De’Marco Cantrell Ratliff

For De’Marco Cantrell Ratliff, creativity has never been simply about producing something for the world to consume. It is an expression of faith, a responsibility to develop the gifts he believes were entrusted to him by Ahayah, and an opportunity to leave something meaningful for generations yet to come.

Raised primarily by his mother, Karen Ratliff, De’Marco experienced a childhood that demanded independence long before he fully understood what that meant. His father's presence had been inconsistent during his earliest years, and when De’Marco was just nine years old, his father passed away. His younger brother was only six, approaching his seventh birthday.

Growing up without his father's guidance left questions that De’Marco would spend years answering through experience, personal mistakes, and self-education. Their mother carried the responsibility of raising two young boys while doing her best to provide the guidance, discipline, and encouragement they needed. Those early circumstances shaped De’Marco's determination to become a present and protective father, a lifelong learner, and someone willing to teach himself the skills necessary to pursue his ambitions.

His earliest introduction to the power of storytelling came not through a novel, but through his mother. At Greater New Hope Baptist Church, he watched her stand before the congregation and share the poetry she had written. He witnessed how a few carefully chosen words could move an entire room, stir emotion, and give voice to experiences that others struggled to express.

That influence stayed with him.

By the age of thirteen, De’Marco was writing songs of his own. At sixteen, he began pursuing music more seriously, eventually forming a group called DUO with fellow young musicians. Even then, he found himself drawn toward storytelling—creating narratives through lyrics and helping others develop the words they wanted to share.

What began as songwriting gradually expanded into a creative life encompassing books, photography, music, publishing, and entrepreneurship.

Today, as a father of six, De’Marco views his creative work through the lens of responsibility and inheritance. He believes investing goes beyond financial markets and material wealth. It also means investing time, discipline, and dedication into the abilities a person has been given.

His work reflects a simple conviction: a gift left undeveloped is an opportunity left behind.

Through his writing and other creative projects, he continues building a body of work intended not only to speak to readers today, but to remain meaningful long after his own lifetime.

De’Marco does not claim to have all the answers. Much of what he shares comes from lessons learned through personal experience, observation, mistakes, faith, and the passing of time. He believes wisdom becomes more meaningful when it is preserved and shared, especially when those lessons might help someone avoid struggles they would otherwise face alone.

For him, writing is both artistic expression and personal freedom. A single conversation, passing thought, difficult memory, or moment of reflection can become the beginning of a story. Some ideas develop into complete works almost immediately. Others are written down and preserved until the time comes to give them greater meaning.

His children remain among his deepest motivations. He wants them to inherit more than material possessions. He wants them to inherit the thoughts, experiences, principles, and creative works of their father—something they can revisit, learn from, and eventually pass to generations of their own.

De’Marco also views authorship as a form of ownership. He believes people have a responsibility to recognize and develop their God-given abilities rather than allow them to remain unused. Where others might see writing as a hobby or temporary pursuit, he sees the creation of intellectual property as an investment in oneself and in the future.

His faith remains at the center of that philosophy. To De’Marco, the Most High is the greatest author, and human creativity reflects something of the Creator's gift. He believes that everyone carries experiences and perspectives worthy of expression, though discovering how to communicate them is a journey of its own.

De’Marco's approach to literature is guided by advice he once heard: “Write a book that only you can write.”

Those words stayed with him.

Rather than measuring his success solely through bestseller rankings, money, or public recognition, he places greater importance on creating work that is genuinely his. His books emerge from his personal experiences, imagination, beliefs, and willingness to examine subjects that others sometimes avoid.

He has never limited himself to a single genre or form of storytelling. Faith, family, betrayal, financial literacy, personal accountability, ownership, and human struggle all find their way into his work.

He is especially drawn to complicated subjects and the challenge of making them understandable through storytelling.

His novel LESS INTO MUCH reflects that approach. Rather than accepting the belief that meaningful investing is reserved for people who already possess substantial wealth, De’Marco explores how financial literacy, patience, discipline, and family education can influence the direction of future generations.

His writing is often an invitation to question assumptions, examine familiar beliefs, and consider perspectives that may challenge conventional thinking.

