Ray L. Watkins

Experienced and talented writer with 40 years of amateur and professional experience in fiction, non-fiction, editing, and songwriting in any and all genres. A focused individual who works through problems using a systems approach and all available resources.

• American Society for Composers, Authors, and Publishers

• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AIML), 2023
• Holistic Health Consulting
• Iridology

Recently my skills as a writer were requested to co-author a book with a Sri Lankan professor and scholar based in UK.

Additionally, I was asked to co-author a men's health book with a colleague who has also written a book. This, and a professor at Georgia State University's African-American Studies department also asked me to co-author a blog and possibly be an event speaker on our shared subject matter.

As a youth I was a prodigy in the literary arts due to the upbringing with my paternal grandfather, an inventor, soldier, and police chief, and his wife, my grandmother, who was an educator for 30 years. At age 4 I was tested by a child psychologist and shown to read on a collegiate level. From grades 2 through 5 I won nearly a dozen spelling bees and began writing short stories, even being entered into a national writing competition at age 10. I began studying forensic sciences at the prompting of another relative, and learned about primary source material and secondary sourcing.

During college I served as National News Editor and Associate News Editor for the Signal, Georgia State University's school newspaper (the school had nearly 30,000 students at the time). Beforehand, at Morris Brown College, I enrolled and succeeded in several honors literature and composition courses. On a project regarding Norse mythology, my Honors World Literature professor used my outline as the standard and passed this onto his other students.

During and immediately after this time I conducted interviews for online (no defunct) music magazines, newsletters, and began compiling primary and secondary sources for future manuscripts, one which has achieved great international success under a pseudonym; the others, which are unpublished non-fiction works, debut in 2023 and 2024.

I've also been apprenticed by a Japanese Shinto master in his tradition, and a South Indian master, in Indian yoga and Ayurvedic medicine. At the same time I trained for a short period with a Daoist master in Qi Gong and Tibetan medicine. This last skill set is helpful if writing on energetic sciences and indigenous Eastern medicines.

I have achieved the above without a college degree, and have been a contractor and entrepreneur most of my adult life. In Summer 2023 I am returning to school to complete my Bachelors degree, then a Masters in International Business or Finance.