Rick grew up in a small town in California–so small that most people living there haven’t even heard of it. With only he and his Stephen King novels to keep him company, he fell in love with the art of writing. It wasn’t until after getting out of the military as a medic, and taking an acting class out of pure desperation for an easy elective course, did he fall in love with acting, eventually moving to Hollywood, getting his SAG card, and doing bit parts in TV shows that amounted to maybe half a full acting part.

Love for writing never fully disappeared, so he started dabbling in writing short screenplays, mainly because his brain had a hard time coming up with a feature idea worth pursuing. But eventually his first feature idea came in the Spring of 2012. . . over the next four or five months he created his first screenplay, Pewter Island. . . followed by a short victory dance.

He then was accepted into a WGA mentorship with working screenwriters for veterans of the armed services, where he met some great writers very generous with their time reading and giving feedback for his screenplays. He still takes part in that mentorship, helping him learn how to be a better screenwriter.

Conquering his first screenplay, he progressed through his second, then his third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and finally his seventh, a western he decided to send into Script Pipeline since he had a couple fans of the script. But thinking he had no chance, he forgot about the contest until he received an email saying he was one of the top two. After another short victory dance he calmed down, took a breath, and waited to hear back to see if his western is able to cross the finish line. It did.

Now he’s excited to see what’s next.