THEOLOGY
Coming June 1, 2020
CREATIVE PROJECTS
I have spent the last decade working on these projects in my spare time. They're all in different stages of development. Some are distributed and some are still a work in progress. There's always a chance I publish or produce some of these in a more official way, but for now the images you see are placeholders and the text is subject to change. You can download the work for free and let me know what you think.
If you're looking for my professional portfolio, you can find it here.
Title: The Teacher
Project Type: Novella
Overview: The Teacher is about a boy employed in the service of a wanted cult leader and terrorist hiding in a compound near the Texas border. Gabriel - the boy - is tasked with taking The Teacher's watch to be repaired in the nearby town, but while he travels alone, familiar doubts and questions rise up about the nature of life and love, right and wrong, all leading up to a final raid on the home that proves his darkest premonitions to be true.
Title: Vigil
Project Type: Screenplay
Overview: Vigil is the story of Kruso and Elle, a married couple who run an underground church in a totalitarian state. When a list of remaining churches is discovered, Kruso must race against a brutal and relentless agent of the state to find and protect the list at all costs, while Elle must keep their own church safe. Though the script was written first and has a slightly different storyline, Vigil is also the fifth book in the Theology series.
Title: Quincy and Vienna
Project Type: Novel
Overview: Quincy and Vienna is a short novel that spans the twentieth century through the life of one man who builds a lottery empire. Quincy is born on the streets and develops a con-man's touch on his way to becoming a tycoon - and an enemy of the federal government. A pure and ruthless individualist, his only moral compass is Vienna, the love of his life who is always out of his reach. This is a book about luck, destiny, and what it means to pursue a dream at the expense of your own happiness.
Title: Reza
Project Type: Screenplay - Short Film
Overview: It sounds like a bad cliche, but Reza was born out of a dream. In the dream, angels were tasked with carrying the souls of the dead through an underwater cavern. I immediately woke up and took notes in my journal. That image led to Reza, a story about the loss of innocence. In a land that has been ravaged by war, a group of designated children are tasked with ushering the dead into eternity. But Sohm, the main character and oldest child, knows that he cannot stay here forever, and that one day the war will come calling for him. Full disclosure: I love this story. This is also the title of a book in Theology, but the stories are different. If I ever made this into a short film, I would change the name.
Title: Ferus
Project Type: Screenplay
Overview: Ferus is a love story about a woman who trains horses for a local monastery while she is hiding from a previous life. When a man comes to stay at the monastery to retreat from the world and re-evaluate the meaning of his life, he meets her and they build a friendship centered around care for the horses. In time, he discovers that she was abused by a previous husband, and that husband is still looking for her, and that soon he will find her. I wrote this script with intention of actually making the film myself one day. The script is short and needs some tightening up, but the story is beautiful.
Title: We From The Sunrise
Project Type: Novel
Overview: We From The Sunrise is the first book I ever wrote with the intention of publishing, and I probably spent more time on this book than any other. It's one I should have let go long before I did. At the time, I was obsessed with the Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and it's obvious when you read this book. This project taught me that I need my own voice, not the voice of those I admire. The story is about twin brothers born in a Texas mission town. While one brother leads the church to absurd new heights, the other brother commits the seven deadly sins on his way to becoming the church's greatest enemy. There are some gems in these pages.
Title: Waco Native, Volume I
Project Type: Poetry
Overview: I like big ideas, metaphysics, and epic stories about the mysteries of God. This project is none of those. Like all of us, I'm the sum of many parts. One of those parts is a kid who grew up in the country in Texas in the 90s. This book of poems is an homage to that. Comprised of 70 fictional poems about odd characters throughout the state, this collection is bizarre, at-times funny, and reveals a side of me that I don't share very often. Once you start reading, you'll understand why I wanted to use a pseudonym for this book.
Title: Genesis
Project Type: Film
Overview: Genesis is a feature film about the first book in the Bible that I had the opportunity to write, direct, and co-produce. We made this film on a micro-budget and learned on the fly what it takes to make a movie. The answer: a lot. More than anything, I learned the value of endurance. This film has its flaws (a period piece on a low budget is not recommended), no doubt, but I'm still proud of what we were able to accomplish with so few resources. The story is built around Jochebed, the mother of Moses, as she tells her son the story of their people. This film is distributed by Bridgestone Media Group and is available on most platforms.
Title: Jochebed and the Accuser
Project Type: Novella
Overview: This book came together by accident. For all of my other projects, I set out with a clear intention of what I wanted to accomplish. This one is different. Jochebed and the Accuser is composed of several different scraps of other projects I was working on, but I didn't know what to do with the work. Poetry, short narratives, fables . . . and then I realized that those storytellers could all come together as if they were sitting at one table talking to one another. So that's what I tried. I brought them to a table and let everyone speak. The result is an engaging discussion about the nature of man and God, with the two most prominent voices being Jochebed and the Accuser.
Title: Woof
Project Type: Screenplay
Overview: As a young writer in Austin I took whatever opportunities came my way. A local director told me he wanted to make an animated feature about a wolf that couldn't howl. That's all the direction I had when I wrote Woof. This script is different than anything else I've done, but looking back, I love it because of how it stretched me as a writer. The story is fun. Logo is a young wolf living in Yellowstone National Park and, to the whole pack's embarrassment, he can't howl. Before long he gets caught up in the company of a rowdy band of stray dogs that have been abandoned at the park over the years. Logo has to decide if he is a wolf or a dog, and he saves the whole pack in the process.
Title: A Place to Land
Project Type: Screenplay
Overview: Like Ferus, I wrote this script with the intention of raising money and making it myself. When you're writing with that in mind, you intentionally build in locations, scenes, and characters that you can actually pull off with limited resources. A Place to Land is a small-town story about a songwriter who rescues a young woman who has been trafficked, and their bond over music brings them close together even as she is being hunted by those who want her back. This movie was meant to have a built-in soundtrack (which I started writing but never finished), so you will see cues for certain songs throughout the script. Here are a few lyrics that inspired the title: just a couple birds looking for a place to land / we've been around the world / we're coming back again / with the wind at our backs and a song in our hearts / how else could it end? / just a couple birds looking for a place to land