Look and Listen

Biography

I have gained a belief of giving it your all from a young age as I loved participating in the sport of Gymnastics. I learned that once you start you have to finish, and go all the way; otherwise you will surely get hurt. That vitaly lesson I've taken with me through every thing I've aspired to doing. At the age of 15 I started coaching, and found that I love to work with people. I love teaching, inspiring, educating, and solving problems with them. I have had the opportunity to coach well over 10,000 kids, and loved them all for some reason or another. This led me to care, and aim for their success; as well as my own. Since every person is so dramatically different, with their perspectives, fears, ambitions, talents, and struggles, I took great lengths to learn how to best teach every individual to their strongest learning points. This got me into my first published book. I wrote and published a book with the topic of Goal Setting & Self-Esteem. I needed my gymnasts to self-propel themselves by setting their goals; I also needed them to believe and trust themselves as they were moving rapidly and invertedly through the air while spinning at the same time. So this made perfect sense to build their foundation upon them, and not just as a trust in their coach. I started my own gymnastics club in 2001, and operated until the end of 2012; when I unfortunately lost in after a long battle of divorce. It was a dream come true, then shattered to an end. I'm thankful I wrote my own book as it was something inspiring to help me through all the turmoil. The most important things were my 3 kids, whom I had custody of 70% of the week with my youngest only 1 at the time. After the loss of the gym, and any sort of measly income stream it became incredibly financially difficult. At many moments I felt punished by the world for being an astout father. I was downsized from a business owner, family man, and dad in a 4 bedroom home to a mere 30 foot long motorhome and nights away from my kids. Due to schedule arrangement with the kids, a job was impossible. I turned to the few things I had left; a computer, an imagination, and my kids effections. My oldest daughter, 10 at the time, and I got interested in studying Chinese Zodiak, in which I'm a Dragon. She also expressed interest in writing books, but lacked direction and confidence. So, this was the begining of the Dragon Veils Series. My daughter and I have a relationship granted by the heavens. I got the pleasure of being daddy to the sweetest, very intelligent, and hard working little girl, plus I was able to coach her gymnastics as long as she could remember. Now our relationship has continued to blossom as we've designed plots, characters, and ideas for each others written works. Book one of the series has been published, and the day it was published I couldn't even buy myself a copy of my own book. But I also knew that I could never repurchase the time, the memories, or the appreciation that was gained in the process if I hadn't put my children in my priorities. I look forward to completing the Dragon Veils Series, and sharing my experiences with the world.

Inspiration

There are a lot of things that inspired the Dragon Veils Series, with good and bad implecations. Regardless of the positive and negative aspects, I'm proud of my choices and my priorities; for those are what make me Me, make me happy, and make me successful in within my failures. My scenario at the time was frankely dismal. I was doing my best to operate my gymnastics facility, the economy had been rough the previous years, and I was faced with attorneys degrading my value as a father during the divorce; which was to me the most insidious and painful insult I've ever been accused with. Now for the positive stuff. Job Dad, is #1 to me. My beautiful oldest daughter, was 10 at the time, and trying to find her place in this world of change. She had been my shadow and my little gymnast from day one. It was clear at this point that the gym had a short life left as I hadn't the resources or energy to make it grow, but we made the most of that time. She was very interested in the Astrological signs, and we studied them as well as the Chinese Zodiaks. She claimed an interest in writing a book. So, we started talking plots, scenarios, characters, and jokes to make our scripts interesteing. She is a Snake in the Chinese Calendar, and I'm a Fire Dragon. Months prior I had a dream of wolves in the forest and being chased by them. During the dream I vividly recall taking a third person, commentator like, part of the dream, and thinking "This is the start of my book." I intentionally startled myself awake at 2:38 AM, to write this down and save it. This has now become the begining of the Dragons Amongst Men sequence, and evolved into the wolf pack for Sliver Balls. This opening sequence remained hidden on my desktop for sometime, until my daughter expressed the first interest to writing her a book. Because it was a great begining, and we were getting involved with our astrological personalities, I decided that I would write a story as an example for her to emulate. I studied more and more about dragons, and found they existed in most cultures through out the world. They became very interesting to me, and as I shared my findings with my daughter an entire plot for the 7 books evolved in my head. I was in between coaching 2 classes in the gym, and I quickly wrote the titles of the 7 books on a scratch piece of paper. Since that time, the book series became alive to me and my daughter. It has become a bonding mechanism between us ever since. Which is why the Begining of Dragons Amongst Men she is the special recognition for my happiness, which is the only success I care about.