He does not write to follow the conversation. He writes to contribute something he believes is missing from it.

De’Marco believes a book should offer readers something they can carry beyond its final page.

Through LESS INTO MUCH, he hopes families recognize the importance of teaching financial literacy early. He wants readers to understand that ownership, discipline, sound judgment, and long-term thinking are principles worth passing to children. Financial education, in his view, should not be withheld until adulthood or reserved for those who already have money.

He also hopes readers develop the confidence to become visionaries—people willing to recognize potential where others see limitations and pursue meaningful goals before the results are visible.

Through Set Before His Face Forever, his message turns toward spiritual accountability. The title itself reflects his belief that humanity lives continually before the eyes of Ahayah, whose knowledge extends to both righteous and unrighteous deeds. He hopes readers will examine their lives honestly, seek repentance, and place their ultimate trust in the Most High, His laws, statutes, and commandments.

Although the subjects of these books differ, they share a common purpose: encouraging readers to think more deeply about how they live and what they believe.

De’Marco does not want his readers to accept every expectation, limitation, or definition of success that society places before them. He wants them to look beyond appearances, ask meaningful questions, strengthen their convictions, and recognize the responsibilities that come with knowledge.

Above all, he hopes his writing reminds people that their lives contain possibilities beyond the paths others have prescribed for them.

For De’Marco, a story's value is not confined to the moment it is published. Its deeper value lies in what someone may discover within it years—or even generations—later.

Cantrell Tales was born from De’Marco's conviction that creative expression should remain in the hands of the person entrusted with the gift.

He believes deeply in free will and the responsibility that accompanies it. Having spent years developing his abilities independently, he was unwilling to build a creative career around the idea that someone else should determine what he was permitted to write, how his stories should unfold, or which subjects deserved his attention.

For De’Marco, artistic independence was not simply a preference. It became a founding principle.

The name itself carries personal significance.

Cantrell is his middle name, an identity he associates with the idea of a distinct voice—a quiet note capable of being heard above the surrounding noise. That interpretation reflects the spiritual and literary themes woven throughout his work, particularly the importance of listening for a higher calling rather than allowing the world's distractions to determine one's direction.

Tales represents something equally personal: testimonies, chronicles, spiritual songs, experiences, and stories worth preserving.

Long before Cantrell Tales became a publishing identity, De’Marco was arranging words to fit melodies. As his creative expression evolved, he began translating that same rhythm, narrative instinct, and emotional honesty into chapters and books.

He had moved from creating tracks to creating tales, but the storyteller behind them remained the same.

Cantrell Tales represents that continuity. Whether De’Marco is constructing a song, developing a novel, documenting a personal experience, or helping someone bring a manuscript to life, he approaches the work with a belief that every authentic voice deserves room to exist.

Through Cantrell Tales, he intends to preserve his own creative independence while developing a publishing platform capable of supporting the stories of others.

De’Marco's relationship with photography began long before he considered presenting his work in galleries or books.

As a young man, he enjoyed purchasing cameras and creating his own photographs, sometimes setting up personal photo sessions in his aunt Sandra's basement to capture portraits for social media. What began as curiosity about the camera gradually developed into a deeper appreciation for composition, atmosphere, and the moments a photograph could preserve.

In 2022, that interest took on a new dimension when he purchased a vintage camera and began photographing the places and people around him.

Living in Windsor, Ontario, he frequently walked through the city with his family, photographing buildings, landscapes, streets, and everyday scenes. Rather than limiting himself to conventional subjects, he found himself drawn toward the ordinary details of life—the surroundings people often pass without giving them much thought.

A family trip to a Canadian beach became particularly meaningful.

While taking photographs and recording video, De’Marco looked around at the water, the people, the landscape, and the simple experience of being there with family. In that moment, he found himself reflecting on how much there was to appreciate.

The experience helped inspire In Living Monochrome, a photography project rooted in observation, gratitude, and the preservation of fleeting moments.

Even the project's title came from an unexpected source of inspiration: the television comedy series In Living Color, a show he remembered from his younger years.

