I was an avid writer since childhood, I was the first
place winner of the 1998 Fiction Award at the Kansas City Network of
Christian Writers Fall Conference. I am a proud graduate from the Institute
of Children's Literature and have had stories published in small magazines.
THE W-3 CREW was my very first completed feature-length screenplay,
adapted from my novel of the same name, first conceived when, again,
I was a boy of ten, growing up in a small upstate New York. The follow-up,
THE W-3 CREW: UNDERGROUND is well on it's way to being adapted
for the screen, as well as two more spin-offs and two unrelated science
fiction projects as well.
This was all accomplished during the darkest time in
the midst of chronic, unexplained and debilitating insomnia, which had
plagued me from early childhood. I sometimes went weeks without any
sleep at all! My talents and abilities deteriorated as my physical condition
worsened--except my for my writing, which seemed to flourish. As well
as the W-3 Crew books, I completed a sci fi novel and, with a friend,
a romance/suspense novel. Fortunately, I found relief from insomnia
in spring of 2000.
On November 4, 2003, after reading Robert Rodriguez's
Rebel Without a Crew, my own dreams of becoming a film maker
began boiling once again. To that end, I hit the books, learning how
to write screenplays and adapted both W-3 Crew books for the screen.
Then, inspired by the subject matter in UNDERGROUND, I completed
TOPWORLD. This and its sequel TOPWORLD: REVELATIONS
was written in a very unconventional way in that I sat down without
a plot, outline nor any idea what the story was going to be about. I
just started writing to see what would come out. Once a story (about
a social worker, a 35-year-old man, who takes on the case of a 15-year-old
girl claiming to be an escaped slave from a subterranean civilization)
developed, I let the characters dictate the course of the script. I
call this process "freewheeling," (there may be a more technical
term unknown to me) and I must say I was surprised by the results. The
relationship that develops became a "picture" of what a covenantal
relationship, like marriage, involved...the merging of souls into a
symbiotic union. I was also able to explore possibilities of subterranean
civilizations in a more serious way. I have also written two short screenplays-DISPUTE
OF DRAGONS and "YOU GOTTA BE CAREFUL IN THIS NEIGHBORHOOD!"
