So who exactly is this Nathan A. Hunt fellow, anyways? Allow me to answer that for you.
I was born to a pastor and a nurse, and was raised in a very Christian household. One could even say that the church was my second home. I was born with a twin and two other oler brothers. When I was eight, I got another younger brother.
I first started writing for myself when I was in the 3rd grade. The story I began - but never finished, was called The Lost World, and was nothing more than a thinly veiled Narnia knock-off.
So, what cosmic force inspired 3rd grade me to pick up writing for the first time? Well, like so many other authors, I've always had a love of reading, especially fantasy. And one of my favorite authors growing up was a man named Wayne Thomas Batson. For those of you who don't know, Batson is a Christian Fantasy author who writes primarily for children. His works include The Door Within trilogy and The Berinfell Prophecies. These books, and my love of them, is what inspired me to start writing my own book.
When I was young, ideas came to me like dust motes on the wind - often. It seemed like every week I had a new idea, and I would constantly be starting new projects, most of them some variation of portal fantasy, but some soft scifi among them. In 5th grade, I would start the project that would change my writing journey forever.
I got thinking one day, "Hm. All of my fantasy books involve somebody from earth going into another world. What if instead, I told a story where these people were already in that fantasy world?" While most readers will correctly identify this genre as High Fantasy, a genre that many people write in, to 5th grade me, it was the most original idea I'd ever had. And so I started writing a book titled Prophecies of Drakshir. What I had then was... bad, to say the least. The characters were flat and cliched, to plot was nonsensical, and the magic was just a simple elemental system that wasn't thought out in the least. However, over the next year, I changed some things. I changed a lot of things. Firstly, I changed the name from Prophecies of Drakshir to Prophecies of Diranell. Then I revamped the plot, making it far more interesting.
Then... I let it drop.
For the following two years or so, I didn't touch the world of Diranell. It rotted in my Microsoft Word files, waiting patiently for me to open it again.
Then one day I did.
In the 8th grade I picked it back up and started working on it, polishing everything. I realized that in order for this book to be the best possible it could be, the series needed to be far longer than I had originally imagined. Rather than just a trilogy, I made it five books. Then eight. And now that it was eight books long, I realized that I needed to do some outlining. And this is the choice that changed my career forever.
One day, I sat down and forced myself to outline the first book, which I was already halfway through. Then, during the following months, I began outlining the following seven. I spent years working on it, trying just to finish the first draft.
And one day I finally did.
In the summer following my tenth grade year, I finished the very first draft, which ended up around 66K words, a day before my birthday. In the following weeks,I started trying to edit it and polish it even more. Then I lost my momentum. And I came to a frightening realization.
This series was far too big for me.
At that point in time, I had minimal skill. There was no way I was going to be able to make this series as good as it could be. So, with immense resignation, I put it to the side, pausing my work for the time being.