I exist in the electric tension between the Artist and the Engineer. My entire life—personal, spiritual, and professional—is defined by this single, powerful dichotomy: the never-ending flowstate between the Master and the Muse.

I live between the dance floor and the motherboard. Between the sweat of the punching bag and the grace of swishing skirts and high heels. Somewhere between the pixelated dragons of the Atari 2600 and the ray-traced hyper-reality of a Titan RTX, my spirit found its home.

I am the child prodigy, the dancer that dreams of the flower throw, the film school rugrat, the hopeless romantic, and the elite creative executive. I am the impossible harmony of Tori Amos and 2 Live Crew, of Indiana Jones and Lara Croft. Ultimately, I am the original cross-platform cross-dresser dreaming of my next moment in the spotlight.

New York City is my bedrock and the streets are my home. I live for the story, the music, and that one moment that captures the imagination. I am the artist and the engineer—forever moving to the beat of my heart and the pulse of life in the Crystal City.

For decades, the forces of art and science seemed at war with my spirit. Today, they are the fused core of my identity. I am a midlife transgender woman and a Senior Creative Technologist. I create deeply expressive technological wonders and unapologetically feminist art through the rigorous application of my unbridled imagination and the raw power of masculine engineering.

This is my story and the truth behind the universal force that created the person I am today.

My journey began with a profound realization that predates most of my core memories. Sitting in a car seat at age four, I realized a distinct, terrifying, and beautiful understanding: I was a little girl trapped inside a boy's body. And while it would be decades before this understanding became a daily fact of my life, I knew in my heart that one day, I would "turn into a woman."

In the wealthy suburban world of Watchung, New Jersey, I grew up in privilege. I was spoiled, but my spirit, my creativity, and my love of dance and all the arts were encouraged and celebrated by my friends and family. I was the precocious child performer obsessed with music and dance. I was the fanatical child analyzing my heroes' every step—performing the complete Michael Jackson "Billie Jean" dance routine, captured for eternal posterity on VHS by my father. Even then, the truth was undeniable: I was a dancer just waiting to experience the world through the universal rhythm of expression.

Even to this day, whether alone in my kitchen, practicing in the studio, in a nightclub, with friends, or with lovers, dance remains the single most important expression of my soul.

In the spring of 1981, on a warm and stormy night, my life changed forever when I experienced the inconceivable swagger of Indiana Jones and the unstoppable momentum of Raiders of the Lost Ark. And while I loved the magical world of Star Wars, nothing prepared me for the shock and awe that Steven Spielberg delivered to my budding imagination. I was forever transformed into a storyteller, and I will never forget leaving the theater, stepping out into the rain of a passing thunderstorm, knowing that my life would be dedicated to the pursuit of capturing the magic I experienced that night. I was overwhelmed. And for good reason.

From that point on, I didn't just watch cinema; I metabolized it. Whether in the theaters, on videotape, or on my parents' SelectaVision video disc player, I obsessively watched (and rewatched) the masterpieces of the late '70s and early '80s. Films like Star Wars, Poltergeist, Flashdance, Fame, Annie, Arthur, Animal House, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, 9 to 5, and Rocky played until the narratives were burned into my DNA.

On the surface, I loved all cinema, especially anything from my idol, Steven Spielberg. But there was one film that truly rattled my childhood spirit to the core. Something I didn't recognize at the time, but I would come to understand many decades later was the very first breadcrumb of my eventual transition: the gender-bending masterpiece, Tootsie. I adored this movie on a level that can't fully be quantified or understood. It was my first glimpse of adulthood in New York City and my first step in understanding the duality of expression and the human form. This was the first time that I understood film to be an emotional reflection and not just an adventure or raucous distraction. It was the first time I understood that someone can happily defy the norms of society and that love is not a mysterious game without rigid rules of play. I watched it incessantly.

By age eight, I was hijacking the high-end family VCR and video camera. But I wasn't playing; I was editing. I was shooting epic holiday moments, adding titles, dubbing music, and crafting narratives with the relatively advanced yet crude tools of the 80s. As I quickly developed skills, I faced the growing demand of capturing family holidays and delivering the dailies before coffee and cake were served to cap off the night—learning early that in the analog world, there is no undo button, and you better be really careful when you hit that record button.

