Rafael Amadeus Hines comes from a diverse family background with Panamanian, Jamaican, and Irish roots, and is a native New Yorker, born and raised on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Dipping into his early Alphabet City memories, he loosely based many of the characters in the Bishop series on the people he grew up with, and adapted many of his own experiences into the book as well. (You can read more about Rafael’s early years on the Lower East Side in this short Blog, An LES Kid).

A former Jazz club owner and restaurateur, Rafael has worked in the financial and energy markets for over 20 years. On 9/11 he watched his office along with all the others in The Twin Towers come crashing down and, like many New Yorkers on that day, he anticipated follow up attacks to take place throughout the city. Years later he envisioned a lone citizen soldier preventing these attacks and the hero Sgt. John Bishop appeared on paper.

A voracious reader of suspense thrillers, his writing career was inspired by legendary artist-authors Elmore Leonard, John Sandford, Vince Flynn, Stephen Hunter, James Lee Burke, Walter Mosley and Tom Clancy. He is currently working on the third novel in the Bishop series.

Visit Rafael’s website. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

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What motivates you to write and how did you get started?

Hi SS, thank you for the invitation to be interviewed. I’m so grateful for all your support for fellow writers, I’m a huge fan of your work, and I love reading and learning about so many amazing authors through the interviews on your website.

I started writing in 2009 while I was traveling from New York to Houston for work and picked up a bestselling thriller at the airport. When I started reading on the plane I was so disappointed that I said to myself, if this is a bestseller, I know can write a novel. I’d never written anything other than emails before, but I fired up my laptop and stared at the screen for half an hour before I started typing.

The more I wrote the more I enjoyed it and I kept at it for the next few years as a late night hobby. Eventually the hero of my novels, John Bishop, and many other characters appeared in my Word doc and started talking . . . fortunately they haven’t shut up since and with their help I have two novels live on Amazon and I’m currently working on two more.

What’s most rewarding about writing?

A few things come to mind. The writing in and of itself is very rewarding. Taking an idea, adding parts of your own life experiences and combining that with your imagination and then creating a story or a novel based on all of it is a phenomenal life experience.

That said, as powerful and rewarding as the act of writing is for me, as a novice self-published Black and Latino American author (who never served in the Armed Forces) writing Military thrillers with African American and Latino heroes, it’s been beyond rewarding to see the impact my books have had on active duty men, and women, and our Veterans. The direct messages, emails and reviews sent from Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen and Special Operators (often sent from combat zones and Forward Operating Bases) has been life changing for me. One of the greatest honor’s of my life was receiving rungu stick with Rafael Amadeus Hines engraved on one side and John Bishop on the other. The custom-made rungu was designed by an Army Special Ops team deployed to Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti Africa who read Bishop’s War between missions . . . It doesn’t get much better than that.

What’s your favorite genre and why?

My favorite genres are action-thrillers and suspense-thrillers. It probably goes back to when I was nine or ten and I read the Hobbit series (yes, I consider the Hobbit an action-thriller 😊) and then I got a hold of a few of Elmore Leonard’s western short stories and some of his full length westerns (3:10 to Yuma, Valdez is Coming, Hombre) and I’ve been reading thrillers ever since. I read a lot of historical fiction as well, but a thriller with robust characters and gritty dialogue is still my favorite genre.

Where do your characters come from?

When I first started playing around with writing I began loosely basing many of my characters on the people I grew up with on the Lower East Side of NYC, but once I went all in with developing a novel, more and more characters just started appearing out of nowhere.

I’ve also been blessed to have a lot of friends who are US Army, Navy, Marines, Airforce and Coast Guard veterans, and some who are still active duty, as well as buddies in law enforcement, who have all been kind enough to share real-life accounts of their selfless acts of heroism (they never call them that) with an unknown self-published author. As they continue to share their stories with me I tend to blend them together and create new characters that are a melting pot of all these amazing men and women who sacrifice so much, and regularly put their lives on the line for complete strangers.

Who is an author who inspires you and why?

I’m constantly amazed and inspired by writers, artists, creatives, and all those who transform an idea into literature, art, beauty and magic. As an Indie author I’m obviously biased and inspired by self-published authors who continue to write without any promise of a payday and never knowing if they’ll ever find an audience for their work. It may sound cliché, but I’m inspired by authors who write for the sake of writing itself.
That said, as a Black and Latino American author, I have also been inspired by so many writers of color… James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Maya Angelou, Paulo Coelho, Isabel Allende, Walter Mosley, Gabriel Marcia Marquez, and legendary activist, author, and playwright, John Hines 😊 … just to name a few.

