Author Archives: crymsynhart

by | June 1, 2011 · 1:00 am

What is your instrument?

by Crymsyn Hart

Memorial Day is past and summer is upon us. At least it is
here in Charlotte. This whole week is supposed to be in the high 90s with bad
air quality. I cringe to think of hubby since he has asthma so it makes
breathing hard for him. I, working from home, stick near the fan and the air
conditioning typing away on my laptop that is missing the V, B, N keys thanks
to one of my dogs dive bombing it. The S key likes to stick and the delete
button is being temperamental. I think it’s the heat. But it could just be the
computer. It’s a few years old and I’m in need of a new one soon. Of course
saying that now, it might just decide to die on me. I’ve had that happen to me
before. Me and electronic items don’t get along much.  Although, as much as I love the laptop, I love
my Blackberry more.

For the past three summers, hubby and I have been going to
the local baseball stadium and watching the games. The first summer we went, I
took notebook and pen and wrote away since I’m not a huge fan. The next couple
of summers,I upgraded to my Blackberry. Such a great invention smart phones.
The things you can do on them while stopped at a traffic light.

People think I’m a little crazy because I write on such a
tiny keyboard. But I love it. I’m sure others write on their phones too. I mean
it’s easy. I love the feel of long hand when I pull out the notebook, but
trying to go back and read my own writing is a nightmare. I have worse than
chicken scratch. Then there is even more work when trying to retype it, but
whatever tool you use, I commend you. As long as the characters get their say
then, woohoo. That is the most important thing.

So back to the semi-usable laptop. Later on, I’ll break out
the Blackberry and hubby will again look at me and shake his head wondering
what in the world I’m doing. I’ll flash him a smile and then get lost in my own
world again.

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by | May 25, 2011 · 1:00 am

Mood Music

by Crymsyn Hart

Music is a key thing to get me into the mood for a book.
Heck, I’ve even got so enamored on a song that I’ve concocted a whole story
around just the one song. Once the book is written, I have nothing to do with
that song or artist for a few months because I’ve just over played them. I don’t
particularly plan on who I am going to listen to during the day. I just put my
MP3 player or computer on shuffle and listen to whatever comes my way.

However, if I’m going to be writing dark fantasy, I like to
listen to Ballad Metal, what I call it, with such bands as Nightwish or Kamelot or
even some instrumental collections to bring me into the other world where dark
elves and even vampire fairies exist. If my muses decide they want to focus solely
on vampires, then I break out one of my favorites either Type O Negative or Concrete
Blonde.  When I get down and dirty
and into the action scenes or big fights, then I pop in Disturbed or Cradle of Filth
so I can see the battle happening before me in either the guitar riffs or the
screaming of the lead singer.  For other
things it all depends. I shy away from country and rap only because I’m not a
fan of the genres.

What bands help you get into the mood? Some authors post
play lists for their books, is that something you like or would you choose your
own play list if you could?

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by | May 18, 2011 · 1:00 am

Balancing Act

by Crymsyn Hart

The summer is gearing up with conventions that I’ll be heading out to so I can hang out with some other cool authors and meet some great new people. I’ll be headng to Fandom Fest in Kentucky in July and then Authors After Dark in August. There I’ll be chilling with some more paranormal romance authors. I can just imagine that we will be talking about. Getting up together with more than three hundred women will be an interesting experience and who knows if there will be a cat fight or two.

Before all of that, I’ve found that I’ve been confronted with a balancing act of late. Writing for myself and writing for the market place. Not speaking for anyone else, but over the past couple of years I’ve noticed the market place has changed. Vampires used to be huge (not that they aren’t anymore), but zombies seem to be the in thing this year. At first it was okay to write just one couple in a book and the reading population was happy.

Now it appears that menage a trois and multiple partners are the new rage. Trying to follow the market, I’ve dabbled in this genre of the erotic romance, but find it difficult to keep up. I’m more of a one man and one woman kind of girl even though adding in the other characters makes for an interesting twist on the plot. So the question is, how do I balance everything?

I’ve always stuck by the staying that you have to write for you and not for the market. Most of what I write is for me. And I do admit, I bow and have found myself writing more of the erotic and adding in more of the sex than I find necessary, but hey, people love to read about sex. I find that I write more of the multiple partners as a dare to myself. Just to see if I can do it. And if the dare doesn’t work out, well then I guess I have to write more for me and hope that others en

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by | May 4, 2011 · 10:58 am

The Holy Terrors

We call her Gizmo for short.

by Crymsyn Hart

If my pets had voices they would say, “You’ve done enough writing for the day” after only five minutes on the keyboard. “Come out and play with us. Throw the ball so I can catch it. No throw the Frisbee so I can catch it.”