Beyond film, my early influences were the avatars of my future self. I worshiped the eccentric and expressive gender-bending pop gods: Michael Jackson, Prince, Boy George, Cyndi Lauper, The Go-Go’s, Annie Lennox, and Pat Benatar. And really, just about every other artist that debuted on MTV. I was obsessed with music videos and seized any opportunity to watch the fledgling channel, absorbing every moment of expressive joy it delivered.

Of course, it goes without saying, Madonna stood as the ultimate fusion of fashion, music, dance, and raw feminist energy, remaining one of my most beloved artists for decades. I bought my first album with my grandmother—Joan Jett and the Blackhearts—connecting instantly to that raw, sexy, feminine rebellion.

As a boy, I grew up fast with jet-set parents who spent nearly every weekend in Atlantic City or Las Vegas. My sister and I were given the freedom to explore the cities alone, even as children. I experienced the hustle of a city for the first time and absorbed the sights and sounds of the early 80s entertainment meccas. I'll never forget the shows and concerts, and more immortally, my time spent in the arcades playing the classics: Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Frogger, BurgerTime, and Mario Bros. I was particularly enthralled with Dragon's Lair and the incredible technology that allowed for the delivery of such magnificent artwork and animations—even if the game was ruthlessly predatory and stole my quarters faster than I could possibly feed the beast. I believe this was a turning point for my creative spirit, and the idea of building Virtual Worlds and movies that I could control was a magic bean planted in my creative spirit.

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Then came the move to NJ countryside, where I lived my own personal version of Footloose—an exile from the semi-urban pulse to a country silence that aggressively suppressed my nature. From 4th through 7th grade, my refusal to conform earned me the pejorative nickname "Culture Boy." I was constantly bullied for my effeminate ways, my high-fashion sensibility, my trademark red Converse high tops, and my dancing. I made friends, but let's just say I took a beating in those early years in horse country—literally and figuratively.

To survive, I escaped into other worlds. Going beyond the movies on HBO playing in endless loops, or the pure ASMR escapism of Bob Ross, I was an avid reader. I devoured the literary universes of Roald Dahl, Shel Silverstein, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Nancy Drew. I secretly, fearfully, yet fearlessly read my sister's Judy Blume novels—a literary breadcrumb that validated the girlhood I craved. I consumed Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Playboy simultaneously, internalizing the feminine ideal as both object and objective.

Most importantly, I was a devout Stephen King reader. I engrossed myself in as many books as I could get from the library. I absolutely adored his work, especially The Dark Tower. And while The Gunslinger may have been a bit beyond my preteen sensibilities, the artwork by Michael Whelan captured my imagination just like the high fantasy art of Dungeons & Dragons and Heavy Metal Magazine—another seminal inspiration that captured my imagination on a level unlike almost any other artwork outside of a museum.

During this time of intellectual and creative growth, somewhere in the mid-80s, my parents began taking my family into New York City, frequently sharing the magic and wonder of the Big Apple with us. I fell in love. Hard.

NYC became an emotional sanctuary, a dreamy and luring destination on the distant horizon. My parents gave us the keys to the kingdom: the grandeur of Times Square, the ritual of the TKTS booth for Broadway legends. Shows like The Pirates of Penzance, A Chorus Line, 42nd Street, Les Misérables, and La Cage aux Folles became secret loves that, as a young boy, I kept to myself and dared not speak of my appreciation to my friends. I experienced the hospitality of Mama Leone’s while my sister belted out "Tomorrow" while standing on a table before a packed Saturday afternoon lunch rush. We visited the working lofts and studios of artists in SoHo and Greenwich Village, seeing the creative lives of true artists in practice.

