If you’ve taken a wander down Hamilton’s Beaumont Street lately, you may’ve come across Nathan Bell.
The Newcastle-based author has been diligently setting up shop on the popular eat and shopping strip, amid the buskers, diners, and revellers, to sell copies of his debut novel Kings of the New Age: The Quest For The Balancing Stones.
And, it appears that the novel is resonating with Newcastle readers with Nathan selling more than 300 copies of Kings of the New Age.
“I believe that if you want to succeed as an artist you’ve got to be business minded,” Nathan said.
“I brought the book out through Kindle Direct Publishing, and I just figured, you’ve got to get out there and sell it - no one is going to sell it for you.”
The epic fantasy, imbued with political drama and magic realism, tells a tale of a dystopian post-apocalyptic future that sees our city enslaved by a criminal gang, and a quest to heal the earth.
Nathan said the book was the culmination of three years of hard work and was made possible thanks to some great mentorship through Rely-Ability - a non-clinical, peer-led mental health service of which Nathan is a client.
“It took about three years to write the book from when I started jotting down ideas and passages,” Nathan explained.
“Then I started to solidify all that and come up with a real plot to the story about a year in to the process then I started working with a mentor Robert Burley who I worked with for about a year and then I worked with another mentor Brooke for about six months - through the mentoring I learned a lot more discipline in how I was writing.”
Rely-Ability’s Creativity Hub in Tighes Hill is somewhat of a fecund breeding ground of artistic and creative talent, offering clients guidance and mentorship in a range of creative pursuits including writing, sound production, animation and digital art, and music performance.
With the book resonating with readers (Newcastle and Hamilton libraries both hold copies) and with a strong network of support behind him, Nathan said that he was encouraged to keep doing the work in order to, one day, realise his dream of seeing the story on the screen.
“I’ve had some really good feedback which is great because now I know that people like it just keep selling it,” Nathan said.
“I want to write two more books in the series, at least, and the dream is to turn it into a TV series filmed in Newcastle.
“And if you want things like that to happen, you’ve just got to keep working.”
You can pick up a copy of Kings of the New Age: Quest for the Balancing Stones here, or through Newcastle and Hamilton libraries.