We recently connected with Robert Lewis and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Robert thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

In 2023, the company I worked for reorganized and I had to make a decision to either say with the company or leave. I could stay with a company at a job I loathed, get abused by customers and felt unappreciated at or I could leave and find my fortune elsewhere. It wasn’t a hard decision. It was a scary one, but not a hard one. I’ve always been putting my dreams on hold, either for other people or responsibilities. It was time for me to live my dream and life. It was time I took a risk on myself.

I decided to leave my steady paycheck, my insurance, and all the stress that came along with it to pursue writing full time. It was the scariest and most liberating decision I ever made. The moment I no longer had to worry about scheduling time off or making sure I had enough vacation time to do things, I began to flourish. I started taking more chances, that led to me brokering a deal to be the Luxxxe Studio Insider on social media, to doing conventions, to being the first ever red-carpet correspondent at the Grabbys America 25th Anniversary Award Show.

Taking that one chance and believing in myself gave me the courage to do things and take further chances including writing things that aren’t traditional and are contrary to the norm. Taking that one chance, that one risk, has led me to greater happiness and peace that I ever have. If I had to do it all over again I would without a doubt because my life since then has been amazing.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’ve been writing all my life, mainly stories in my head. In the fourth grade, my teacher gave us a writing assignment and she loved the story I wrote. Her encouragement had me continue writing and over the years, I honed my craft. I mainly wrote to myself though every time in school I had a writing assignment I blew my teachers out of the water. I really wasn’t ready to share my work with the world until after my back injury.

In 2016, I incurred a back injury that nearly left me crippled and did leave me paralyzed for 8 hours. The only thing that ran through my head was, how am I going to be able to support my family. What can I do if I can’t walk or use my left hand. It was an extremely scary time for me and the main thing I was worried about was not me, but how I was going to be able to take care of my mother and Bonita, the family dog.

I decided then that I needed to focus on something I could do if I wasn’t able to work a normal job. Write. I started writing and posting my stories. I gained a good following. In 2020, I saw an opportunity to write scripts for studios and I applied. I became their main script writer for two years. I only was working on a story that I was going to put as a web series on my page, but, when it was done, I decided to shop it around to publishers. The first publisher I submitted to loved what I sent them and offered me a contract a month later.

Since I signed on with Four Horsemen Publications in 2021, I have released 8 books, have one about to release and several more in the works. I do my best to provide positive BIPOC and LGBTQIA2s+ representation in my books along with positive imagery of sex workers. Yes, I write spicy and steamy but I also write things that will make you laugh and feel that you’re part of the story.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

As I stated, I sustained a back injury in 2016. The entire left side of my body was basically unusable. I couldn’t put any weight on my left leg and my left arm didn’t function right. My nerves were misfiring and sometimes signals would get into a traffic jam that caused other issues. What I was going through, the doctors had never seen before. My skin would randomly just start burning in places. I actually watched my skin split on my left calf in three lines. The doctors didn’t know what was wrong and couldn’t explain it.

I refused to give up though. I made myself move. I went for short walks to help keep my muscles from atrophying too much. Any strange issue, no matter how small, I wrote it down. I refused to give up. I knew very well that if I did, I’d lose my left arm and leg. It’s a very real fear that I have to this day and why I go to the gym every day. I want to remind my body that those limbs are still there.

Then I had a very bad nerve storm when I went back to work. I call it a nerve storm because there’s nothing to compare it to. Every nerve in my body went haywire. I couldn’t move. I could barely talk or form words in my head. I was trapped in my own head. I had to be taken from work in an ambulance and was paralyzed for almost 8 hours. It was the scariest thing in the world to be able to see everyone and not be able to interact or communicate.

I eventually regained control of my body and I refused to give in. My walks progressed to walking on the treadmill at the gym, to adding an ankle weight on my left leg to help rebuild the muscles in it. Honestly, it was so atrophied that if I got into a pool, my left leg would not stay down. I it didn’t have the strength. I kept on, forcing myself to go to the gym daily and eventually finding the courage to start doing weights again to this day I still have issues with my left side but I have not had another episode like that.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

There are two lessons I had to learn. One, accept criticism. When you’re a give your manuscript to your editor they have to point out all the mistakes. Authors and writers are very protective of their work and all we want to hear is praise. An editor’s job isn’t only to praise you but to correct your mistakes and no one wants to get their baby back with a bunch of corrections that need to be fixed. The first time that happened, I found myself getting angry and saying to myself, “who do they think they are?” Then I took a step back and told myself, “They are here to make sure your work is the best it can be. They don’t get paid to praise you. They get paid to make sure your work is ready to send out to the public. Check your ego.”

The second thing I had to learn was to be happy for others. Everyone is going to achieve different levels of success. Other authors and writers aren’t my competition, they are my friends and collogues. I shouldn’t be jealous of them, I should be praising them, building them up. We rise together. Today I might have something great to share, tomorrow someone else will. Everyone gets their time in the spotlight and my light doesn’t dim because someone else’s is shining next to mine.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://robert-j-lewis.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/authorrobertjlewis/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100077175596186
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Robbylewis77
• Other: Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/51124.Robert_J_Lewis
  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@authorrobertjlewis?lang=en