Raf's Biography
Rafael Hohmann was born in December 1992 in Curitiba, Brazil. Although brought up in poverty for the first few years of his life, him and his mother were able to obtain their American citizenship and move to the United States. He learned English from the ages of six to eight by attempting to read American books and watching television in the basement storage of a local restaurant for hours a day while his mother bussed tables. This kindled his love for books and the desire to explore worlds where there were no limits. By the age of nine he was writing his own stories while following his mother around as she took college classes in the evening. He learned college-grade mathematics and English through those few months while his mother attempted a degree (which she was unable to afford finishing).
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Through junior-high he sold hand-drawn comics at school and shared chapters of stories he was writing to friends. By 2009, while in high-school he completed his first novel: which he edited, formatted, printed, and sold around thirty copies of. He was living on his own by seventeen and was determined to create a stable life for himself and become a professional writer.
By 2012 he returned to South America, serving an LDS mission in Bahia, Brazil. After returning to the United States, he married his closest friend Jessica Jenkins in 2014. It was a humble first couple of years, with him working in a warehouse building electrical components for military submarines and tech companies. Throughout that time he obtained university degrees in Applied Science and Business Management, going on to work in the university sector as a departmental leader. Throughout this time he continued to hone his craft of writing: publishing short stories online for free each week and testing his skills in every genre/genre-bled he could think of. To his surprise, he obtained a following of a few thousand within two months and fans began to clamor for him to publish a full novel.
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Following the wishes of his fans, Rafael wrote SunRider, an epic fantasy novel which blended traditional fantasy with super powers. Launching it on Amazon in 2017 with the intention of gaining a better understanding of building a business in writing, he was astonished when it became an overnight success. SunRider went on to become a national number one best-seller in epic fantasy and dark fantasy, drawing the attention of Podium Publishing who contracted with him for audiobook rights.
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His success established his name in the local writing community, where he went on to become an active writing panelist at conventions throughout the state of Utah and bordering states. He balanced both working as a COO for a local business while raising his first two children. During those years he was introduced to one who would become his writing mentor: international best-selling author David Farland, former mentor of Brandon Sanderson, Stephanie Meyer, and various other successful writers. The initial days of David's tutelage were interrupted when Rafael's youngest brother tragically passed away in a car accident. Rafael buried his brother with a copy of his first book, as he had been seeking to one day become an author as well. David would go on to tutor Rafael one-on-one and work with him in local conventions. When David passed away in 2022, Rafael was asked to take over teaching David's creative writing courses online at an international level to prospective writers.
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Taking a temporary break from writing after David's death to focus on teaching and raising his family, Rafael has now come back into the writing world with the intent to seek new ways to share his stories with fans and friends alike.
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Throughout his journey he has learned the importance of creating an ecosystem, not a platform for authors and readers. He is a fan of his fans, and wants to spend as much time with them as he does with his writing. On any given day you can find him either writing, hiking, writing, playing with his children (he was able to keep his promise to give them the stability he never had), writing, playing video games, writing, or going to the gym.
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Please feel free to reach out to him. He would love to meet you.