He began playing with the idea of living in color while presenting the world through monochrome.

What emerged was more than a visual treatment. It became a way to transform everyday experiences into a cohesive photographic narrative—one in which color was removed so that memory, atmosphere, expression, and the passing of time could occupy the foreground.

The photographs would later become part of his published book In Living Monochrome, Volume I, extending the life of the original project from individual images into literature and collectible art.

For De’Marco, photography and writing share a common purpose. Both allow a moment that might otherwise disappear to become something another person can experience years later.

Music was among De’Marco's earliest forms of creative education.

Growing up, his mother enrolled him and his brother in the choir at Greater New Hope Baptist Church in New Haven, Michigan. The experience exposed him to the emotional power of music, the discipline of performance, and the relationship between words and the people receiving them.

Alongside his mother's poetry, those early experiences helped form the foundation of his identity as a songwriter and musical artist.

Even in his teenage years, De’Marco rarely approached a song as words arranged around a beat. He wanted the lyrics to tell a story that listeners could follow and imagine.

While writing, he often envisioned the music video that could accompany the song. The scenes, movements, characters, and emotional progression needed to make sense in his mind. If he could not imagine how the story would appear visually, he sometimes abandoned the idea and began again.

That instinct remains central to how he approaches storytelling today.

His interest in cinema and screenwriting grew naturally from this habit of imagining stories in motion. He has long wanted to write screenplays and envisions a future in which his books can be adapted into films, short scenes, and other visual productions.

His ambitions extend beyond the page into directing and producing, allowing the stories he creates to take on additional forms.

De’Marco approaches creative projects with both an artist's imagination and an entrepreneur's perspective. He sees potential not only in books and songs, but also in games, software, digital experiences, and other forms of intellectual property.

To him, a single title can become the foundation of a larger creative world, with its own identity, audience, and business opportunities.

Yet beneath those ambitions remains the same impulse that first drew him toward writing music as a teenager: the desire to take an idea that exists only in his imagination and give it a form that other people can experience.

Whether the finished work becomes a photograph, song, novel, screenplay, or digital project, the purpose remains deeply personal.

The medium may change, but the voice behind the work remains his own.

Faith was part of De’Marco's life long before he began writing books.

Raised in the Baptist church, he spent much of his childhood at Greater New Hope in New Haven, Michigan, where Pastor Mack played a significant role in the congregation and surrounding community. To De’Marco, the pastor represented more than spiritual leadership. He was a respected father figure in a community where many young people needed guidance.

When Pastor Mack passed away, something changed.

The church that had once felt like a second home gradually lost its familiar sense of belonging. Members began going elsewhere, and De’Marco's family no longer attended services with the same consistency.

But leaving a familiar church environment did not mean he stopped searching for understanding.

Years later, while working as a vehicle service technician, De’Marco began studying scripture during lunch breaks with a coworker named Sean. Their discussions encouraged him to examine biblical teachings more closely.

Around that period, he encountered a Hebrew Israelite teaching video on YouTube. Initially uncertain about what he was watching, he continued listening. The message moved him deeply, especially its emphasis on the dignity, history, and spiritual identity of Black people.

For a young Black man who had grown up learning about the suffering and displacement of his ancestors, those teachings opened an entirely different way of understanding his heritage and relationship with scripture.

He remembers being moved to tears.

As he continued studying, he became connected with the GOCC congregation, where further instruction from an elder strengthened his developing convictions.

Through this journey, De’Marco came to embrace a personal understanding of his ancestral relationship to biblical Israel and the identity of Yashaya, whom he believes to be a Black Israelite and his spiritual and ancestral kinsman. These convictions became important to his faith and sense of belonging.

For De’Marco, the discovery was never about diminishing people of another race. It was about recovering a sense of dignity, hope, and spiritual connection that he felt had been obscured by the historical experiences of his own community.

His faith gradually became more than the religious tradition he had inherited as a child.

It became something he had studied, questioned, wrestled with, and personally chosen to believe.

Today, he describes his spirituality less through denominational labels and more through his relationship with Ahayah, the Most High. He believes that faith requires obedience, repentance, personal accountability, and an ongoing willingness to seek understanding.