What do you look for in other people’s books?

I always look for great dialogue. Elmore Leonard is one of my all-time favorite authors and in my eyes he’s the gold standard for letting the characters tell the story.

Tell us about your newest book or what you’re writing now.

I just finished book #2 in my action-thriller John Bishop series, Bishop’s Law, and got right to work on book #3. I had a two-and-a-half-year span where I stopped writing altogether after losing four of my closest friends so there was a long gap between my first novel, Bishop’s War (published in 2016) and Bishop’s Law (2020) and my goal is to deliver book #3 in 2021.

What kind of book would you like to be known for?

A few things. Although I never had the honor of serving in the armed forces, I write military-action-thrillers and I do a lot of research and rely on feedback from combat Veterans to try and capture the spirit of Military life as accurately as I can. My development as a writer is an ongoing work in progress, and the fact that so many members of all five service branches have embraced my work and have helped me improve it through their personal and public messages… It’s just something that I am continuously awed by and forever grateful for.

In addition to the Military portion of the Bishop series, I write about predominantly Black and Latino heroes and anti-heroes. I loosely based many of the characters in my books on people I’ve met or grew up with and one of my goals as an author of color is to break through the traditional stereotypes that have dominated print, media, television and cinema for decades.

The last thing I’ll say here is that in my view and my experience, most if not all human beings are somewhat flawed and complicated. In other words, nobody is perfect. I’ve met heroes and villains from all walks of life. They come from different backgrounds, in all colors, genders and religions. I strive to capture that in my writing and I hope that my readers will come to love the characters in my novels as much as I do, despite their flaws… Flaws in the characters! Not the readers! 😊

What has writing taught you about yourself?

Throughout my childhood I was exposed to a lot violence and abuse (An LES Kid) and early on I developed a very dark view of the world. Thankfully, my perspective gradually changed over the years as I discovered that there are so many good, loving and kind people out there and there is magic all around us. I don’t feel it every time I sit down to write, but when the magic happens and it’s no longer me writing (it becomes an almost out of body experience where characters and scenes appear and I’m just along for the ride), it’s those moments that reaffirm my belief that love trumps hate, there is far more good than evil, and through sharing our stories we can uplift others as well look inside ourselves and examine the best and worst versions of who are and who we strive to become.

How has your life experience influenced your writing?

It’s been significant. Growing up on New York’s Lower East side, everyone in my neighborhood was a storyteller and the cops, firemen, gunmen, gangsters, dealers and junkies all hung out on my block. When I write, especially when I’m writing dialogue, I usually hear their voices speaking to me. The same things often happens when I write action scenes. I think back to the fistfights, knife fights and gunfights that were just part of daily life back then and it helps me get the action scenes flowing. On the opposite end of the spectrum my books are also love stories. All of us who survived growing up in LES/Alphabet City developed life-long bonds of love and loyalty to each other and love is definitely the foundational theme running throughout the Bishop series.

What encouraging advice can you offer new writers?

My advice is just write. Write from your heart and keep writing until you find your voice. I started without any clear idea of a story in mind. I began by writing down/retelling stories about all the crazy things that happened to me and my friends on New York’s Lower East Side. Then a story outside of my own story started to take shape and pretty soon my first novel, Bishop’s War, began to emerge. My point here is that you have to love the writing first. Have that as your foundation and see where it takes you.

That’s my advice on the creative side. For the business side of things, it’s definitely a grind. I did a lot of trial and error trying to see what platforms might help me find an audience. Twitter was really helpful for me, but like all social media platforms it’s time consuming and it can actually stifle your creative juices… at least it did for me. In a nutshell, keep writing while you put in the necessary work to find your audience and build your platform.

I would also encourage new writers to connect with other authors as much as they can. The indie author community is amazing, and although all writers basically need to self-isolate in order to get the work done, I always feel connected to the global family of indie authors where all are welcome and it’s all about supporting and encouraging each other.

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Awards

Rafael has recently been added to the list of the World’s Top 200 Most Influential Authors and in addition to becoming an Amazon international bestseller, his debut novel, Bishop’s War, is an IPPY (Independent Publisher) Suspense-Thriller Award Winner, New Apple Literary Award Winner for Best New Fiction, New Apple Literary Suspense-Thriller Solo Medalist, a Global eBook Suspense Award Winner, Book Excellence Gold Medal Winner, Pinnacle Book Achievement Award- Gold Medal Winner, Top Shelf Magazine- 1st Place Winner, the IAN Book of the Year, and the Book Viral Millennium Book of the Year.

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