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Rickey Bray

Goodreads Author

Born

in Lawton, Oklahoma, The United States

Website

http://www.rickeybray.com

Genre

Literature & Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Influences

Ernest Hemmingway, Edgar Allan Poe ...more

Member Since

February 2009

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/rbray

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Growing up in the rural Elgin, Oklahoma area, my life was happily normal with my wife and three young children. All of that changed abruptly on a spring day in 1978.

We were returning home from an outing in the mountains when our car was involved in a head-on collision with a drunk driver. After the screeching of brakes, glass shattering, and half of our car destroyed, my wife and two of my three children were dead. I was only in my early twenties and was unable to cope with the loss. I fell into a miasma of depression and, unfortunately, turned to illegal drugs for consolation.

Even though I later remarried and had two more children, I never fully recovered from my loss and continued to use drugs as a crutch. All of this came to an abrupt ha Growing up in the rural Elgin, Oklahoma area, my life was happily normal with my wife and three young children. All of that changed abruptly on a spring day in 1978.

We were returning home from an outing in the mountains when our car was involved in a head-on collision with a drunk driver. After the screeching of brakes, glass shattering, and half of our car destroyed, my wife and two of my three children were dead. I was only in my early twenties and was unable to cope with the loss. I fell into a miasma of depression and, unfortunately, turned to illegal drugs for consolation.

Even though I later remarried and had two more children, I never fully recovered from my loss and continued to use drugs as a crutch. All of this came to an abrupt halt fourteen years later when my second wife and I were arrested in 1993 on numerous drug charges. Both of us were sentenced to 32 years in prison!!! I was 39 years old!

Entering the prison system, I felt as if I was in a void similar to the five stages of grief. First there is denial, followed by anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, hopefully, acceptance. It actually took me four years before I came to terms with my situation and did a “life review.”

I finally asked myself, “Am I going to try and accomplish something, even though I’m in jail, or am I just going to give up?”

It was then that I decided to try writing. I had always loved to read, so writing came quite naturally to me. In prison there was no access to computers or the Internet for reference materials, and the prison library consisted only of a box of tattered westerns and romance novels, which in effect forced me to rely on my own imagination. For me, writing became my therapy. I was finally able to deal with the death of my wife and children, my incarceration, and overcome my dependence on drugs.

While in prison, I was very fortunate that my cellmate was an artistically gifted person. We had an unspoken agreement to keep our cell quiet so that each of us could pursue our creative endeavors – I wrote and my cellmate, who was serving time for murder, painted. I used him to critique my writing, and he used me as the subject of many of his paintings. I now have a portrait that he painted which I take to all of my book signings.

With the “time” to write and our cell turned into a creative studio, I wrote six manuscripts using only a pencil on yellow legal pads. My first published book, Rendezvous Rock, is a romantic-drama with some light supernatural elements. One of the principal characters is a contemporary witch. Yet I knew nothing of witchcraft and had no way to do any research, so I concocted an earth-based religion to base the story on. I tried to make the characters real and believable. Although fictional, it seems real enough that it leaves the reader wondering … maybe? The book placed second in the Fantasy Category of the 2010 Reader Views Literary Contest and won the Cross Genre Category of the 2011 National Indie Excellence Awards.

Now a free man, I was in the Oklahoma prison system for twelve years, from 1993 until 2005. Since my release from prison, my wife and I divorced, but I have recently married a lovely woman I have known since 1977 and now reside in Marlow, Oklahoma. I have also returned to my previous profession as a house painter and serve as the foreman for a painting company. I hope to eventually get all of my manuscripts published. My life has turned around, and I am now only looking forward instead of dwelling on the past.
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Rickey Bray's Blog

Kindle Version Out

Check the new Kindle Version of Rendezvous Rock which is now available on Amazon. To help you decide if you might like it, you can read the first 42 pages for free.

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Published on April 06, 2012 13:47

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Rickey Bray’s books

Average rating: 3.89 · 64 ratings · 28 reviews · 1 distinct work

Rendezvous Rock

3.89 avg rating — 64 ratings — published 2009 — 3 editions

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The Wettest County in the World

by Matt Bondurant (Goodreads Author)

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Oct 07, 2013 07:56PM

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Social Media Marketing for Publishers

by Liz Murray

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The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium #1)

by Stieg Larsson

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May 20, 2015 11:47PM

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Quotes by Rickey Bray (?)

“White people build a really big fire and stand way back. Indians build a little-bitty fire and get real close.”
― Rickey Bray, Rendezvous Rock

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