Fields of Destiny Re-Release! (Plus Song Lyric Designs for You to Save + Share)

Fields of Destiny - 2016 Cover - Republished by Freedom Meadow Media

Available on iTunes
Available on Amazon Music

Listen to Fields of Destiny on YouTube

On August 26th my debut album, Fields of Destiny, was re-released on my publishing label, Freedom Meadow Media. You can read more about it on the Freedom Meadow Media website, if you’d like an overview of what the album is like. Basically though, I’m very, very excited about the re-release, for a couple of reasons.

First of all, I’m thrilled that there is a label for it to be published on, that I started my record label after many years of wanting to, & that my music can be released on my terms, with all the legitimacy having your album released on a label includes. It was so nice when I was submitting a song from my album to Pandora to actually be able to put something in the “Label Name” field! I’ve been waiting so long to be able to do that.

Second, I am so glad that people will actually be able to buy my album. When I released my first song ever (the single version of The Strength of Hope), I chose to distribute it through CD Baby. That was about four years ago, but it seems longer. After much recording, re-recording, mixing, re-mixing, & spending significant amounts of time getting my songs sounding the way I wanted them to, I released Fields of Destiny. I published it on YouTube & Soundcloud, allowing free downloads of some of the songs on the album & streaming of the album. For about the next year after releasing it, I either forgot about wanting to distribute it via CD Baby, lost interest in or procrastinated in publishing it, or didn’t have the extra money to pay the approximate $70 it cost. After that point, I procrastinated putting it for sale because I wanted to start my label first, which ultimately made more sense. Unfortunately, this included some additional delays as I learned about how to properly start a company & went about starting it, but I’m glad I waited.

Third, one of the reasons I’m glad I waited is because I did a little more mixing on the overall sound of the songs on my album. When I listened to the first “proof” version of my music on CD Baby before approving it, the songs sounded reasonably tinny, thin, & just lacking something. I put all the songs into Audacity, played around with some of the EQs, & ultimately ended up with something I am THRILLED with. Chills were literally running down my spine when I listened to the remastered proof version of my album, because the songs sound so damn good now, better than they ever have before.

You can check it out on iTunes or Amazon here. It is or will be in the near future on a lot of other great music websites, so if you’re into a music source other than Amazon or iTunes, keep your eyes open, because there’s a good chance it will be on there soon.

Now, here are 10 awesome song lyric photo designs for you to save, share, + enjoy!

Great Day Lyric Art by Ashlee Craft Shooting Star Lyric Art by Ashlee Craft
Shooting Star Lyric Art by Ashlee Craft 2 The Strength of Hope Lyric Art by Ashlee Craft
You'll Never Own Me Lyric Art by Ashlee Craft I Tried in the Night Lyric Art by Ashlee Craft
I Know You Can Make It Lyric Art by Ashlee Craft I'm Going Out to Be Free Lyric Art by Ashlee Craft
Everything's Gonna Be Alright Lyric Art by Ashlee Craft Great Day (Reprise) Lyric Art by Ashlee Craft

P. S. –

If you buy my album, I would really appreciate if you could leave a quick review for it on whatever site you buy it on, your blog, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or whatever social media site you like, so thank you in advance for reviewing my music, but thank you even more for buying it in the first place!

I Launched a Company : All About Freedom Meadow Media

Freedom Meadow Media - Logo

Yes, it’s true & it’s awesome : I am now the proud owner of my dream publishing company, Freedom Meadow Media! This company will publish a variety of materials : books, films, music, zines, art, photography, etc. I will mainly focus on publishing & republishing my own materials for now, but in the future I plan on expanding to acting as the publisher for other people’s media too.

The Inception

Around three years ago, I had the idea for starting a publishing company. By this point, I had already been self-publishing for several years (April 4th this year marked the 5th anniversary of me publishing my debut book, Strange Occurrences. I was 16 when I self-published it.) After thinking about a variety of names, I decided on Freedom Meadow Media, & even drew a draft version of the logo, which I’ve had taped to my wall in my prosperity corner of my bedroom / house for years. At first, I had considered names such as “Freedom Meadow Records” or “Freedom Highway Records”, but ending up scrapping these ideas pretty early on.