I can already hear them barking at me to get my attention and pull me away from the computer. And if it’s not my two dogs, then it’s the bird screeching at such an insane volume that even with music blaring, earplugs in, and me in the other room with the door closed, I can still hear him.

I love my pets very much, but they run the house. Now that I’m working from home, I get to spend my whole day snuggling with my black Lab, Morrigaine or fighting with my Border Collie/black Lab mix, Cadence. Both of them are my babies. Morrigaine makes a wonderful footstool as I recline on the love seat and she takes up the other cushion. While I do that, Cadence is jumping by my head so her two front paws land on my laptop and press a whole bunch of keys and gibberish appears on the screen. She has already victimized my laptop and my v, b, & n keys have been sacrificed to the writing gods. Luckily the sensors are still intact so I can still write.

If Cadence isn’t jumping on my keyboard, she accidentally steps on the power cord and with one wrong move pulls it out of the laptop therefore leaving me gasping for my lost words because I hadn’t pressed save in the last couple of minutes or ready to throw the laptop across the room because it needs a new battery. Once Cadence pulls the cord out and that doesn’t get my attention, she then pokes her wet nose into my arm. I think this is the worst of her actions to interrupt my writing day. Because she seems to do it right when

Lapdog, foot warmer, and great Frisbee catcher.

I’m in the zone. Of course, there’s nothing I can do except look longingly at the screen, and pray that my characters will talk to me once I’m done being the slave that my dogs have trained me to be.

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by | April 27, 2011 · 10:59 am

What’s in a Name?

by Crymsyn Hart

How do you find the name of your character? Do you scour name them after your best friends or other people that you know? Do you use some random name that pops into your head? Or do you run to the baby book of names or website and see what’s trendy these days? Or do you want a meaning of a certain name first before you choose the most sacred of titles for your main character or the secondary ones who are involved in the novel.

I confess. I’ve done all of them.

My first book was based all around my friends. So each character got the name of the person I was writing about down to coping their personality. Of course the experiences in the book were all made up, but the names were not changed to protect the innocent. LOL

When a character pops into my mind, I get their attributes first most of the time. Then I hit the Internet baby name websites and search the meaning of a name. Once I do that, then I know I’ve found a good moniker. Or I look at the names I already have and try to find the balance of what the letters the other names start with. Other times the names pop into the story even without me conjuring them up.

But names are a big part of who a character is. They give you insight into who they are. If they’re strong names then the reader would hopefully know they will turn out to be. Sometimes the spellings are different than normal or the character ends up with a nickname. Sometimes their name can have an impact in their destiny.

What do you think? Have you read anything where a character’s name just didn’t fit? Or do you look for the deeper meaning in a name?

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by | April 6, 2011 · 10:01 am

Remembering

by Crymsyn Hart

Over the weekend, I was doing a lot of cleaning, getting down and dusty. While I was cleaning, I came across some of the stories that I had written in high school. I took a moment to go through the short tales. It got me to thinking about the people in my life who had been influential in helping me write and encouraged me to do so.

During middle school and through high school, writing was a way for me to cope with the reality of the my chaotic environment. My friends always lent me a kind ear. My teachers always told me I could do what I wanted. My family stood beside me through the years, but it was my grandfather who really encouraged me to keep on going.

When I was twelve, he set up a small space for me in his office, in the attic, so that I could write during the weekends that I would spend with them. So during the hot summer hours, I’d retreat up there with his electric typewriter and start tapping away at the keys. He would read everything I wrote and kept on encouraging me even though much of my stuff was about vampires. He asked me once when I was twelve, why I loved vampires so much. I shrugged and told him I didn’t know. I just loved them and I would keep writing about them as I got older. He dutifully told me that my likes would change as I got older and I would probably move out of the faze. After I had several works published that he had read, he told me he didn’t mind reading what I was writing, but he just couldn’t stomach any more vampires. That was something I brought up again a few months before he passed away. He chuckled and said that he really wanted me to finish this one piece that I had done when I was in high school. Out of everything it was his favorite. A young adult fantasy novel about a girl who steps into another world and discovers that sorcerers and unicorns are real.

Well, this was the very thing that I had come across when I was cleaning this weekend. Years ago, he had printed out the massive volume and went through and edited it for me hoping that one day it would see the light of day. It was up on my shelf in two huge three ring binders. Before he passed away, it was the one thing he insisted that I really focus on.

So these past few days, I’ve been flipping through the pages he marked and am finally seeing where the story should go from here. It’s been collecting dust for way too many years to count and I pluck at it once and a while. But for him, I’ll finish it and see it done. All because he was the one who was there for me and always encouraged me to keep on writing. Vampires or not.

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