Creative Works
Below is a collection of sample work I have created. Short stories, essays, screenplays, and short films. A diverse portfolio, I am able to effectively navigate different genres, layering engaging conflicts, developing complex characters, and providing a unique voice, tone, and resolution, while following the 3-act narrative structure, including Blake Snyder’s beats.
Short Stories
The Lake of Lions is an extended metaphor for those broken souls who neglect their potential. Those who run from their identity, afraid, anxious, and abiding, blind to the latent power suppressed inside, trapped within.
I wrote this visceral story during a time of heavy circumstances. My objective was to create a quick hit of inspiration consisting of intimate truths, poetic elements, and brutal imagery.
The Slave and the White Whale is the short story of an escaped slave's voyage to freedom across the sea, and his encounter with the white whale which challenges the protagonist's ethical code and will to survive. Freedom is not everything, if everything is not free.
My mission was to write a conventional story without an overpowering narrative voice.
Inspired by Melville's Moby Dick and the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass as an American Slave.
Screenplays
Brimstone tells about a young son struggling to gain his identity as an adult capable of handling himself. Set in a post apocalyptic world where childhood is an endangered luxury, Brimstone is a dark, oppressing, tale of redemption and revelation.
The quote goes: The Devil you know is better than the Devil you don't. The Devil You Know is a fun short story about someone pigeonholed and misunderstood who tries to break free of those labels associated with his reputation so that he can define himself as he wishes in a journey to seek fulfillment.
Inspired by the old myth about the man who sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads when the night was the darkest.
A surreal tale about a man who's tasked with chauffeuring the dying to their final resting place, The Ferryman is a story about a man's fight against time and mortality and an elderly lady's final quest to reunite with the love of her life.
A man of wealth, power, and privilege ventures alone into an unforgiving desert, abandoning a life meticulously constructed around success, appearances, and control.
But beneath his immaculate exterior lies a lifetime of buried guilt, painful memories, and truths he has desperately tried to escape.
As the relentless sun strips away his possessions, dignity, and identity, the boundaries between reality and delirium, civilization and savagery begin to dissolve. What follows is a harrowing descent into the darkest recesses of the human psyche, where the past refuses to remain buried and survival becomes inseparable from self-destruction.
Blending psychological horror with existential allegory, The Creature explores the corrosive nature of guilt, the fragility of identity, and the monstrous consequences of running from oneself.
When everything that defines us is stripped away, what remains beneath the surface—and is it still human?
Creative Writing
A dynamic summation and preview of what to expect for season 2 of Netflix’s radical series: Love, Death, Robots.
A Satire for Self-Destruction is a piece intended to poke fun at and combat all the self-anointed heath professionals of the here and now, their goofy blogospheres, and their righteous regiments.
Short Films
Tomato Juice is a film that examines the relationship between a newly divorced mother and her preteen son who has just been cut from the soccer team. The film details the recognition of being excluded from meaningful relationships and how to transcend a shared conflict through an unexpected outlet.
Inspired by my younger sister's one wish for her 5th-grade graduation: A big juicy tomato to throw at our backyard fence. The film was also inspired by Jane Campion's short film, PEEL, and real-life events.
The Ballad of W.E. Blackburn is an experimental short film chronicling a death-row prisoner's final moments alive.
Inspired by T.S. Eliot's poems, The Love Song of J. Aflred Prufrock and The Hollow Men.
MEAT
MEAT is a peculiar reminder of man's primal instincts. MEAT was shot on 16mm film. The film was inspired by my need to tell a story without many resources.
I have always been fascinated with the animal instincts that survive in us today, believing it's important to remember and recognize our history and the natural foundations uniting all of us and nature, because it sheds light on what it means to be alive and human.