has given me is moving, and though it’s not the funny, or well, forced-humor of my regular posts, it is stirring.  I am very proud to showcase her talent and thoughts.  You can find more of her gorgeous writing on her website.

Thanks again to Elizabeth for her wonderful piece.

Elizabeth Cheryl writes: When we are young we are taught that addiction belonged to drug users and alcohol abusers. It wasn’t until I reached my mid-twenties did I realize that there are many forms of addiction. It’s not that I hadn’t already experienced my own addictions before then but I clearly didn’t see the signs until later in life. I had what we could call Love Addiction. I know it doesn’t sound scary or at all close to terrifying but the effects of Love Addiction and the demons that lurk in the dark parts of us can wreak havoc in our lives.

It all started on one sunny Sunday morning…..wait, who am I kidding? I have no idea when it started. All I know is that I have had some of the darkest demons visit me in my life from violent or dysfunctional relationships. I do have memories though of being a very young girl watching my step-dad hit and abuse my mom. As a child witnessing such an act can cause emotional damage that we are not aware of until we look back at our life’s choices.

I have one particular memory of him striking her so violently that she fell down an entire flight of cellar stairs and hit her head on the cement basement floor. I was only seven at the time but I recall her not moving for a few minutes. That image still holds terror in my gut as I write about it. Memories that I rarely revisit.

We have to ask ourselves at what point do we as humans go from being a loving supportive partner, doing daily chores and picking up kids to hitting your spouse so hard that it immobilizes them? I went to a conference last weekend in San Jose called, PantheaCon. [Admin: Pantheacon is the largest indoor gathering of pagans in North America, according to their website.] I know it sounds a little different and it was, but it was fascinating all the same. The theme of the conference was Unity in Diversity. One of the workshops presented at the conference was an exorcism of some sort. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I showed up to this workshop.

The room was filled with a few hundred people and it was semi-dark. There was a fire pit with a fake fire, of course, seeing it was indoors, and a circle around the fire made up of six to seven people with drums. As they began to close the doors to get started everyone got very quiet. One of the women began to chant as she cast a very large circle around the room protecting us from negative energy. She talked of demons and their powers that can grab hold of us and manifest inside. But these are not actual demons with horns and fanged teeth, these demons are of our own creation. Demons of fear, greed, anger, rage, obsession and so on.

These demons that live in our darkest parts of our mind and soul eat at our potential every waking hour and every moment of sleep when we have no control over our thoughts. They evolve in our dreams turning them into nightmares. Whatever we are battling in life whether it be a loss of a job or a loved one. The need for money and food on the table or an abusive relationship. Weather it be verbal abuse, physical or emotional it will bear down on you in your subconscious mind. In this Exorcism we were to connect with what was ailing us that night, I connected mostly with greed. I feel as if I never have enough money, enough love, enough of the finer things. I see the house that I want to live in someday and I just want it…

Now some of you may say that we need those goals to be put in front of us so we may strive to succeed and do better. And I will not disagree with that perspective but our Ego has a lot to do with how we go about achieving those goals and what we find important enough to sacrifice in achieving them. What are you willing to sacrifice to have the nicer car and the bigger house? Will you give up time with your family or will you work yourself to the bone with no time left to enjoy what you own?

These thoughts ran through my mind dizzying me like a spinning top as I watched countless people enter the center of the circle dancing and shaking. They were releasing their inner demons, their addictions. Some thrashed their heads from side to side, some just danced to the beat of an aborigine type drum and some stood in the middle of the circle and just screamed the words, “Greed, Fear, Rage!!” It was the most intense and the most human thing I have ever experienced in my life. Seeing that this was my first time witnessing anything like this I enjoyed watching more than I would have joining. The drumming was playing to my soul as humans danced and released their demons amongst perfect strangers. And the most beautiful part about it was that no one cared what they looked like nor did they care what anyone thought. This was our time to release what life and society had covered us with.

Now that’s not to say we all walked out of there different people that night but it definitely made me think about how much I let fear, greed and obsession control parts of my life. The obsession part has been the one thing that I could say has been the most damaging. Years and years of failed relationships with all types of abusers. Physical abusers with demons so dark in their soul that we had to move to another city when I was twelve to avoid him ever finding me, unfortunately he still did. A twenty-six-year old math tutor that my mom had hired for me when I was eleven, turned into a potentially deadly stalker for four years until he was arrested and sent to San Arita State Prison. But that’s for another story.

I then went on to relationship after relationship ending them as I danced along to the next when it wasn’t working for me, completely numb to their feelings of pain. As this process continued I became my own demon of addiction, addicted to the highs of the butterflies in your tummy and the euphoric feelings of falling in love. Come to find out later in life that I really had no idea what the heck love was in the first place. You see, I thought all that good mushy stuff in the bottom of your belly was actually LOVE! Well leave it to my surprise when a few hits to the eye or a hundred foul words and years of starting over and over and…over, did I finally get the big red flag placed on my front door step.

How many times do we need to see that damn red flag before we put up our white one?

