Originally from Fort Sill, Oklahoma, I made Laguna Beach my home some thirty years ago. Between working and travelling overseas, I raised two young sons, ran a few businesses, and got to see some pretty cool corners of the world. I always preferred the funky, less travelled places. The places other people couldn’t pronounce or find on a map.
Eventually the mountains called, and I answered. I now split my time between my ranch in Northern Arizona, and my home in Laguna Beach. Getting off the pavement every now and then is important to me. It’s almost spiritual. I can write most anywhere in most any conditions, but out there the words rush onto the page, often faster than I can type then.
“Sometimes life gets in the way, and your writing and your art take a back seat to more pressing things like marriage, kids, and a career. I recently drifted back into writing and found, having missed it immensely, I embraced it voraciously, refusing to never let it get go again”.
Jeff Tyler, Winter, 2020
Awards & Recognition:
UCI, Irvine, California
While attending UCI’s Creative Writing Program, I developed two original screenplays: “A Hedge of Bitter Almond”, and “An Enemy Among Us”. Both took second place, two years in a row in the Annual UCI Screenwriting Competition.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences
Out of over six thousand entries, two of my original screenplays advanced to the Quarter Final round of less than a two hundred entries. Although they were neither optioned or produced, I feel they are some of my best work.
Newport Beach Film Festival
Another of my screenplays was Jury-chosen to have scenes read at the Newport Beach Film Festival by a cast of professional and amateur actors. This was an amazing experience to see my characters and my words literally come alive, on stage in front of hundreds of people.
Jeff Tyler, Fall 2023
“Ranching, above all else, is purifying. When nothing else in the world makes sense, or when the crazy and mean creeps in too close, the land can heal us. There, in the silence of the wind and the trees, far from the pavement, there is solitude”.