Naked Cheese! With Crystal Collier

Halo, fine friends!!! I know you don't normally see me on the weekends, but I have a special reason to be here! I am a stop on Crystal Colliers Moonless book release tour! And she is talking about two things we LOVE!!!! NAKED and CHEESE!!! (is there anything better?)

So without further ado, welcome Crystal!

THE NAKED CHEESE

What's that you say? Cheese is always naked? Not necessarily. Sometimes it's covered in rind, sometimes dressed up by side dishes or merely a tasty ingredient. But what we're getting at today is the naked cheese. 


What is it that makes a piece of art really shine--be it the written word, a painting, sculpture, etc?


Any piece of art creates a mood and invokes an emotional response. That's what you find at its core, the artist's passion. And where do we find that passion?


IN REAL LIFE.


If you want to make your art more powerful, isolate experiences in life where you've felt extreme passions and channel that emotion into what you're creating.

While I was revising MOONLESS, my father was diagnosed with
stage four cancer. Being close to home, I helped with his care, and sat
with him through the last night of his life. It was my responsibility to administer relief through drugs or not, to try and wet his dry throat, to comfort him through his last hours.

In Moonless, Alexia has a moment of truth next to
a death bed, and although what takes place there is very different, the scene
draws heavily on a reality I lived through. It’s these experiences that ground
a work of art and really ring true to the reader. It's these experiences that help us come together in an understanding of the human condition. 


Now you ask, so what's with the cheese? 


Cheese is the best food. Cheese makes the world go round. Cheese equals happiness. (And if you responded to that by scoffing and referencing chocolate, you need to read my post where cheese and chocolate go toe to toe.)


Now get out and do some living, eh? 

Alexia’s nightmares become reality: a dead baron, red-eyed wraiths, and forbidden love with a man hunted by these creatures. After an attack close to home, Alexia realizes she cannot keep one foot in her old life and one in this new world. To protect her family she must either be sold into a loveless marriage, or escape with her beloved and risk becoming one of the Soulless. 

MOONLESS is Jane Eyre meets Supernatural.

"MOONLESS is powerful, compelling, and packed with soul." --Bethany Kaczmarek, editor at A Little Red, Inc. 

"I fell head over heels for the characters." --TC Mckee, BookFish Books 

"Power-packed action, heart stopping mystery, unpredictable twists and turns..." --I Am a Reader Not a Writer

Buy MOONLESS HERE or add it on Goodreads.

Crystal Collier, author of MOONLESS, is a former composer/writer for Black Diamond Productions. She can be found practicing her brother-induced ninja skills while teaching children or madly typing about fantastic and impossible creatures. She has lived from coast to coast and now calls Florida home with her creative husband, three littles, and “friend” (a.k.a. the zombie locked in her closet). Secretly, she dreams of world domination and a bottomless supply of cheese. 

You can find Crystal on her blog and Facebook, or follow her on Twitter.

And Crystal has a rafflecopter giveaway going on, too... if you'd like to join...


a Rafflecopter giveaway