Nathan Cross Profile

Hi, I am Nathan Cross,

I spent my entire life living and working in Columbus Ohio but have recently retired to a cabin on the side of a mountain in Virginia. It is a decent place to write except for the occasional distraction of bears tearing down my bird feeders or greeting me when I step out into the back driveway.

I never gave writing a second thought save for a little technical writing I did on our company website. As I stated I am not a writer but my son in his youthful rebellion began bullying and fighting with people. As part of a multi-pronged approach to deal with him, I began creating scenarios where some of his victims decided to retaliate.

Every time a thought went through my mind, I would make a note. Before long, I noticed characters would begin appearing in my thoughts then eventually dialogue.

Long story short a theme began to develop and I realized I had the makings of a book. Having no idea of how to proceed I began reading books on how to write a story. All that did was confuse me and burden me with a bunch of technical stuff that I didn’t really need at the time. So I concentrated on writing and started reading anything and everything I could get my hands on, mostly thrillers and mysteries. Ten years later I have a draft of approximately 140,000 words and estimate I am about half way finished.

I became aNext Big Writer member because I am deep enough in the process now that I believe I am mentally ready for some professional guidance, accountability, and critique.

I have sampled many writing programs over the years and finally settled on Scrivener for Windows. There is a fairly steep learning curve but this program has worked out very well for me.

I use Grammarly for my editing needs now as I think it catches a few more things than MS Word does.

My two favorite authors are Stephen King and Brad Thor and I would like to think my writing style reflects a combination of the two. One thing I know for sure is I have created a monster (in the book) and by way of a project that is growing much larger than I could have ever imagined. In closing, my son no longer bullies people.

Nathan