I fell in love with Central Park, The MoMA, The Met, Lincoln Center, the stately elegance of Madison, and the pure unadulterated luxury of Fifth Avenue. Bloomingdale's became my temple of fashion and confidence, and to this day, there is just something about "Bloomie’s" that fills my spirit with love and light. It is my Mecca, and it's bigger than the sum of its parts. The perfect place to get away from it all when I need to reset and reboot my love of everything artistic.

By high school, "Culture Boy" had evolved. In the summer of 1985, on the sandy streets of Lavallette, New Jersey, I found skateboarding on a family vacation. I became obsessed and deeply committed to the expression I could enjoy even as a young boy suppressed by New Jersey stereotypes, unable to embrace my feminine side yet deeply committed to expressing myself come hell or high water.

Due to the prejudice and stereotypes of my peers, I never really pursued drama in junior high or high school, but I found expression that was accepted by my peers in skating, learning advanced tricks and even overcoming my fear of the dreaded vert ramp—dropping in to find that sometimes you just gotta suck it up and go for it. Skateboarding defined me in that era; I was enthralled by the culture, the fashion, and the counterculture rebellion of the California and NYC scenes. Vision Street Wear was my wardrobe and the Bones Brigade were my heroes.

I embraced the counterculture of Powell Peralta and the Bones Brigade, Christian Hosoi, and Tony Hawk—learning to fly on my own skateboard. During this time, with a board under my arm, I lived in the arcades, obsessed with the technical magic of 720°, OutRun, Hard Drivin’, NARC, Smash TV, and After Burner. I played Nintendo and Sega, obsessed with Phantasy Star because I could actually play a female lead—a joy I later found in the feminist touchstone, Lara Croft and Tomb Raider.

And despite the fact that I always loved movies, it was in my early teen years that I became deeply, intensely obsessed with cinema and the pursuit of a career in film. I worked tirelessly—at the video store, the movie theater, and for a wildly flamboyant interior designer—saving every penny to buy my own video camera, VHS tapes, and an expansive catalog of movie soundtracks that I used to dub onto my projects. In this time, I mastered the art of emotional engineering by curating the perfect mixtape, recording songs off the radio with surgical precision, ready to cut the DJ at the last possible second.

Along with the orchestral masterpieces of Alan Silvestri, Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard, John Williams, and even Yanni, I listened to Top 40, Hair Metal, Gangster Rap, Dance, and Punk. I lived for the melodies of Def Leppard and U2, the gritty sounds of Run-D.M.C., N.W.A, and the Beastie Boys, the sweet and synthy guitar riffs of Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, the groovy retro magic of Deee-Lite and A Tribe Called Quest, and the unmistakable beats of Madonna, Janet Jackson, C+C Music Factory, and Black Box.

There was also another powerful breadcrumb that I left behind in this era. Something that I subconsciously knew and dared not acknowledge: that the masculine-femininity of the incredible Michael Hutchence was something that I couldn't quite understand but would one day realize was simply another stepping stone in understanding gender, expression, attraction, and denial.

When Enigma dropped their infamous choir-meets-hip-hop jams, my life was changed forever. I fell in love with this newfound magic in New Age music versus streetwise beats. Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner" became one of my anthems.

This is when my love for graphic design started to take shape, as I would freehand all of my favorite skaters' logos and under-board artwork. I was known for drawing logos for movies and rock bands on desks, notebooks, and even my clothes. I may not have been the most talented fine artist, but I did my best, and it was a turning point for my creativity.

I armored myself with the grit of Thrasher—my monthly Bible—along with Premiere, Cosmopolitan, and Vogue. By this point, I was sneaking my father's Playboys out of the recycling and under my bed, reading them cover to cover and absorbing everything that I could about adulthood, women, feminine grace and beauty, and the complexities of relationships. The Playboy Advisor became one of my absolute favorite things to read every month.

As high school progressed, my identity crystallized through the silver screen. Movies were cheap back then, and matinees only cost a few dollars. I would go to the movies constantly. Never afraid to go myself despite what my friends and society thought was weird, which I will never understand. This was a golden era for Cinema and a time of great development and storytelling and cinematic wonder. There are many movies from this time that expanded my understanding of Cinema but there is one that stands out as another breadcrumb left behind to eventually reveal the truth about who I am as a human being.

