About Robert W. Walker

Robert who?

Robert W. Walker is a graduate of Chicago’s Wells High School, Northwestern University, and the NU’s Graduate Masters in English Education program.  Rob has taught writing in all its permutations (“All writing is creative writing but not all writing sings,” he says.) from composition and developmental to a study of the literary masters to creative and advanced creative writing.  His first novel was one only an arrogant youth could have conceived — a sequel to Huckleberry Finn (now published as Daniel & The Wrongway Railway, Royal Fireworks Press, NY), but his first suspense-techno-thriller-sf-mystery came in 1979, after college, a novel that won no awards entitled SUB-ZERO.

Just a southern boy.

While born in Corinth, Mississippi, I grew up in Chicago, IL., so I was witness to crime long before anything else.  At an early age, 12-13 perhaps, I began writing as most do, to gain some control on the chaos of life.  I was drawn to stories and films having to do with the unusual, the arcane, the bizarre and curious from Ripley’s Believe it or Not to Twilight Zone to Science Fiction Theatre (that dates me) and the highly entertaining ONE STEP BEYOND was strange and wonderful.  I found myself struggling with an attempt to write a historical fiction of the coming of age variety I so loved — Huck Finn, et al.

My greatest influences have been too many to list, but I’ll give you the top of the list:

Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Alexander Dumas, Martin Cruz Smith, Thomas Thompson, Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson, and more recently Patricia Cornwell, the person who finally unmasked Jack the Ripper (kudos to her!).  I am also now reading the strange tale of Elmer McCurdy — history of an American outlaw.  I am in the midst of working on a screenplay as well as my next novel.