Every year, I would put “Start my company” on my list of goals for the year, but every year, it would get pushed out of the way. Sometimes this was due to lacking the money to start my company, but admittedly, a lot of times I procrastinated launching my business because I feared that it would be too difficult or confusing of a process. At the end of last year, I decided that I was just going to go to it. I put in the necessary research, & through a process of trial & error, found the process a lot easier than I had believed it would be. This isn’t to say it wasn’t filled with some challenges & hurdles, like figuring out which kind of business license to get, & whether I needed a DBA (“Doing Business As” license), but I’m so glad that I prevailed in this!

Why I Did It

I wanted to own a company in order to empower myself to have complete creative control over my work as well as playing an integral part in the success of it (rather than relying on a traditional publisher to do these things for me), as well as making it much easier to promote my work as a whole. A be-your-own-hero kind of thing. Ceasing waiting for someone else to say that my work is “good enough” (after seeing how many books with bland plots or or ridiculous writing were published by regular publishing companies, including those which I had submitted my first manuscript to). Deciding for myself that my work was worthy of being published, & giving myself the full power to do so. Uninterested in trying to appease someone who would always find the number of books or songs that I produced in any given year to be “too much”. I wanted to be the one to tell myself “yes” rather than listening to people tell me “no” all the time; the one to give me permission to be as expansively prolific as I wanted to be.

What Does the Name Mean?

A “Freedom Meadow” is a concept I came up with years ago, & has since made its appearance in multiple, multiple poetry books & other media of mine. The idea’s first appearance was in the poem “Running Thru the Fields” in my Spring poetry book, the third volume of my Four Seasons series.

In the poem, the Freedom Meadow begins as such :

running thru the fields, our souls soaring with the fresh breeze of spring / the sun shining brightly overhead, blue sky glimmering above us / I feel so content & happy racing thru the fields of life with you / bright colors flashing past, the colors of tulips & daffodils & daisies & I see Queen Anne’s Lace swaying in the winds of beauty & change / sweeping up everything wonderful & perfect in life & depositing it in this sacred field

this field of beauty is not a physical place / it exists in my mind / you & I both sharing the same dream / this sacred field is the field of my Imagination, a field of Destiny, a field of Dreams, a field of Love, a field of endless Possibilities

Basically, a Freedom Meadow is a place, either real or imaginary, where you feel totally comforted & can believe that you really will be more than okay. A “safe place”. A Freedom Meadow reminds you of somewhere you’ve been, somewhere you wish to be, or a time in your life that feels particularly idyllic & halcyon & special; a place where you can completely be yourself and feel peaceful & happy. It’s a place that you can retreat & feel safe + nurtured when things in your life are stressful or difficult, & a place that you can feel happy & free when things are going great. A Freedom Meadow is a place which exemplifies happiness to you. To me, I see it as being a big beautiful field with a tree house in the middle of it, & a serene, joyful atmosphere. It can be whatever you want though, & you can always change or expand on what it means to you. I also think of it being like the line from Guns ‘n Roses’ Sweet Child o’ Mine

“Her hair reminds me of a warm safe place
where as a child I’d hide,
& pray for the thunder & the rain
to quietly pass me by.”

I love the fact that I have a company based upon this concept. I love the fact that I can say “I’m the CEO of a indie publishing company”, & that I can really call myself an entrepreneur now. I love the fact that I have a company which in the future will provide the same freedoms + environment I nurtured helping other people to achieve their dreams. I love the fact that I made this happen.

P. S. – It would really mean a lot to me if you could check out the Freedom Meadow Media website, follow Freedom Meadow Media on Twitter (I follow back!), like my Freedom Meadow Media’s Facebook page, or follow the Freedom Meadow Media Pinterest account. Thank you!!!

Shipwrecked – Second Edition Released!

I am proud to announce the release of the second edition of my 2013 book Shipwrecked under my publishing company Freedom Meadow Media! Out of all the books I’ve written so far, it is definitely my best-selling one, which is why it is one of the first ones I have republished with my new company.

A little history on the book itself : in 2012, I was very very bored, so I was looking for some sort of writing challenge to keep myself busy with. I heard about the 3 Day Novel contest. It wasn’t around the time that the competition actually happens, but all the same, I was psyched by the idea of it. Writing 50,000 words in three days? Could I do that? With a very vague story idea in mind – a teenage girl goes on a boat, the boat sinks, & she has to survive on some random island – was all the plot I had when I began writing it.