Switch (1991) became the Rosetta Stone of my soul—raising countless questions, subconsciously pondered for decades about the spirit, Good and Evil, bias, and the concepts of gender, the physical body, sexual preference, and the dysphoria that comes with the misalignment of Mind, Body, and Spirit.

It was around this time that Paris Is Burning was shown at the movie theater where I worked. Something magic and brilliant happened to me when I first watched that groundbreaking documentary about drag ballrooms and queer culture. It was a film I never would have seen if it weren't for a booking mistake by the theater's owners, and one that I could certainly never share with my friends or family at the time. Paris Is Burning is one of the single most important movies I've ever seen, and it was the first legitimate crack in the dam of my masculine identity. I may not have known it on a conscious level, but watching Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, Angie Xtravaganza, Willi Ninja, and the whole Xtravaganza crew, deep down I knew one day the knowledge I had as a toddler would manifest in reality and that someday I could come out of the closet.

The magnificent cinema of this time galvanized my creative spirit, the Storyteller Within, and the deeply feminist artist screaming about concepts I could only dream of understanding. Thelma & Louise, The Witches of Eastwick, and Fried Green Tomatoes fueled my feminist fire, while the epic action movies, Woody Allen comedies, and sexy, gender-bending and queer-centric dramas of the early 90s truly infected my spirit. Basic Instinct was another touchstone for my understanding of attraction, lesbian ideals, and the magic of erotic cinema.

In my senior year, as soon as I turned 18, I immediately started sneaking into the city and venturing into the club scene on a weekly basis. I may have been a wet-behind-the-ears newbie, but I was deep into the underground nightlife—raves in the industrial zones of Brooklyn and Jersey City, insane Hip Hop shows at Roseland, or the elegant nightlife of the China Club. I was all in, and the scene altered my being permanently. Absorbing the kinetic energy of The Limelight, Palladium, Studio 54, and The Roxy. I danced endlessly to the underground techno scene and worshiped the altar of the dance floor, strobe lights, lasers, and fog machines, dancers in cages, and models playing spin the bottle. This was my first real exposure to queer culture, to true performance art, to wildly risque behavior, to dancing the night away, to the thrill of getting on guest lists and receiving those coveted drink tickets from the doorman. We were the quintessential raver kids of the suburbs, but we actually had street cred at the door.

The hardest thing after a weekend in the city was returning to life in the country and slogging through the end of high school. And while I enjoyed the high school life of an expressive, active teenager, my grades and my SATs suffered. I barely even graduated because I had given up on the routine of scholastics that bored me to tears. Outside of English class, I only found joy in the computer lab and the newly funded video production tools purchased by a special grant from New Jersey. Using these unheard-of technologies, I explored the power of early Macintosh computers, and even produced graphics using the earliest design software on the platform. I was eventually banned from the tech room late in my senior year for making raver and nightclub-related graphics intended for t-shirts. Even then, I was pushing boundaries and creating artwork that was sometimes uncomfortable for some people to understand.

Thankfully, before I was banned, I created an exceptional, progressive application video for the School of Visual Arts (SVA)—featuring a lesbian runaway character disowned by her parents. My video was truly progressive and was one of the first examples of my willingness to express the trials of being queer. Using music to power my narrative and the semi-pro equipment from the tech department, the video was good enough to overcome my lackluster grades and atrocious SATs. It got me accepted into one of the most prestigious art schools in the country, and launched me into NYC in 1993.