If you are battling demons from rage or abuse or any form of addiction it’s time to put your white flag up! If you are playing ping pong and you think that just by hitting the ping pong ball back to your abuser softly is ending the game, or even if you still have the paddle in your hand and you think that you have stopped playing the game? You’re wrong…. You will only rid your life of those nasty demons when you take that paddle and set it down. Game over…Perform your own exorcism and rid your life of the darkness that brings you down or holds you back.

We all say it but it couldn’t be more true, life is too short to be kept in the shallows of it. You belong with the Angels, not the Demons.

Best of Blessings,
Elizabeth Cheryl

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I Get Real with Fantasy Author Cindy Young-Turner and We Kill Hill Giants and Talk Dodecahedron Dice

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Cindy Young-Turner lost a bet and was forced to let me interview her. Or she pulled the shortest straw. Or there was some diabolical deal that was made. (CYT: It was a dark and stormy night. I met the devil at the crossroads. He offered me the chance to be a brilliant guitar player or… do an interview with Aaron. Guess which one I picked?) I don’t know, but we chatted, and it was a delight!

She is a writer’s writer. Lives in Maryland because that’s where cool folks live, and for a day job she works on proposals for health and development projects in developing nations across this big, blue marble where we live. And she writes and belongs to two, count ‘em, two critique groups. Her first novel, Thief of Hope, came out in May of 2011 from Crescent Moon Press.

What is Thief of Hope about? I’m glad you asked.

Sydney, a street urchin and pickpocket in the town of Last Hope, has managed to evade the oppressive Guild for years, but there is no escaping fate when she’s sentenced to death for associating with the resistance. After she’s rescued by a wizard, Sydney is forced to accept that magic–long outlawed throughout the Kingdom of Thanumor–still exists, and the Tuatha, a powerful faery folk, are much more than ancient myth and legend. When the wizard offers a chance to fight the Guild and bring Willem, bastard prince and champion of the Tuatha, to the throne, Sydney embraces the cause as a way to find her own redemption. But Sydney’s fear of the Guild, distrust of authority, and surprising connection to the Tuatha threaten Willem’s success. Can she untangle the strange threads that entwine her life not only to the fate of the kingdom, but also to Willem himself?

It’s fantasy time, m’lords and ladies. Polish off the swords, grab a spellbook or three, curl up with a Beholder, and let’s get to it.

Aaron Michael Ritchey: Okay, when we chatted, we talked about Dungeons and Dragons. And boom, I figured this was as good an excuse as any for me to come out. To be open. I am a former gamer. A graph-paper gamer. Lead miniatures. Dodecahedron dice. Big Gulps and cheap pizza. Yes. I did it. I’m not proud of the countless hours I spent gaming, nor the role-play I did in grocery stores across Northern California, but there you have it. It’s out now. Good. Cindy, I think we need to embrace our history of fighting umber hulks and stirges ‘til four in the morning. The question, now, is this. How did your experiences as a gamer prepare you for the awesome task of writing a fantasy novel?

Cindy Young-Turner: You’ve twisted my arm. I’m coming out of the gaming basement with you. I began playing D&D in college. I’m not sure if that makes me more or less geeky. Saturday nights were spent with soda, pizza, powdered doughnuts, and slaying orcs and giants. I loved it. And it introduced me to fantasy. Honestly, I hadn’t read much fantasy until I went to college and my friends started giving me fantasy books to read (and lured me into the diabolical world of D&D). I was hooked. In fact, I’ll even admit here that the main character of Thief of Hope began as my very first D&D character. In some ways, role playing is a writer’s dream because you get to act out the part of a character. Um, isn’t it? Okay, I’m putting the gaming dice in the drawer now and backing away.

Aaron: I’m a morning gamer…er, writer. So for me, I have a time limit. I write until I have to go to work. As a night writer (not to be confused with David Hasselhoff, Knight Rider–nevermind), when do you call it quits? When do you shut off the computer when you don’t have any set time limits?

Cindy: I’m definitely a night owl. I’ve always been a night person. Being frantically busy, sadly I can’t quit my day job just yet, means I write when I can, and if I have to stay up to the wee hours of the morning, that’s what I do. When I was working on the final edits for my novel there was at least one time where I was literally falling asleep over my laptop. That’s a sign it’s time to call it a night. If I’m on a roll, though, sometimes I’ll just stay up another hour. The only problem is that with a three-year-old there’s no making up sleep like I used to be able to do. I’m getting old. Can’t do those all-nighters any more.

Aaron: What are the high fantasy elements of Thief of Hope? How J.R.R. is it? What are the low fantasy elements of your novel? How ghetto fabulous is it?

Cindy: I wikipedia’d high fantasy vs. low fantasy to make sure I got it right. High fantasy is set in a made-up world (like Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings), so my novel falls into that category. On the other hand, it’s not the kind of fantasy with elves and dragons and unicorns. The town of Last Hope, where my heroine lives, is a dark, gritty place. Think inner-city Baltimore crossed with medieval Edinburgh. Thieves, prostitutes, drug addicts. So there’s a bit of real world realism, just translated to a fantasy realm. It’s not really the kind of place Frodo Baggins would stop in for a pint, although there are some decent parts of town as well as the slums where you’d better watch your back.

