Hello! I’m Author and Anthropologist CJ Hahne

While CJ Hahne may seem like my penname, it isn’t! Throughout my life, I had always been referred to by my initials – something that many more people now, who enjoy my writing, will become familiar with. I was lucky to be born with a penname for this career, but it wasn’t always going to be that convenient. My original aspirations, since I was a young man in the 5th grade, had been in the field of astronomy. Yet even before my star-gazing days, I was an avid reader. My favorites as a child included popular children’s novels such as Goosebumps and, humorously, Captain Underpants. I even wrote many “inspired” versions of these stories as a kid, pretending as though I was a true author. I would put them on paper, staple them, draw on the cover, and present them to my 3rd and 4th grade English classes (shoutout to Kathy Crane, Ann Richards, and Robin Frost!). It never fails to amaze me how far I’ve come since those days, and to revel in the fact that I’ve, essentially, returned to it. I, also, was never a “Potterite”, as many of my generation were. Rather, I was interested in science fiction, science fantasy, and, particularly, Star Wars.

With all that in mind, how did the course of my life take me back to writing? To writing a high fantasy young adult novel? A genre that, on the surface, seems out of my range of relative interest? Unfortunately, the answer is a bit anticlimactic. The journey was surprisingly simple: it all started with a text conversation I had with my sister. After hearing a hook I had for a movie idea, she encouraged me to instead turn said ideas into a novel (and only after typing furiously about how much I needed to write it, just because she liked what I had on the surface). On that afternoon, January 20th, 2017, I wrote the first 2,000 words of The Wandering Order: Autumn Light - and here I’ve been, many years later, doing what I’ve never known I actually wanted to do.

The world of Mythical Modernism has taken many, many years to build. I hope that all who read this series truly enjoy the fruits of my labor.