My time at SVA was ultimately brief as the cost of film school and the realities of my parents' finances collided after only a couple of years in school. In the end, this was a blessing in disguise as the techniques that were being taught were on their deathbed. Clipping film, using laboratories, videotape analog cameras, and literally splicing film was a dying art form ready for the morgue. I'll never forget the orientation of my freshman year, the sight of the latest Apple Macintosh computers on demonstration in the lobby of the 23rd Street facility. My mind was swirling with the idea of using computers to make videos and artwork. It would only be a matter of time before I made my way to my first professional job editing videos for a questionable CD-ROM developer making adult content. It was low-paying and frustrating work, but I was able to use the tools of the future and learn the basics of Adobe Premiere and Macromedia Shockwave. I'll never forget my boss's computer lit up with the code of keyframes and having no idea what it could possibly mean, and the long-dormant engineer awakened with brutal inspiration to understand more about how these CD-ROMs were made and what I needed to do to make them myself. This was the dawn of a new era. Digital content creation and the newfound frontier of the internet. It was an exciting time marked by inspiring ideas, hacker culture, endless possibilities of expression, and the power to create immersive wonders never before possible.

During this time, I was overwhelmed with the possibilities of creation and all of the new tools that artists and engineers were able to utilize. Eventually, I settled on creating music for commercial reasons using the latest technology to produce digital music unlike anything that was possible before.

I returned to my love of music with a passion and vigor of a lifelong musician. I created mixtapes and eventually launched Vertigo Studios, a commercial music venture using a small custom home studio powered by the infamous Roland XP-80. At the time, I was working construction gigs for Somerset County Elite and using the money to invest in my equipment the same way that I did in junior high.

And while I was a decent musician and created some very cool songs, I needed to promote myself in the newfound world of the internet. This was the turning point for me professionally.

At some point in mid-1996, I built my first website using the first version of Adobe PageMaker and Photoshop 95. Absolutely archaic tools that date back to the Iron Age of the internet and the time when websites were some kind of magical destination arrived at through screaming modems and endless delays of popcorning content. The website for Vertigo Studios was actually really advanced for the time and I immediately recognized that the tools in hand were bigger than the sum of their parts and they allowed me to achieve new things that seemed untouchable or inconceivable just a year before. Forever on the cutting edge of all of this new technology, I found new ways to deliver my products. I was one of the first people in the world to offer MP3s online, encoding my music via command line for download and delivery on the Vertigo Studios website. It was remarkable. The global demand for digital music in the MP3 format was so great that our site received unheard-of traffic. Even though no one really wanted my music services, they basically just wanted digital music, and the results were staggering—thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people downloaded my music every week to the point that I got a little ahead of myself and felt a tiny little bit of Rock Star Energy.

And as I promoted the Music Services through this site, I quickly realized that people didn't really want my music services; they wanted a website and they wanted it now. There was no way that I could deny, the internet was here to stay and building websites was something that I needed to capitalize on as a matter of creative fulfillment and finally paying the bills with my imagination.

I was one of the first people in the world to sell MP3s online, encoding them via command line. My music career culminated in a massive project for Silicon Graphics (SGI)—a success that ironically proved my true calling was the medium, not the music.

In the end, Vertigo Studios broke even. I made about as much money as I spent on all the equipment, but I learned the invaluable lesson that I could pivot from one destination to another and begin a new career as a web designer and developer. And that's just what I did.

In the mid-90s, in order to stay competitive on the digital frontier and enable my creativity, I began building high-end computers from the ground up—a house of cards built on bleeding-edge tech flirting with blue screens of death like Chrissy Snow with a naval officer on ship leave. Through the reality of fried components and the endless battles with drivers, I learned engineering is something that I can do on a professional level as long as I'm brave enough to endure the pain of learning exactly what it takes to succeed. I quickly learned that there are no RMAs for smoldering video cards or hard drives with a corrupted boot sector, but I was a fast learner, and despite the trials and tribulations of this newfound possibility, I learned how to create a machine that could propel my ideas in new and challenging directions.

Of course, I needed the speed for creativity, but also needed to run Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Quake, and Unreal Tournament.

I pivoted to digital design, mastering Macromedia Flash (starting with Flash 3), influenced by the culture of Hackers and The Matrix.

Before I became known for Stephen King, I was a force in the entertainment industry, and looking back, this era was defined by a series of surreal manifestations—as if the universe was collapsing my childhood dreams into my professional reality.

It began on the morning of New Year's Day, 2000. While the world was recovering from the Millennium parties, I booted up my machine and began coding the digital architecture for StreetWise Concepts & Culture.