Aaron: Your day job is working on proposals for projects in developing countries regarding health and development. Do any of the aspects of your job filter into your novel? If so, what is an example?

Cindy: I think the aspects of my novel that might relate to my job are more just part of who I am. Self-empowerment, freedom, and fighting against oppression are important themes in the novel, and they are also things I’ve felt strongly about for a long time. It’s neat to be able to say that in some small way the work I support makes a difference in the world. I never intended to put those things into the novel, but somehow they crept in. And I like that. I hope it gives the story more depth and more relevance to issues we are dealing with in the world today.

Aaron: Favorite Dungeons and Dragons memory? Sorry, sorry, sorry. But do you have one? Last D&D question. I promise.

Cindy: You had to ask! There is one night in particular that comes to mind. A room of 30 or so hill giants. About 10 of us adventurers. We actually came up with an elaborate plan and everyone followed through. Which is amazing because if you’ve ever gamed with a group of people you know there’s always one who’s out there throwing fireballs or whatever at random. It’s the first and only time I’ve gamed until the sun came up. And the only time I drank six cokes in one night. My hands were actually shaking from the caffeine. But we kicked some hill giant butt and the battle became the stuff of legends. And I’m sure I sound like a total dork for gushing on about it.

Aaron: I too belong to two critique groups. How do you generally use them? For me, I try to have each group look at a different project. But now that Thief of Hope is out, and you are working on the sequel, what is your general practice? How do the two groups fit into your writing routine? If it’s too secret, lie. We’ll never know the difference.

Cindy: I can only focus on one project at a time, so both of my critique groups review the same thing for me. I get different feedback from each group, though. One is all genres (I’m the only fantasy writer) and the other is primarily SF/fantasy. Each group has a different vibe and gives me a different perspective. I tend to procrastinate a lot with my writing, so often I write in spurts before a deadline to send things to my groups for review (see the staying up ’til all hours question). I need something other than myself to keep me motivated. And with the first novel published, I have even more incentive to finish the sequel.

Aaron: Okay, Thief of Hope really was a labor of love. You’ve spent years and years working on it, and finally, it’s out there. Going forward, what lessons did you learn from writing that novel that will help you with the sequel?

Cindy: One important thing I learned is how to plot and create a story arc. You need a good story to begin with, but it also has to hang together. If only I could outline, but I’ve tried and it just doesn’t work for me. I have to write in order to find out where the story is going. I feel like I’m a much better writer than I was when I first started Thief of Hope, but you always need feedback and criticism so you can continue to improve.

Aaron: Your heroine, Sydney, starts out as a street urchin. If she were to come to your door, would you let her stay with you, like on your couch? Or would she be too scary?

Cindy: Hmm, that’s a tough one. I might take pity on her and let her have the couch, but only if she took a good long shower first. And I suppose I’d hide our valuables. Just in case. She is a thief, after all.

Aaron: Okay, now we all know that being novelist is a life filled with fame, fortune, money, offers of seductions, lots of seducing and money and leisure time. Okay, none of that is true. It’s a life of grueling, lonely work and missed sleep. If there was a drug that could cure the writer of this burden to write, would you take it? No more writing. No more of the desire to write. Would you take such a drug? Why or why not? And give us the juicy details.

Cindy: It’s tempting, but I don’t think I’d want that kind of drug. I do envy the non-writers out there, people who can come home from work and don’t have that creative monkey on their back saying write write write. But writing is so much a part of me that I don’t want to give it up. I’ve always told people I wanted to be an author when I grew up and being able to say I did it and followed my dream is the coolest thing. Now where’s my fame and fortune? LOL

Aaron: Last question. What if. What if the Tolkien estate came to you and asked you to write a new Middle Earth novel, would you do it? If so, what might such a book look like? Would it be more Tom Bombadil or more Shelob’s Lair?

Cindy: I. hate. spiders. With a passion. There was nothing more frightening than seeing Shelob on the big screen. I am partial to Tom Bombadil, though. I’d be deeply honored if Tolkien’s estate asked me to write a new Middle Earth novel but I don’t know if I’d feel up to the challenge. Tolkien fans can be rabid. These are people who can recite the genealogy of Middle Earth and can read and speak elvish. I haven’t even read the appendices of LOTR. But there are so many facets to Middle Earth that maybe I could find an obscure character to write about. And Peter Jackson, if you’re reading this, I have a great fantasy novel for your next movie project.
Thanks so much for putting me through the wringer, er, interviewing me on your blog! Now who’s up for fighting some trolls?

Give it up, ladies and gentlemen!  A big round of applause!  I had such a nice time with Cindy.  And I love that her first published book comes from her experiences gaming.  Bravo!  It’s so sweet.  Not the first, not the last, but still, so sweet.  And for all you graph-paper gamers out there.  Keep your swords sharp, your spellbooks dry, and check out Cindy’s website andThief of Hope on Amazon.  And, and, and, you can purchase the print version of Thief of Hope on B&N.  You lucky, lucky halflings.