As a writer you write, and apparently I started doing this on the walls of my nursery.

It probably wasn’t good writing, but still.

As a kid, I filled childhood notebooks with exuberant tales of world saving, high adventure, and city-leveling destruction. Sure, it was all off from STAR WARS and James Bond, but that’s the height of adventure when you are 11.

Or 40. 

In 1992, at 23 years-old and while completing my Masters in Counseling Psychology and Human Development, I landed my first first writing-producing gig on the groundbreaking INSIDE / OUTSIDE THE BELTWAY TV series.

IOB beat ELLEN, WILL & GRACE and the both the original, U.K version and the American revamp of QUEER AS FOLK to the punch in portraying gays and lesbians as real people, in funny and dramatic situations, by several years.  The show was seen in cities across the country and garnered quite a few awards, from groups as different as GLAAD and The American Film Institute.

Alas, sometimes you can be too early to a party.

When that show folded in 1996, I spent the following decade as a therapist and social worker. Psychology was another love of mine. And I did have to eat. And clothe myself. And put a roof over my head. Oh, and then there was that whole comic book addiction thing.

I worked with diverse populations from gay men to abused children, before winding up doing Child Protection in Los Angeles County.  It was me, my pen, and my photocopied badge against the Mean Streets Of The City. In those circles, I’m best remembered for writing the most cinematic court reports to ever grace the Bench.

STAR WARS and James Bond, remember?

Even then,  I spent what free time I had writing articles, essays, short stories and screenplays. Lots of screenplays. Lots of bad screenplays. But then, one day, quite by magic though really through hard work and effort (but magic sounds so much more dramatic, no?) I got good.

My script PARIS, the story of a gay, ass-kicking private detective who’s also gay, won achieved semi-finalist status in the 2003 Scriptapalooza screenplay competition and, later, made me a top 100 finalist in the 2004 Project Greenlight contest.  And it got me into the Professional Screenwriting Program at UCLA, which lead to a very coveted slot in the MFA Screenwriting Program at UCLA.  The scripts that followed won awards (TELL ME and THE DARK PLACE won the Carl David Memorial Screenwriting Award in 2005 and 2006.)

Most of all, it got me work.

In 2007, with several partners, we created the production company, Door Q

Entertainment, LLC, to make both standard and New Media productions. Our first

project, doorQ.com, a multimedia and networking site for gay fans of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, launched that Halloween. We created original video content for the site;  my short film TELL ME premiered in our theater.

In 2008, IN THE CLOSET, another short I created for the web, went on to have its debut in a real theater, at the 2008 Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Outfest.  It’s been seen around the world, earned a nomination from the IRIS Film Festival as one of the Best Shorts of the Year, and can currently be seen on  Peccadillo Pictures DVD compilation AMERICAN BOYS.

That same year, I started teaching Screenwriting for UCLA.

In 2009, my first feature as a screenwriter, Regent Entertainment’s HEAT WAVE, was released in theaters, on TV and on DVD. My short film IN THE CLOSET was nominated for the prestigious IRIS Award.

Currently, in addition to stumbling my way through Hollywood, in pitching and promoting, in noting the distinct parallels between the psych units I used to frequent and the studio lots I now do, I’m hip deep in web-productions, producing for an upcoming children’s SF web series and prepping another SF show of my own. Hollywood is contracting and the Internet is expanding. It’s a new world out there.

There are a few other teaching gigs and consulting work that occupy my time, but I’ve written a small tome all about me. As fascinating as I subject as I am -- well, my mom thinks so -- I want to close out here by urging those of you would be and journeyman writers to keep at.  Write. Just write. And drink plenty of Coca-Cola.

But that’s an essay for another day.