The site was a revelation—a kinetic fusion of MTV aesthetics and CD-ROM video game logic delivered entirely over the web. At a time when the internet was static, we were delivering full-screen transitions, complex navigational logic, and immersive soundscapes that felt alive. It was groundbreaking work that captured the attention of Los Angeles. While the "dot-coms" were burning cash and failing, StreetWise was making money hand over fist, becoming the talk of the town and landing the owner in Time Magazine.

We scaled the site from managing seven bands to over thirty, utilizing advanced Flash 5 and Generator database-driven architecture to handle the volume. We were the digital launchpad for some of the biggest acts in modern music history. We worked from the ground up to break Linkin Park into the global lexicon, alongside heavyweights like System of a Down, Slipknot, Papa Roach, Marilyn Manson, and Rob Zombie.

My work for these titans caught the eye of executives at DreamWorks, leading to a massive professional victory. For the child who stood in the rain after watching Raiders of the Lost Ark, this was a spiritual loop closing; I was now building digital worlds for the house that Spielberg built. I produced the official website for Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous—a film celebrating the chaotic magic of rock and roll access. Armed with these powerhouse LA clients and the confidence that they would fund our future, my girlfriend and I made the bold decision to move to New York City to advance our careers.

We arrived in Manhattan exactly nine days before September 11, 2001.

The timing was catastrophic. The tragedy of 9/11 didn't just break the city's heart; it decimated the economy and the confidence of my remote clients. Fear gripped the industry. People were legitimately worried that I would be killed in a nuclear attack or an anthrax incident—which was a terrifyingly real possibility, as the 59th Street Post Office on my block had an actual anthrax exposure.

Because my Flash work was so advanced and exclusive, clients feared that if I died, no one would be able to maintain the projects. They couldn't be left holding the bag on complex sites they didn't understand.

StreetWise pulled their accounts. DreamWorks pulled their projects. We were dead in the water, stranded in a traumatized city with our income evaporating. Yet, the year following 9/11 remains one of the most bittersweet experiences of my life. It was a "truly dark, sexy, and twisted fairy tale" with bursts of hope and sunshine that I will never forget. It galvanized my love for the city and my consummate Urban Grit.

Amidst this chaos, the "Almost Famous" manifestation spiraled into reality. In the shadow of the attacks, I found myself backstage at The Meadowlands for the legendary Pledge of Allegiance Tour, standing stage-left with System of a Down and Slipknot. I had coded the narrative for Cameron Crowe, and now I was living it—embedded with the loudest bands on earth while the world outside was silent with grief.

But "cool" doesn't pay the rent. As our finances disintegrated, we barely survived by landing projects for Broadway producers like Cameron Mackintosh and Baz Luhrmann. We built the sites for Les Misérables, La Bohème, and Man of La Mancha—another callback to the "Pledge of Allegiance Tour" of my childhood, working within the very theater district I had idolized as a boy. We were living like starving artists, scraping by on the grace of the theater.

And then, at the darkest point, when we truly needed the universe to deliver, the phone rang. It was Marsha DeFilippo. She said she was calling on behalf of Stephen King.

Time slowed down. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I scribbled on a piece of paper and handed it to my girlfriend while I was still on the line: "Holy shit, it's Stephen King!" And then, reality disintegrated. They didn't just want a website. They wanted to commission a cutting-edge Flash experience for The Dark Tower. It was the ultimate manifestation. The Dark Tower was the sacred text of my childhood; I had stared at those Michael Whelan covers for hours as a boy in New Jersey. Now, I was being tasked with bringing Roland Deschain's world to life and promoting the final three books of the series. Stephen had seen my work on La Bohème and decided I was the one to handle his Magnum Opus.

The man who wrote my favorite stories was now the one saving me from financial ruin.

Moving to NYC just nine days before 9/11 was a terrible coincidence that tested my survival skills for years to come. The timing was disastrous; I lost every LA client almost immediately. But the time in New York City in the year after 9/11 is one of the most bittersweet experiences of my life. A truly dark, sexy, and twisted fairy tale with bursts of hope and sunshine that I will never forget. It galvanized my love for the city and my consummate Urban Grit. As my finances disintegrated, I persevered. And at the darkest point, when I truly needed a break, the power of New York City delivered: I landed the account of a lifetime, Stephen King.