Over the next three days, things were pretty crazy, to say the least. The first day, I think I only ended up writing about 11,000 words. I can’t remember exactly how many I did on the second day, but on the third day, I believe I wrote about 20,000+ words. By midnight on the third day, I’d written about 47,000 words and decided just to consider my novel done. It’s crazy even now, looking back on it, & thinking “Damn, I really did write a WHOLE NOVEL of about 50,000 words in THREE DAYS.” But I did, & Shipwrecked was the result of it.

It wasn’t until 2013 when I actually got around to publishing it. This was due to several factors. (1) Some parts of the story were poorly written or incomplete scenes. (2) The ending of the book involved, for some reason, criminals who wanted to kill the main character (why did there need to be criminals???). (3) The book was absolutely CHOCK FULL of spelling & grammatical errors. This took forever to straighten out. (4) This was back in the good-old days where I had to make my dad read & edit my books before I published them. Because he had a full-time job, he didn’t always have much time to edit my books. He would write the edits down on an index card & hand them to me. Now, I use much more efficient methods so there’s less delay between when I finish writing a book & when I get to publish it.

Fast forward to now, when I started my company & wanted to republish Shipwrecked. When I set out to republish it, I assumed that editing it would be relatively straight-forward. My current editing method involves making my computer read my book out loud to be, which makes it easier to hear where the errors are. Things had gone smoothly editing & republishing A Thousand Cranes, Volume 1 this way.

With Shipwrecked, it was an entirely different story. The book was sadly filled with many, many errors – grammatical errors, spelling errors, missing punctuation, continuity errors, as well as sentences & things which, upon reading them three years later, just sound lame. I probably changed or fixed an estimated two to three hundred such things throughout the course of the book (some of these were adding a sentence here or there to improve things, but still). I honestly wasn’t aware that there were so many things wrong with it, so I’m sorry if any of you read it & these errors took away from the story. Let me tell you this now : all the errors I could find in the book have been fixed, and this is an entirely new edition. I’ve never released a second edition of any of my books before, but I felt like the changes I made to this book warranted a clean slate & a new edition.

Here is the brand-new edition, with a brand-new (& much improved) description. I hope that if you read the book, you let me know what you think of it, preferably on either Amazon or Twitter.

Shipwrecked by Ashlee Craft - CoverThe imaginative 16-year-old Tami Franks is thrilled to finally be going on her dream adventure of a three-day boat trip. She read Treasure Island several years ago, and ever since then, she’s spent her time reading survival guides, climbing trees, and swimming in the neighborhood pool in preparation for the adventures she might go on one day. When her parents finally agree to let her go on a trip with their charter captain friend, she is expecting the adventure of a lifetime. Tami gets much more than she bargains for when the boat sinks in the middle of the night, killing the captain and leaving her stranded in the middle of the ocean. She manages to swim to a nearby but uncharted island, where she must put her survival skills to use in order to have a chance at seeing her family again and saving her own life. Unsure of when, or if, she will be rescued, she must use her imagination, courage, and belief in herself in order to triumph.

Second Edition
Publish Date //
March 11, 2016
Paperback 246 pages
Genre // YA Survival – Adventure

Kindle Edition
Paperback
View Sample Chapter

Release Schedule

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March 4 // Owls (Wonderful Wildlife, #7)
March 2 // Shipwrecked – Re-release under Freedom Meadow Media
February 28 //
Honey, Who Do You Expect Me To Be? (Single)
February 25 //
Ashlee Craft / Assemblage, Issue 10
February 22 //
Creative Fuel : 65 Projects to Expand Your Creative Horizons – Re-release under Freedom Meadow Media
February 16 // Document Your Life : A Journal – Re-release under Freedom Meadow Media
February 14 //
Flowers, One
February 7 // 
A Thousand Cranes, Volume 1 – Re-release under Freedom Meadow Media
February 5 //
A Beautiful Question of When & Where
January 30 // 
Launch of my company, Freedom Meadow Media
January 29
// Ashlee Craft / Assemblage, Issue 9