(keyboard clicking) (chill music) - [Dominic] There were a lot of challenges when I was little.

It was really difficult to concentrate.

- He struggled in school, but we had to send him to Huntington Learning Center.

- I took summer school from first grade all the way up to fifth grade.

- I did everything I could to help him out.

I made sure I spoke to every administrator, teacher, because they didn't understand him.

I worked with him, I had teachers work with him, I was nonstop.

- I came to find out my best attribute was just creatively writing and making stuff up, and it's been pretty well so far.

Even though I may be slower, that's okay, because that was a cocoon for what was to come years later.

(keyboard clicking) - He graduated high school, wound up going to TCC, got his associates, and then he took up on the writing thing, which surprised us 'cause it just seemed like work that he might have wanted to avoid.

- The boy that wouldn't read.

- Yeah, he wouldn't read.

(Patty laughs) You could hand him any kind of Dr. Seuss book.

- Oh, my gosh.

I read... - Anything like that.

- When I told them at the dinner table for the first time that I was writing a book, they looked at me like I had three heads.

Like, "What do you mean you're writing a book?"

That was a very surreal moment, because it was like right at that moment, my mom gave me a look of like all those years of putting me through the extra programs finally paid off.

My dad was a heavy inspiration for me.

He understands what it's like to struggle.

Watching him battle cancer was really hard to watch.

He's like a tank to me.

He just takes the blows but he just keeps powering through, and I aspire to be like that as an author.

(keyboard clicking) (chill music continues) The first book was very much so just an experiment.

It wasn't designed to be the perfect book.

In my creative writing class at TCC, the class would start and you would have people that would be brave enough to go up there and share what they have with the rest of the class.

I just started writing "The Marksman."

I went up there and I shared.

Everyone in that class ripped it apart.

That memory pushes me.

If it's able to get people thinking, I know I plucked something.

And my second book, I wrote more so out of anger because now, I was honed in.

"The Marksman" has been released.

What happens from here?

(keyboard clicking) (tense music) "Project: Apex One" is about in the future, in the year 2083, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has essentially spiraled out of control.

Trash has littered everywhere and no one knows what to do with it.

So this aquatic foundation creates a creature to eat the plastic, but it gets out of control and turns back on the people that had created it.

One man that was a big inspiration for the second book was a guy named Mr. Dave Bradrick.

(chill music) Mr. Dave Bradrick is a good family friend of ours.

- Look at the red crystal.

- He was like a second dad.

He served as a deep sea diver for over 30 years.

His garage is literally...

It embodies who he is as a person.

'Cause you walk in there and there's scuba tanks on the walls, figurines on every crevice, posters on every surface.

He even plopped an underwater welder mask on my lap that weighed almost half a ton.

- Helmet.

(Dominic laughs) - He's gone to him for a lot of advice, listening to stories, which helps him with his stories.

- Some of the things I've done, I wish I could do again.

Other things, I'm glad I survived it to be able to be here again, because some of the stuff I did was so crazy that I don't know how I'm lucky enough to be here still.

- [Dominic] I dedicated the book to him because he was such a heavy proponent in that story.

- He handed me that sign to me and I teared up, just like I'm doing now.

It meant more to me than I think he even realized.

He touched my heart.

(gentle music) (keyboard clicking) - I don't write these books for me.

I write these books for other people.

That's the hidden truth of being an author.

You don't do this for you.

You do this for your family and your friends.

The satisfaction of people seeing it and reading it and loving it, that's a feeling that only authors get to experience, and artists, too.