Belly Up to the Bar and Have a Drink With Me.

Hello there everyone!

My name is Robert K. Lewis, and I'm one of the new kids on the Inkspot block. I got the call about my Midnight Ink sale back in January, and since then have been up to my elbows in rewrites until just about five days ago. So now I have a little room to breathe, which is nice, and which also means I can start contributing to this great blog on a regular rotation. I'm very excited to be able to do so, too. :-)

Before I do anything else, I want to first give a huge thank you to all the other Inkers who have welcomed me so warmly and graciously. What an amazing group of writers I find myself involved with! Truly awesome!

For my first blog post, I thought I would just tell you a little bit about myself, so without further ado...

I started writing novels about seven years ago, those first couple years overlapping with the decade I spent writing screenplays. As a screenwriter, I sold one script to an indie producer, and though it got made into a film, the film never could land a distribution deal. I had a few screenplay managers over that decade, and a few options. The novel that landed me my wonderful agent, Barbara Poelle, was the fourth novel I'd written, and was an earlier incarnation of the book that eventually sold to Midnight Ink. The tentative title is Unknown Damage, and features the debut of my series detective, the ex-narco cop Mark Mallen. If Mallen and I are lucky, I'll be writing him for a long time.

My influences would not only be the noirish and gritty detectives of authors like Hammett, Chandler, and Spillane, but also Frank and Henry Kane, Donald Westlake and his alter ego, Richard Stark.

Beyond that, however is the influence of movies shot in New York between 1968 through about 1981. New York in those days wasn't just a location, it was practically another character. Movies such as Midnight Cowboy, Panic in Needle Park, Serpico, Death Wish, Fort Apache the Bronx, The French Connection, and The Seven Ups went far in influencing my writing style and the characters that inhabit my book worlds.

I also play blues guitar, with some rock tossed into the mix. Stevie Ray Vaughn, Albert, B.B., and Freddie King, Buddy Guy, Hendrix, Jimmy Page... these are the guys that have heavily influenced my playing. I'm a total guitar junkie, if truth be told.

Oh, and there's the red wine. Old vine Zin, please, thank you!

Anyway, I would just like to say again how happy I am to be a part of this group of writers, and this publisher. I'm very many times blessed, and that's a fact.

Best, and see you again soon!

RkL