About Crystal Hunt
I’ve been habitually creating things my whole life, and have managed to collage together a super-fun career as a professional creative which is how I’ve been paying the rent for the past twenty-plus years now. I’ve done a lot of school (like, a LOT) over the years and am constantly chasing new areas of interest on behalf of myself or the characters who live in my fictional worlds.
Most of that education tends to be a blend of health and wellness-type stuff (group fitness instructor, health psychologist), and writing and publishing related topics. Although I’ve also been known to totally geek out at tech conferences for things like WordPress and publishing technology.
A lot of things interest me, and I generally wiggle things around until I can figure out how to blend all those things together into some shape that results in the bills getting paid.
What currently has me all fired up?
Reading, writing, publishing, cool creative technology, collaging, creating animated videos, designing and building games, virtual reality workouts, indoor urban aqua-gardening, reducing carbon footprints on digital products, improving the accessibility of the creative stuff I’m making… basically anything that can make life a little brighter for ALL OF US sharing this planet.
The Rivers End Bookclub (writing fiction)
I’m writing fiction set in the small, fictional Vancouver Island town of Rivers End. I started with romance, then added a dash of mystery, magic and suspense and will have romance (as CJ Hunt), mystery (as Jean Hunt) and paranormal thriller (as Mercy West) titles under 3 different pen names over the next few years. I scaled back my conference teaching, events and traveling in 2021-2022 to focus on getting the next few books in the series ready to roll, and am excited to see those rolling out starting in the fall of 2022. Click here to visit the Rivers End Bookclub website.
The Creative Academy Guides for Writers (writing non-fiction)
Since 2018, the Creative Academy partners have been creating guides for to help writers through various parts of the writing and publishing process. Our next guide to hit shelves is Build Better Settings (co-authored with Eileen Cook) which will be released in Dec 2022, and I’m currently writing Build Better Romance and a co-authored book on Indie Publishing with Stephanie Candiago which will both be published in 2023.
The Creative Academy for Writers (connecting with authors)
This project is a collaborative, pay-what-you-can-afford online community geared towards supporting writers from all genres and backgrounds as they journey along a creative career path. Established in 2017, it’s a team project co-managed by Eileen Cook, Donna Barker, Stephanie Candiago and myself and a fabulous group of volunteer leaders. It’s 100% virtual, so authors from everywhere in the world can participate. Click here to learn more about The Creative Academy for Writers.
What other create rabbit holes have I gone down in the past?
This includes some brands, projects, platforms and companies that I have developed or co-founded, that have been an intergral part of making me who I am today. In addition to what’s listed below, over the last 20 years there have been hundreds of projects that were other people’s passion projects that I was privileged enough to play a role in helping bring them to life.
Strategic Authorpreneur Podcast (writing, publishing, business)
I co-hosted 67 episodes of the Strategic Authorpreneur podcast with Italian author Michele Amitrani while the world was in lockdown (2020/2021), sharing info and tips and interviewing rock star guests in the areas of indie publishing, book marketing and writing.
Crystal Clear Solutions (coaching, consulting, project mgmt)
I started this company when I was sixteen years old and was facilitating goal setting and leadership retreats around the province. It’s always been there in the background, the container for all my coaching and consulting activities. The focus of the company has evolved as my interests evolved, and projects ranged from building apps, books, websites, animated videos and interactive learning scenarios to designing and executing entire educational programs and initiatives for clients ranging from individual authors, to Health Authorities, professional governing bodies, Tribal Councils, colleges, school districts and beyond. Basically, if it had to do with health, education, and creativity and someone had a cool project idea and no idea how to make it a reality—my job was to come up with solutions. As the scope of our projects grew, so did the size of our team and we collaborated with a wealth of talented and fabulous creative professionals including: artists, graphic designers, photographers, animators, voice actors, videographers, app developers, web developers and many, many more.
Wellthy Living (articles, digital summits, mentorship)
A health and wellness brand, focused on sharing articles online, and hosting online events like the Caring for Caregivers Summit, and the Wellthy Living Summer Fun Challenge that were created as collaborative projects with a team of students from the Langara Nursing Program who were learning about knowledge translation, building their digital communications skills, and connecting with a wider audience.
The Creative Women’s Summit: Passion to Profit (online event)
This project was co-hosted with Donna Barker. We put together a talented lineup of creative women to teach on a huge variety of ways of being creative, and turning those passions into creative businesses. We met a whole host of amazing women—both presenters and attendees—and this was the event that eventually sparked our desire to do something larger scale on an ongoing basis, and eventually evolved into our vision for The Creative Academy for Writers.
Live Your Dream (books, workshops)
In the early days of indie publishing print on demand technology, my husband Jared and I travelled around the province teaching workshops about the indie publishing world, and wrote several books to help people access the newer publishing technologies that could help them do it without it costing the earth, or needing super advanced technical skills. We started an online only community called The Self Publishing Network at a time when indie publishing was not at all cool. (Fun fact: we hosted this SPN community on NING – which was a build your own social network app way ahead of its time. It eventually closed down, and its creators went on to create Mighty Networks… which is the platform that now powers The Creative Academy for Writers! Cool, right?!)
Gumboot Books (children’s book publishing)
A small, Vancouver-based children’s book publishing company attempting to make use of new publishing technologies. While it started as a way to indie publish my own books, we actually did open up to publishing other authors along the way as well and published a number of titles, many of which we also made into interactive educational apps in the early days of app building. We did a collaborative literacy fundraising project in partnership with Rotary Clubs, and worked with 75+ authors and illustrators from around the globe for our World of Stories project. We learned a ton, met some wonderful creative people—many of whom we still work with in various capacities to this day—and this experience was the jumping off point for everything else that followed in one way or another.