For 15 years, I served as his Creative Director and Publisher Liaison. I managed his digital identity, worked promotions for every major book, short story, and comic published in that time including (Dreamcatcher, Black House, From a Buick 8, Everything’s Eventual, The Dark Tower I–IV [Revised Editions], The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla, The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah, The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower, Faithful, The Colorado Kid, Cell, Lisey’s Story, Blaze, Duma Key, Just After Sunset, Stephen King Goes to the Movies, Under the Dome, Blockade Billy, Full Dark, No Stars, 11/22/63, The Wind Through the Keyhole, It [25th Anniversary Edition], Joyland, Doctor Sleep, Mr. Mercedes, Revival, Finders Keepers, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, End of Watch, Charlie the Choo-Choo, Gwendy’s Button Box, Sleeping Beauties, Marvel’s The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born [and 15+ subsequent graphic novel arcs], Marvel’s The Stand: Captain Trips [and 5 subsequent arcs], Del Rey’s The Talisman, Vertigo’s American Vampire, Marvel’s N., IDW’s Road Rage).

I also managed the internal promotions for dozens of TV and Film projects including those Warner Bros. Pictures (Hearts in Atlantis, Dreamcatcher, It), Columbia Pictures / Sony (Secret Window, The Dark Tower), Dimension Films (1408, The Mist), MGM (Carrie [2013]), USA Network (The Dead Zone), ABC (Rose Red, Kingdom Hospital, Desperation), TNT (Nightmares & Dreamscapes), Syfy (Haven, Children of the Corn), A&E (Bag of Bones), CBS (Under the Dome), Hulu (11.22.63), Netflix (Gerald's Game, 1922), Audience Network (Mr. Mercedes), Spike (The Mist TV Series).and fabricated the canonical interactive game Discordia, which remains one of my greatest professional achievements—especially the moment Stephen said the opening credits gave him "chills." Once again, through the power of music combined with the perfect visual synergy, I proved that decades of tinkering had finally delivered something special. I created a sequel to The Dark Tower, a childhood favorite. Life is weird, man. Working for Stephen is a one-in-a-billion opportunity. I will never forget it.

The Spartan Era:

After Discordia, I settled into a new focus: 3D (Cinema 4D). I immersed myself in it for years, building a deep understanding of 3D as an artist and engineer. Stephen gave us the keys to his office in Bangor, which we faithfully recreated in 3D for his fans. I was obsessed, forever in the pursuit of the perfect render, partnering with BOXX Technologies and Maxon. I was a functional workaholic, working for King and countless other clients in publishing, retail, and music.

It was in this era that I found my soulmate: Spartan, an exceptional African Grey parrot. I committed myself to him on the level of an amateur anthropologist. We pair-bonded immediately. I treated him as my best friend and roommate. Over time, I taught him hundreds of words, phrases, and songs. He was intelligent beyond measure—beatboxing, laughing, expressing empathy, and apologizing when he was wrong. As my vet said, he was a "magnificent specimen" with the cognitive reasoning of a 6-year-old child. We were a deeply bonded, codependent pair. But his demand for constant attention, combined with my workaholism, led to a decade of physical neglect on my part. I became drastically overweight, smoking too much, and neglecting my nutrition. I needed a change. After 15 years, I adopted him out to a loving family. It warms my heart to know we will reunite one day, but for now, we are on separate paths. Adopting that silly bird was the greatest thing I ever did.

In 2015, near the apex of this era, Mad Max: Fury Road was released. It became my favorite film of all time—not just for its feminist core or the sonic violence of Junkie XL’s score, but for the metaphor that would come to define the next decade of my life.

Like Max Rockatansky strapped to the hood of Nux’s car, I was riding headlong into a global catastrophe I couldn't see coming. I thought I was driving the War Rig; in reality, I was speeding toward a collapse.

