 While working as a journalist, one of Ortega's poems, "A Place at the Table", was selected as the lead poem for a poetry anthology, "A Place at the Table", which was juried by the publishers of Blue Begonia Press and the Raven Chronicles, and edited by award-winning poet Jody Aliesan.During this time, he also worked for Microsoft, providing original content for a number of the company's online video games.In 1998, Ortega founded his own publishing and entertainment company, Omega Point Productions, and in August 1999, the company published the first edition of his debut novel "Frequencies".