Crystal Memmott grew up in Cedar City, Utah, home of the world renowned Utah Shakespeare Festival. A romantic at heart, it's not surprising that her favorite play is Romeo and Juliet. She has lived in California, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah. She currently lives near Salt Lake City. Crystal is a former elementary teacher who earned her degree from Southern Utah University. Most recently she works to help elementary students to improve their reading skills.
Happiest while strolling past whimsical fountains and under wisteria draped arbors, visiting beautiful gardens is one of Crystal's favorite pastimes. As a result of growing up on a ten-acre country farm, Crystal appreciates the hard work that is required to design, and maintain, a productive, beautiful garden. To her delight, Crystal's parents owned a floral shop during her youth. She enjoys working with, and being surrounded by, plants and flowers. Crystal spent quite a few years working in retail floral shops as a designer, assistant manager, and store manager. She is especially intrigued by wicked plants, and poison gardens.
One of Crystal's favorite things is decorating, and she loves HGTV! Other favorite things include: travel, cooking, and reading good books. Crystal thoroughly enjoys writing. She is constantly scribbling down notes and ideas for her books. A notepad in her car is essential, because she never knows when inspiration will strike! Her first success with writing came in the fourth grade, when she won a contest with her essay titled: What the American Flag means to me. She is a romance writer working towards becoming a published author. On a more personal note, Crystal has been married to her incredibly patient husband for nineteen years and has two fantastic children. She treasures her time spent at family gatherings, neighborhood dinners, and camping trips with good friends.
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Live every moment,
Laugh every day,
Love beyond words.
When all else fails, pick up a good
book and get lost in the adventure.
Laugh every day,
Love beyond words.
When all else fails, pick up a good
book and get lost in the adventure.
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Path to Publication
*Bach. Interdisciplinary Studies, Major: Marketing; Southern Utah University
*Bach. of Science, Major: Elementary Education; Southern Utah University
*State of Utah, Elementary Education teaching Certificate
*Taught 3rd grade
*Spent time raising my children and participating in the PTA.
*Worked part-time in an elementary school as a reading assistant.
*Taught 2nd grade part-time (mornings job share).
*Watched the Twilight movie and then read Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight series.
*Worked part-time as a reading assistant again.
*After teaching beginning writing skills to 2nd graders I decided that I could certainly write a book as good, or better, than some of the books that my reading students were reading aloud to me (admittedly many of these books were only 100-200 word books). I was inspired by a couple of books in our literacy library that described how to get published. The main idea for Windows of Heaven came from a discussion with a couple of friends. I questioned whether angels had wings or not. The idea took off from there. I jotted down ideas as they came to me and in the evenings I would enter the ideas or dialogue into the computer. I researched how to format a manuscript and continued learning about the publishing business.
*Attended the Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers (WIFYR) Conference.
*Began to tell people about my project and asked friends, and family members, to read portions of the manuscript.
*Finished the book manuscript. The story had grown and developed into a complete 117,000-word novel! It was going to need a sequel.
*Moved 7,000 words to the start of book two and researched literary agents, editors, and publishers.
*Attended WIFYR again and a writing workshop in Cedar City, UT.
*Wrote a query letter, short synopsis, long synopsis, bio, and began to query literary agents. *Revised all of the documents and continued the query process.
*Began editing the manuscript.
*Attended book signing events of Authors: Ally Condie, Shannon Hale, Libba Bray, Brodie Ashton, Lindsey Leavitt, Brandon Mull, and Sheryl Johnson.
*Sent the manuscript to a local publisher who decided it wasn't ready yet.
*Finished the school year for another second grade teacher. The students were in a Dual Immersion program with half the day learning in English and half the day learning in Chinese. (Teaching 47 students between the two classrooms left very little time for working on the novel).
*Worked part-time as an assistant for a fifth grade class in the Chinese/English Dual Immersion program.
* Hired a freelance editor to help make the story better and catch grammar errors.
*Attended LDStorymakers writers' conference again and learned about fine-tuning the novel and self-publishing possibilities.
*Hired Laine Sutherland a web/blog designer with A Little Peace of Africa to create an author website.
*Hired artist Shaunna Page of Lil' Frog Illustrations to help create a logo design to use on Facebook.
After all these baby steps educating myself about the writing and publishing industry I'm getting closer to publication.
*Hired Laine Sutherland a web/blog designer with A Little Peace of Africa to create an author website.
*Hired artist Shaunna Page of Lil' Frog Illustrations to help create a logo design to use on Facebook.
After all these baby steps educating myself about the writing and publishing industry I'm getting closer to publication.
The future can seem very scary. But when you have amazing people by your side the journey of life becomes less intimidating.
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