Why I Wrote
the SURVIVOR WANNABE Book

April 21, 2026

If you’ve read my book, you already know this: after years of applying the traditional way, it wasn’t a fancy video or a perfectly crafted audition that finally got me a call from casting. It was a direct email.

One message — sent at the right moment — opened a door that had been locked for years.

During COVID, I binged a few seasons I’d missed, and something in me reignited. Not nostalgia. Not fandom. Hunger. The kind of hunger that makes you say, “I’m not done with this dream.”

Around that same time, a friend called. I must’ve sounded distracted because he stopped mid conversation and asked, “What’s going on? Are you writing? You seem distant.”

I told him the truth: “No, I’m working on an email… and it’s currently an eight page Word document.”

He laughed. “Eight pages? What’s it about?”

“It’s stupid,” I said.

“Eight pages isn’t stupid. What’s the topic?”

I hesitated. “Have you ever seen Survivor? I’m emailing the casting director.”

He didn’t miss a beat. “That’s awesome! My wife and I never miss an episode.”

We talked for a few more minutes, and he could hear it — the passion, the obsession, the way this show has lived rent free in my head for two decades. And then he said the sentence that changed everything:

“That’s not an email. That’s another book.”

And here’s the thing about me: once I get momentum, I don’t walk — I sprint.

I sat at the keyboard, and within a week and a half I had over 130 pages. An AI helped tighten it, and two weeks after that phone call, the book was live on Amazon.

I mailed copies to the casting office, thinking maybe — just maybe — writing a book about the casting process would get me noticed. It didn’t.

So I built this website. Not as a shrine to the show, but as a place to tell the story behind the story — the part that didn’t fit neatly into a long form or a 3 minute audition video.

The book came from frustration, yes. But more than that, it came from hope. Hope that someone on the other end would finally say, “Let’s talk.” Hope that the years of applying weren’t just noise. Hope that the story I never planned to tell might be the one that finally gets me to the island.

And if it doesn’t?
At least the story exists.
At least I told it.