That conviction also shapes his identity as a creative visionary.

To De’Marco, faith and vision share an important characteristic: both require a person to believe in possibilities that are not yet visible.

He understands that other people may not share his interpretation of scripture, his religious convictions, or his view of the world. Nevertheless, he believes creative work should emerge from sincerity rather than an effort to satisfy every expectation.

He hopes readers of different backgrounds can recognize the dedication, sacrifice, imagination, and personal conviction behind his work, even when they disagree with his beliefs.

If his willingness to create independently encourages someone else to write their own story, then another part of his purpose has been fulfilled.

For De’Marco, fatherhood is inseparable from memory.

His father, Mark Donaldson, passed away when De’Marco was nine. Although he remembers the time his father was able to spend with him, he also remembers the unanswered questions and difficulties of learning to become a man without a consistent paternal presence.

As a child, he did not fully understand the complications adults sometimes face in relationships, parenting, and family life.

Becoming a father himself brought a different perspective.

He came to understand that raising children requires more than providing for their immediate needs. It demands patience, emotional awareness, communication, discipline, accountability, and the willingness to guide a young person through circumstances they may not yet understand.

Much of that understanding, he believes, came through trial and error.

There were lessons he wished someone had taught him before he learned them through difficult experiences. There were choices whose consequences became clearer only after the damage had already been done.

Those memories now influence the guidance he gives his children.

He wants them to know that no insult, provocation, peer pressure, or outside influence is worth surrendering their freedom or abandoning their principles.

He teaches them to think before reacting, to recognize manipulation, to remain disciplined in difficult circumstances, and to understand that a moment of anger can produce consequences lasting far beyond that moment.

Above all, he wants to be a father who listens.

He understands the importance of children having someone they can approach with their fears, mistakes, ambitions, and questions without feeling that they must face everything alone.

But his hopes for his children extend beyond protection.

He wants them to create.

He wants them to wake up knowing that their imaginations, abilities, and ideas have value. He believes they should learn to build opportunities for themselves rather than assume that their futures must be limited to the paths society presents to them.

He respects the value of honest work, but he also wants his children to understand ownership—the difference between earning a living and building something that can continue to provide meaning and opportunity long after the original work is completed.

His greatest ambition as a father is not to dictate every decision his children make. It is to equip them with the wisdom, faith, independence, and confidence to make decisions of their own.

He wants his children to inherit choices he never knew he had.

And when he thinks about the generations who may come after them, his vision becomes even more personal.

He imagines a grandson or granddaughter discovering his books decades into the future, reading about the experiences that shaped him, and realizing that their grandfather had been thinking about them long before they entered the world.

He wants them to know that they were loved before they were born.

He wants them to understand that the books, photographs, stories, ideas, and businesses he spent years developing were part of an effort to create opportunities beyond the hardships he experienced growing up.

He cannot guarantee that future generations will never face struggles of their own. But he can do his best to leave them with knowledge, creative assets, encouragement, and an example of what it means to build rather than surrender.

To De’Marco, that is the difference between simply surviving one's circumstances and deliberately creating something that outlives them.

Although Cantrell Tales began as a declaration of creative independence, De’Marco's ambitions for the company extend beyond publishing his own books.

He understands what it means to have ideas without knowing where to begin.

He remembers the years he spent learning to write music, experimenting with production, teaching himself new skills, and discovering how to transform thoughts into finished creative work.

That experience informs his vision for Cantrell Tales as a place where aspiring writers and other creators can receive guidance without losing ownership of their personal voices.

He hopes to help people who have meaningful stories to tell but struggle to organize them into manuscripts, develop characters, construct narratives, or understand the publishing process.

Through editorial collaboration, story development, and publishing support, he envisions helping creators move from scattered ideas toward completed work, with services developing as the company grows.

Mentorship is equally important to that vision.

De’Marco wants younger creators to recognize that their backgrounds do not disqualify them from producing meaningful art. He knows what it means to learn without a roadmap, to develop abilities outside formal institutions, and to pursue ideas others may not immediately understand.

