Born: September 6, 1968. Anaheim California
" We are our masters of our destiny and responsible for the choices that we make. The choices I've made certainly have proven this to me. In my writings, in my present and certainly everything I do now affects my future.
There are many things in our life that choose us and we make the choice either to accept it or reject it. This is how writing came to me. In the 1970s, many families, including my own were without money. Life was hard. Not as easy as you see in the movies. In 1976, I had only a handful of comic books, a joke book and not much else.
In March of 1977, we moved to Salt Lake City, Utah and it was there I washed people's windows to buy my first book " The Three Musketeers " by Alexander Dumas. What also inspired me to write was the fact we didn't have a TV. Every night at 8:00 we'd sit in front of the radio and listen to American actor E.G. Marshall's " Mystery Theater " . The final contributing factor which led me to write came as a gift from my grandparents: four volumes of books, with four different books in them. From these my mother read to me every night such books as " The Scarlet Pimpernel ", and " The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes " . She would also read to me from " Hurlbut's Story of the Bible " . I loved books. They were gateways to places I'd never been to.
Since we didn't have a lot of money to buy books, I decided to start writing my own book. During the summer of 1977, I played with a basic idea which involved a secret agent wanting to stop political assassinations caused by a corrupt American government. I didn't finish the actual writing of this book until I was ten and I'd seen a movie that helped contribute many ideas. I had liked the movie so much that I used exact scenes from it so I could watch those scenes again. I also started making my own radio shows from comic books and other books I'd read at the library. I did all the voices, mixed my own music and did all the sound effects.
By the summer of my 12th birthday, I'd written four books, some short stories and my first play. The idea to turn my fourth novel The Branded Man into a stage play came from the time I'd spent in Southern California where I spent a few weeks taking acting classes and seeing plays with my aunt who was and still is an actress. When I came back to our neighborhood in Salt Lake, I recruited about fifteen kids to act in the play. The Branded Man play was also the first play my mother helped me type on my very first typewriter (a gift from my grandfather).
Over the following years up through high school, I was to write many books, plays, and even a role playing game that would be the beginning of the universe all my future books would take place in. Along with this universe came a language, among other things. I also got a taste of what it was like to be a teacher, the director of a long play and an actor in a few plays. In the 12th grade, I was to make a movie and combine it with a play, The Promise, I entered it into a multi county wide competition winning second place and a scholarship to attend a writing class with two time Academy Award winning director Larry Lansburgh. I also started writing a volume of poetry.
Up until today, I've written over twenty books, numerous plays and some movies. All this experience has led to the production of two plays An Evening With the Bledsoes and They Shoot Actors Don't They?, several poems and the self publication of my novel Rooster Dreams.
In the summer of 2003, I fulfilled one of my dreams to live and work in a foreign country. On June 13, I came to Romania through Peace Corps to teach English in Campulung-Muscel. Inspired by all I've done and knowing how much fun I had studying drama throughout my life, that I decided to create a National Drama Festival .
The first edition of the festival took place in Campulung-Muscel in May of 2004 and continues growing strong. I have written many plays for my students to compete in the festival. I continue writing plays, teaching drama as well as English.
With the help of my wonderful wife and family dog, I have completed my first collection of plays for beginners. "