What’s a modern-day storyteller?

Storytelling is how our species communicates, preserves history, inspires, connects—and convinces producers the banjo-playing fish in Act Two is absolutely essential.

I’ve been a storyteller since I was a boy with an overactive imagination. That condition eventually led to print journalism, marketing and public relations, and a career as a communications executive with the federal government, where “creative writing” was generally discouraged—especially in official documents.

Along the way, I became a husband and father of four: two daughters in their early thirties and 19-year-old twins in college—the precise cause of my gray hair and dwindling bank account.

After decades of telling other people’s stories, I decided it was time to tell some of my own. Then screenwriting found me—or perhaps caught me hiding from a more sensible retirement hobby, like pickleball or blogging about lawn-care products.

I’ve now written ten feature screenplays and two television pilots, won ten screenplay contests—including Fade In and the New York Screenwriting Awards—and reached the Austin Film Festival’s second round four consecutive years.

I primarily write feature dramas, although I recently wandered into comedy. That screenplay has earned several contest wins, suggesting I may be funnier than my children have been willing to admit.

I’m especially drawn to overlooked true stories about unconventional people or circumstances in which curiosity, ambition, or obsession changed the culture around them—often at profound personal cost. Blame my journalism background: I keep gravitating toward stories with a vein of truth that, somehow, have largely gone untold.

Now I’m off to write another slightly improbable tale about this strange and fascinating world we inhabit.

And yes, the banjo-playing fish stays.