By 2017, the crash happened. The business logic shifted, the firewall was dismantled, and the King era concluded. The landscape I had dominated for a decade and a half evaporated beneath my feet, and I was thrown into the wasteland.

Unmoored, I threw myself into the burgeoning "cult" of Virtual Reality, chasing the vaporware dream of the "Hummingbird" flight simulator and the early promise of the Oculus Rift. But the technology wasn't ready, and neither was I.

It was a different kind of "presence" that would actually save me.

At an Oculus Connect conference in San Jose, amidst the hackers and futurists, I saw the truth—a diverse, technicolor spectrum of humanity living loudly in their own skin. It was the crack in the armor.

It was in this fragile state of awakening that I met Her.

She was a fellow creative professional, a veteran of the high-end NYC agency world who understood the language of my career. But more importantly, she saw me. We were the best of friends and the best of lovers, holding hands through the darkest nights of the pandemic. I still remember her sneaking past patrol cars through the lockdown-silenced streets of Hudson County just to be by my side.

She took my hand and gently dragged me out of the shadows and into the vibrant, chaotic life of a queer woman in the 2020s. Because of her validation, I entered my personal "Clown Era"—that awkward, beautiful, terrifying period of early transition where you find your gait, your voice, and your wardrobe. It was a magical, messy rebirth, fueled by love and the thrill of finally walking the streets of New York as myself.

The storm hit in waves. First, the pandemic. Then, the collapse of the luxury AR contracts where I had found a lifeline working for brands like Louis Vuitton, Pandora, and Tumi. I clung to the VR dream for one last gasp—delivering a final, high-end project in Horizon Worlds (late 2022).

But while the "Cult of VR" was failing to materialize, I had already secured a seat on the next rocket.

During this exact window, I was selected as an original participant in the exclusive Adobe Firefly Beta. While the industry was still debating the ethics of AI, I was already in the trenches, generating the early "industrial loft" prototypes that would eventually evolve into my "Happy Place" collection. I was testing the limits of generative tech before it even had a name, proving that my instinct for the "next big thing" remained razor-sharp even as the old world collapsed around me.

But technology alone couldn't stop the financial bleeding. The inflation era decimated the creative class, and the "Graphic Designer" role of yesteryear was hunted to extinction. By late 2023, the storm stripped me of everything. I faced a catastrophic loss of stability that few professionals ever endure—losing the physical constructs of my life, my home, my archives, and my machines.

I was left with nothing but my identity. But survival wasn't enough. I realized that the half-measures of the past wouldn't sustain me in this new world.

I fought to secure the medical care that would change me forever. I began Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), and the shift was profound. It didn't just feminize my body; it brought a crystalline balance to my mind. It unlocked a level of intellectual processing and emotional clarity I had never experienced before. I was becoming the Altered Beast—evolving in real-time to match the harshness of the environment. I realized I was no longer just Max strapped to the hood; I was Furiosa, driving the War Rig, missing an arm but steering with absolute, lethal precision.

We are now living in the Post-Disaster Era. The Bullet Farmers are the algorithms, and the Immortan Joe is the indifference of a collapsed industry. The world told us that AI would replace the artist. It told us to give up.

I chose to drive back into the storm.

I spent the last two years in aggressive, independent R&D, rebuilding my entire application stack to weaponize the very tools that were destroying the industry. I mastered Webflow to replace the old code. I mastered GSAP to bring back the motion. And I partnered with Google Gemini and Adobe Firefly, not to let them do the work for me, but to force them to execute my vision.

I learned to bend the monster to my will.

Flowstate V3 is the result of that war. It is not just a portfolio; it is a declaration of survival for every creative fighting for their relevance. I have ridden through the storm, witnessed the collapse of the old world, and returned to the Citadel with the keys to the future.

I am Addison Flowstate. I am the dancer, the mistress and the muse, the artist and the engineer. I am a transgender woman. I am a survivor. I have what it takes to bring dreams into reality, and I am still here, ready to serve.

‍— By Addison Flowstate and Google Gemini Pro Thinking, December 2025