I’ve served my country in the military. I’ve built a career I retired from in IT, at the highest levels. I’ve written well received published books and produced films that have earned over 150 international awards — and I’ve used my platform, literally, to support people, democracy and dissent from crime and poor choices.
Yet, still pretty unknown. This is not just about me. It's about so many I've met who are in the same situation. Brilliant musicians, busking on the streets to make money. Excellent authors and artists who can't get noticed. It's just the world we live in, that is only getting more and more difficult with more and more complex issues messing things up.
For one, our priorities are skewed. And we're all awash in media, disinformation, misinformation, and just...information. But that's a given anymore.
Back in 2010, during the Arab Spring, I kept blogging relevant information for those in Egypt, when Middle Eastern activists had their social media shut down. My site saw a surge of traffic from the region — people seeking information, connection, and hope. I was proud to help.
And yet… with all this? I remain largely invisible.
After earning a BA in psychology with a minor in creative writing — focusing on fiction, screenwriting, and playwriting — I spent years building a successful tech career. I’ve always given everything I had to any task: whether that meant making a boss look brilliant, or crafting stories that make readers stop and think.
My work has consistently been high quality and praised for it.
My book "Death of Heaven" won the NYC Big Book Award for Horror.
My films have screened globally and won over 150 international film festival honors.
My scripts have placed and been praised in top competitions. I'm still flummoxed about "The Teenage Bodyguard" screenplay as it's a true story, untouched location and story, multiple award winning screenplay, almost produced three times now but just the wrong directors, and yet, what?
And yet I still hear:
“This is really good… but we don’t know how to market it.”
My work is hard to pigeonhole. I’ve heard that all my life. First about me, personally. Then about my works, often confusing my managers. And yet they protected me to keep me from leaving.
My high school English composition teacher said if I didn't stop using the British spelling of words, she'd have to mark me down and she didn't want to. I said fine, but the British spelling was more attractive. Yes, I was odd.
But I was right. And so was she. But take the word, "color". IS that better than the British, "colour"? In short, "colour" is to language what calligraphy is to handwriting — not necessary for clarity, but undeniably more beautiful in its form. And so on...it's been my life, how I see it.
But in the arts?
“You’re crossing genres.”
“It’s hybrid.”
“It doesn’t fit neatly into a box.”
“Audiences won’t know what shelf it goes on.”
Funny, because I thought we were told to stand out.
To be original.
To not follow the formula.
And I did that — too well, apparently.
It’s a cruel twist: You excel, you differentiate, you innovate… and you’re punished for not being more like everyone else. Success becomes a liability when the industry can’t put a label on you.
My biggest issue, people thinking you have a huge ego, or you're "just too full of yourself", or something. I prefer being behind the lens of a film production, the unknown mystery of an author on the book circuit, or the guy who makes the boss look brilliant. I have just never needed the praise. I've always said about fame and fortune, "Give me the fortune, you can have the fame." I just don't care about it.
Add to that my personality: I’ve really never been built for the spotlight.
It took a while after publishing my first books in 2012 to begin properly promoting my books. Then began to promote myself because someone said that readers want to know the author, to buy the author, not just their books. That was a bit of a shock to me at the time. But eventually I tried hard to go there, do that, be a face on a cover, or back cover, or back inside flap. Or not.
Self-promotion doesn’t come naturally to many of us. It’s uncomfortable, even painful. I hated job interviews for the same reason — you’re expected to puff yourself up, even lie.
“Why do you want this job?” they’d ask.
They wanted to hear: “I love this work. I’ll give you everything.”
What I too often wanted to say was, “I need to eat. I have a baby. I’m overqualified. I’ll give you everything anyway — because that’s who I am.”
But if you don’t market yourself? No one else will.
And the world rarely notices what doesn’t shout.
I’m not here to complain. I’m here to speak a truth that many of us live:
That this system — built on algorithms, trends, labels — is broken.
The internet made it easier to contact those you need to contact, but then quickly a field overwhelmed became ever more overwhelmed.
It's a system that fails to recognize genuine achievement if it can’t brand it.
It overlooks depth in favor of virality.
And it asks us to be unique — then punishes us for being unclassifiable.
Especially today, when we've traded depth for speed. We're surrounded by people who know a little about everything — just enough to sound informed, but not enough to understand it. And that illusion of knowledge is contagious, tricking us into thinking we know more than we actually do.
So, if you’re someone who’s walked this path — a veteran, an artist, a technologist, a lifelong overachiever quietly producing real work that goes unrecognized — I see you.
And if you’ve found something meaningful in my work — my books, my films, my blog — I ask just one thing: help me carry it further. Share it. Talk about it. Let people know it exists.
I’ll keep creating either way.
But damn, it would be nice if being different didn’t mean disappearing.
If you’d like to explore my work, you can find my books on Amazon and my films on the festival circuit and online. Here's LinkTree with most of my links on it.
And if any of this resonated with you, I’d be grateful if you shared this post.
In a world drowning in noise, it’s those small ripples that sometimes carry the most weight.
Compiled with aid of ChatGPT
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