About
Who the Hell Is Raffie?
I'm Raffie.
I've spent more than three decades working around people.
Restaurants. Country clubs. Private clubs. Hospitality. Business. Sales. Management. Facilities. Jobs with titles people respect and jobs most people barely notice.
I've served wealthy people and worked beside people struggling to survive. I've watched strangers celebrate engagements, birthdays, promotions, and new beginnings. I've also watched marriages unravel across restaurant tables, people drink through whatever they were trying not to feel, and adults treat complete strangers in ways they probably wouldn't want their children to imitate.
Eventually, I became more interested in people than the work itself.
I listened.
I watched.
I asked questions.
I've always been better one-on-one. Put me across from one person willing to have an honest conversation and I'll probably forget what time it is.
For years, though, I was very good at observing everyone except myself.
That eventually became a problem.
The advice that started it
Before my grandfather passed, he told me something I wouldn't fully understand until years later.
He had known me my entire life. He told me the way I spoke carried weight. He remembered watching me as a child crawl quickly toward a wall, only to stop myself inches before crashing into it.
Fast, but precise.
Then he gave me advice.
If I ever decided to rebuild myself, he told me to put myself in a situation I wouldn't want to remain in…
and fight my way out.
So I did.
Years later, I found myself working facilities at a gym.
I cleaned toilets.
Locker rooms.
Trash cans.
I folded towels.
I did work most people never noticed unless someone stopped doing it.
At first, I thought getting out meant finding something better.
Eventually, I understood what my grandfather was actually teaching me.
Dignity doesn't come from the work.
It comes from the person doing it.
The fight was never against the job.
It was against the version of myself that believed I was too good for it.
Then I started writing
I didn't begin Wake Up Call because I thought I had figured out life.
Quite the opposite.
I started writing because parts of my own life stopped making sense.
Relationships. Work. Family. Money. Identity. Fear. Desire.
The people I surrounded myself with.
The person I saw in the mirror.
I began examining the patterns underneath all of it.
That examination eventually became a book.
At first, I published under another name.
Then I realized the contradiction.
I had written a book about examining the identities we inherit, questioning the versions of ourselves we've constructed, and having the courage to leave behind what no longer belongs…
while I was still hiding behind a name that wasn't mine.
That didn't sit right with me.
So I left that behind too.
I'm Raffie.
No character.
No pen name.
Just me.
And I'm still figuring things out.
What I'm doing now
I'm currently based in Delray Beach, Florida.
I'm writing, creating, building projects through Hundercrown Press, recording Wake Up Call, and looking for opportunities that allow meaningful work and life to happen in more than one part of the world.
I'm particularly interested in people.
- Interesting ones.
- People building things.
- People questioning things.
- People who've failed and rebuilt.
- People who can disagree without becoming enemies.
- People who still have something they're trying to understand.
Because I'm still becoming too.
Hundercrown Press
Hundercrown Press exists to publish work that helps people think more clearly, live more consciously, and leave behind what no longer serves them.
Wake Up Call is where that begins.