T. A. Kuepper

T. A. (Ted) Kuepper is an environmental engineer, writer and climate-change activist with a deep appreciation for the environmental challenges we face today. He lives in Southern California, and in his career, he has served in the Marines, been the managing director of a desalination test facility for the U.S. Navy, and executive director of a nonprofit humanitarian organization. His non-profit work was focused on supplying water to rural villages in developing countries, and as a result, he has traveled to some of the world's most remote locations, helping to supply water during natural disasters. He is best known as the author of The Adventures of Archie Artichoke children’s book series.

The two projects listed on the Blacklist site are:

1) A children’s TV show pilot script, entitled “Farmer Frank and his Magical Garden.” The TV show concept is based upon characters introduced in The Adventures of Archie Artichoke children’s book series. Here are a few words about the script – the TV show concept is to blend the gentleness and calming narrative of human interaction between actor and audience of “The Mr. Rodger’s Neighborhood” with the animation feature of a children’s adventure story. The veggie characters used in the TV show and book series are meant to introduce vegetables to young children in a fun way, but our illustrated chapter books are more than simple stories about veggies. Each one is written to help children develop their imagination through visual imaging text and dialogue complemented with full color illustrations. And besides being fun to read, the stories have positive messages and are designed to teach children about:

Making good decisions;

Accomplishing a difficult task and solving problems;

Working with others to achieve a common goal;

Caring, helping others, friendship; and

and of course, the names of many important vegetables!

All of the Archie Artichoke books are donated to children’s hospitals throughout the United States, and profits generated by the books are shared with children’s hospitals and other healthcare organizations. The desire to help children motivates all of us at Archie Artichoke Books to expand the popularity of our veggie characters.

2) A screenplay for an environmental sci-fi thriller, entitled Alien Winter. Here are a few words about the script - The primary distinction between Alien Winter and the majority of alien/action-genre scripts is the strong character development for both the aliens and humans and their unique interactions that develop in the story. Alien Winter was written to be a dynamic, action thriller and an environmental wake-up call. The ice slide in the story doesn’t create a short-term tsunami, but rather a permanent change in ocean levels, a problem that will eventually happen on Earth; the only unknown is the degree of level change that the Earth will ultimately experience and when it will happen.

Besides the stories used as a basis for Alien Winter and his children’s books, T. A. has written and is working on an environmental art performance designed as a visual representation of the ultimate effect of climate-change on our children. He has previously written, directed and produced a community-participation music video in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

“Every project I’m working on has the goal of changing the world for the better. I learned while serving in the Marines and working in the international non-profit sector to not waste time on things that do not have the potential to make a difference. Admittedly, I routinely fall short of my goal to change the world, but it is always there motivating me every day.”

Thank you for listening and my

Best Regards,

T. A. Kuepper