Hi Darrin,

I, too, am working on my first text face, so don't consider this an expert critique. That said, this looks like its off to a good start. It's getting late, though, so this won't be an exhaustive critique. Just a few nitpicky things on the uppercase:

A, V, U, W: could all be significantly wider. That spade-shaped counterform really stands out to me (like in Times New Roman), which is nice. It might just be from the JPG export or the fact that they're not perfectly lined up, but they look to be a bit tall as well.
B: The counters are a bit boxy. Round them out a bit (especially that bottom one).
C: Looks small. Have you thought about overshoot?
E, F: serifs on crossbar look chopped off.
G: Too dark
K: I think this is your strongest letter.
M: top serifs feel chopped off
P,R: the bowl should be a little thicker, maybe?
Q: nice tail, I think.
S: A little funky.
T: I kind of like the serifs on the T, actually.

The lowercase looks a bit patched together. I have the tendency to patch things together too, and for me, forcing myself to draw the letter by hand will help me consider the letter as a whole and how it will harmonize with other types of letters. I think that might help in bringing a little more unity to the design, and also giving it a little more of your "voice."

As far as the name goes: I say hold off on the last name until you're really accomplished, knowing that Crescenzi could be a damned good for a font and you always have it in your deck. I'm stuck with Ross...

Good luck, and hope that helped,
David

Thanks, David. I've done a lot of alterations and expansion on it, and I'll post an updated version soon. I'm not sure how the "O", "G" and "C" ended up looking so small in comparison to the rest of the upper-case alphabet; their overshoot is ample. But, they're fixed now.

Thanks for the input,

Darrin

It's looking crisp.
Only things I notice at the moment, is that I think that the top curves of the C, O, Q, G and S are a bit thick, compared to the thinnest parts of the other glyphs.
And keep an eye at the serifs, at some places the serifs shouldn't be the same length on both sides, to even the balance and prevent chars from topping over.
Check Gunnlauger SE Briem's Notes on Type, Handwriting and Lettering how-to site for what I mean, under 'Stretched serifs' (scroll down).