I make things for the web.

The early years

From an early age, I've been fascinated with books, the words, and the aged smell. My first "real" book was "Congo" by Michael Crichton, which I read in the fourth grade. While growing up, I learned from an early age that if you wanted to do something, you either learned it or found someone to teach you how to do it. When it came to writing, I was hooked, and it didn't matter where I was. A family vacation, short car trips, the dining room table; no matter where or what I was doing, I took along a yellow notepad to write. Like most boys, I also had a knack for taking things apart, and I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to put them back together. Thus began my passion for writing and technology.

Learning the craft

Junior high and high school were where I learned most of the fundamentals of writing. Grammar was not one of those fundamentals. Even with a shaky grasp of sentence structure, I trudged on in the knee-deep snows of writing. Along the way I realized that knowing the rules helps you break them well, but it doesn't make you a good or great writer. Good and great writers were born with the passion to create what had not been seen before, or to imagine grander than the ink in their pens. By the time I entered college, writing was a large part of my life. So when I enrolled in the Creative Writing program at the University of California, I was determined to write for a career. God had a better twist for my life, and with a degree in writing, I took to web design as a career.

From words to the web

Working as a web designer afforded me a certain freedom to write and to explore new ways to display the writing I crafted in quiet corners of stuffy bookstores and aromatic coffee shops. I learned the language of the web and started crafting beautiful, elegant sites, and still remained close to the craft. When the web work stopped challenging me, I went back to writing as much as I could in my free time.

Today

In 2015 I set two goals: write a book and go freelance. Freelancing grew into Hounder, the web development agency where I am now Chief Development Officer, building Drupal and Laravel sites with a team. The book is still in progress.

This site is where both halves meet. Articles cover what I learn building for the web, and the writings collect the poems and stories I have been working on since that first yellow notepad.