Much to his surprise, Neal won a People’s Choice Award in 2011 for Favorite Movie Pitch for his original screenplay “The Dragonlore Trilogy.”

However, his first love is music. You can find him on stage with The Neal Show (the very humbly named showcase for his wide-ranging catalog of songs), or underground popsters Go Robot, Go! – with sweet gigs like opening for David Byrne of The Talking Heads – or, more typically, entertaining fellow drunks at the local dives.

His original compositions have been used on Comedy Central, the Planet Channel, MTV’s “The Undergrads”, Noggin TV’s “Radio Free Roscoe”, and at The James Cancer Hospital, to name a few.

His score for Jon Osbeck’s “Mann in Pink Slip” received critical acclaim at the Chicago Independent Shorts Festival.

Neal graduated magna cum laude from The Ohio State University where he majored in Journalism with minors in Economics and Photography & Cinema.

His journalism experience includes Arts Editor of The Ohio State Lantern, editing an economic journal in Lithuania, Staff Writer for The Arab News, and assorted freelance gigs he’d rather forget.

Because of his amazing ability to keep playing nineteen-year-olds, he has found himself consistently cast in half-assed indie flicks about disenfranchised youth, zombies and/or the screaming undead.