About

Josh Hoffman was born and raised in the shadow of Pittsburgh and somehow remained an Eagles fan. He is a graduate of Southern New Hampshire University with a degree in Creative Writing. Currently writing his first Urban Fantasy novel, he makes the time to play a Wizard in his weekly Dungeons and Dragons game. He is an avid player of RPG video games and reader of fantasy novels. 

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I first started writing in Elementary school. It wasn’t anything big. Just some small four- or five-page literary disasters about a group of friends adventuring around the world. Those friends were my friends, taken straight from my life and entered onto the page. Our name was the Adventure Squad, which I still claim I came up with before I watched that episode of Rugrats. Our group traveled the world and fought against enemies, both humanoid or natural. (I don’t remember why the volcanoes surrounded us, but they probably had good reason.)

Although I no longer have those stories, though I wish I did, I learned a lot from them. Specifically, about character and the effect writing has on those who read it. Not all my friends enjoyed my… artistic representation of them on paper. One hated how I’d written her and complained about it to one of my teachers. I remember vividly being upset and defending myself with the outcry of, “She’s criticizing my work!” I was mad at the time, but now?

Now I say good. Criticize me! Tell me what you don’t like! Help me grow. Help me mature into the kind of writer I want to be. So, this is twenty years too late, but thanks Jamie! Thanks for criticizing me. And sorry for making your character be frightened of a picture of an onion, whatever the hell that was supposed to mean.

I moved on from writing those stories to doing forum role plays, more commonly known as “play by posts” since every new post in the topic continued onward the story. I joined up with a board called Ultimate Hogwarts: The Rebirth back in middle school and wrote with them up until high school, before the owner of the board passed away and we drifted apart. For most of the last decade, I’ve been writing more with forum play by posts, but also trying to do more short stories of my own. More self-contained writing that could pass for professional, or at the very least amateur. Most of what this blog is for is exercise. Athletes go to the gym, but writers have it harder. We must put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard, and create. Daily. If we don’t exercise our muscles, we’ll never do well in the craft. And I want to do very well.

You can find me mainly on my Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/joshhoffmanwrites