He hopes to encourage that independence in others.

But creative freedom, in his view, must also be accompanied by responsibility.

He wants Cantrell Tales to respect original authorship, honest collaboration, informed creative decisions, and the rights of creators to understand how their work will be used.

His personal faith will also inform the company's publishing choices. He does not wish to build a catalogue around work that he believes glorifies evil, deliberate exploitation, or the destruction of others.

At the same time, he recognizes that honest storytelling may involve difficult subjects, imperfect characters, painful experiences, and perspectives that challenge comfortable assumptions.

For De’Marco, publishing meaningful stories does not require pretending that darkness does not exist. It requires approaching such material with purpose and conscience.

His long-term vision is for Cantrell Tales to become a creative institution with an identity that remains recognizable across books, music, photography, film, and emerging digital media.

A place where imagination is taken seriously.

A place where the creator's voice matters.

And a place where the finished work can become more than a temporary achievement.

Cantrell Tales exists to turn independent voices into lasting creative works—without losing the individuality that made those voices worth hearing in the first place.

De’Marco does not measure the future of his work solely by the number of books sold, the recognition his name receives, or the financial success of his publishing company.

He measures it by what remains possible for those who come after him.

Financial independence is an important part of that vision. He wants his children and grandchildren to have opportunities that do not depend entirely on someone else's permission, approval, or employment. But independence, as he understands it, must reach beyond money.

He believes true independence includes the freedom to think, create, learn, exercise sound judgment, and live with purpose. It means having the ability to make meaningful decisions rather than feeling permanently confined by circumstances or expectations.

His belief that the kingdom is within reflects this understanding: the foundations of a meaningful life must also be developed within the individual.

He hopes that future generations of his family will inherit not only financial resources, but the knowledge, discipline, confidence, and imagination to use those resources wisely.

That is why ownership remains so central to his ambitions.

De’Marco envisions Cantrell Tales becoming a multigenerational creative institution, one that his children and grandchildren can eventually own, manage, and continue developing.

He does not imagine that future generations must create exactly as he does. Instead, he hopes they will recognize the principles underlying his work: independent thought, responsible stewardship, faith, originality, and the value of producing something that can outlive its creator.

He believes the books he leaves behind can serve as a kind of continuing conversation with his descendants.

Through stories such as LESS INTO MUCH and the future works he hopes to develop, he intends to share lessons about ownership, responsibility, financial literacy, and the decisions that shape a family's future.

A grandchild reading those stories might discover more than the imagination of an ancestor. They might also discover guidance about protecting, growing, and responsibly managing what has been entrusted to them.

For De’Marco, that possibility gives his writing a purpose that extends well beyond his own lifetime.

He also dreams of seeing his literary works translated into film.

Long before he began publishing novels, he was imagining stories as moving images while writing songs. The possibility of seeing one of his books adapted into a motion picture or limited television series would represent the continuation of an ambition he has carried since his youth.

He is open to conversations with screenwriters, directors, and producers who recognize the potential within his novels and spiritual writings and want to explore bringing those stories to the screen.

Still, he understands that every medium is only one way of carrying a story forward.

The greater achievement, in his eyes, would be knowing that the wisdom and imagination he chose to share continue reaching people he may never meet.

He wants someone decades from now to open one of his books and discover an idea that changes how they approach family, faith, ownership, or their own creative abilities.

He wants his words to remain available to those searching for something they may not have heard elsewhere.

And he wants his descendants to understand that the work was never created merely to occupy his time or satisfy a passing ambition.

It was built with them in mind.

The biblical principle of leaving an inheritance for one's children and grandchildren is one he carries seriously. But he understands that an inheritance requires more than the act of leaving something behind. It also requires preparing those who receive it to recognize its value and accept the responsibilities that accompany ownership.

That is the legacy he hopes to establish.

Not simply a collection of possessions.

Not merely a catalogue of published titles.

But a continuing foundation of knowledge, opportunity, and creative independence that future generations can expand through their own gifts.

His ambition is not only to leave his family something they can own. It is to leave them the wisdom to understand what ownership means.