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ATOMIC FIREFLY STUDIO
I cut my teeth on stories as a boy in south-central Pennsylvania, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.
There, around woodland campfires with my older sisters and cousins, roasting marshmallows beneath a canopy of rustling leaves and watchful sky, we dared one another into adventures, mysteries, and scary stories. Suspense seemed to hang in the darkness around us: strange sounds in the night, unexplained sightings, quirky neighbors, shadowed woods, and the old-house feeling that something unseen might be just beyond the door.
For a sensitive soul bent toward the arts, with a restless creative imagination, it was the perfect apprenticeship. I was destined to become a storyteller.
And I did.
But it was not by accident.
At twenty-two, I came to understand that God had given me an abundance of creative gifts across many art forms because I was made to be a filmmaker. Film, after all, is the synthesis of the arts: image, word, music, movement, design, performance, rhythm, architecture, light, and time.
What others might call "a jack of all trades," I came to recognize as a calling. A gift. An assignment.
I cut my teeth on stories as a boy in south-central Pennsylvania, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.
There, around woodland campfires with my older sisters and cousins, roasting marshmallows beneath a canopy of rustling leaves and watchful sky, we dared one another into adventures, mysteries, and scary stories. Suspense seemed to hang in the darkness around us: strange sounds in the night, unexplained sightings, quirky neighbors, shadowed woods, and the old-house feeling that something unseen might be just beyond the door.
For a sensitive soul bent toward the arts, with a restless creative imagination, it was the perfect apprenticeship. I was destined to become a storyteller.
And I did.
But it was not by accident.
At twenty-two, I came to understand that God had given me an abundance of creative gifts across many art forms because I was made to be a filmmaker. Film, after all, is the synthesis of the arts: image, word, music, movement, design, performance, rhythm, architecture, light, and time.
What others might call "a jack of all trades," I came to recognize as a calling. A gift. An assignment.
A Life in Story
Across a decades-long creative career, I have worked as a writer, director, producer, cinematographer, composer, editor, photographer, actor, story consultant, and teacher — often bringing several of those disciplines together on the same project.
I co-wrote and co-produced the theatrically released feature film Heroes of Dirt, named to TIME's Top 75 Films to Watch in 2015. My screenwriting has earned national and international recognition, including Best Short Screenplay at the 2022 Atlanta Screenplay Awards and a Coverfly Top 1% ranking for my short screenplay The Cleansing. My creative work has also received multiple Telly Awards and dozens of honors across film, photography, music, and media.
As a visual artist, I have worked as a top-five-percent Getty / iStock–ranked cinematographer and a museum-exhibited fine-art photographer. As a performer, I am a SAG-AFTRA actor with credits across more than 200 film and television productions. As a composer and songwriter, I continue to create original music rooted in faith, imagination, and cinematic storytelling.
One of the most formative chapters of my life took place near Oxford, England, where I served as head landscaper and caretaker of The Kilns, the former home of C. S. Lewis. That season deepened my love for myth, meaning, beauty, Christian imagination, and stories that awaken the soul. I later performed my original music at the historic 1998 Oxford Centenary Celebration. In 2025, I re-orchestrated my C. S. Lewis tribute song, "Legacy of Truth," and began producing an accompanying cinematic music video for its worldwide launch.
I hold an M.A. in Communications — Film & Screenwriting — from Regent University and a B.A. from Temple University. I teach across the Atlanta creative community, including through the Trilith Institute, and for more than two decades I have mentored writers, filmmakers, artists, and storytellers through My Story Core, the story-development method I created.
I founded Atomic Firefly LLC to forge light through story — developing films, music videos, books, visual art, story worlds, and emerging-media projects shaped by beauty, truth, wonder, and redemptive imagination.
I live in Fayetteville, Georgia, southwest of Atlanta, and teach and create from my studio and classroom at Heart Encounters in Tyrone.