This month we had the opportunity to interview author Erica Lewis. Ms. Lewis is the author of Darkness in the Mirror a novel written about a women dealing with a mental disorder. One in four (57.7 million) Americans will experience a mental health disorder in a given year. African Americans in the US are less likely to receive diagnosis and treatments for their mental illness than Caucasians.

TR: Please tell us about Erica Lewis.
I’m a Gemini (I actually have an identical twin brother). I’m single and I live in Atlanta, Georgia.

TR: How did you start writing?
I picked up a pen one day when I was very young and began to write down my thoughts. I lived a lot in my head back then. I still do. Anyway, journaling turned into something more significant and before I knew it I was detailing a lot of personal things about myself that I wouldn’t ever want anyone to know (LOL). So I started making up character names and hiding bits and pieces of myself in every character I wrote. I tell people all the time you really have to know me to know which of my characters possess my traits.

TR: Do you write full-time?
Sadly, no. I would love to do nothing more than write on a full time basis, but Oprah hasn’t called yet and it’s a tough industry. I’ve found that publishers tend to shy away from unique voices, especially African American voices. With the advent of the internet and downloaded e-book, iPad’s, books on CD, and other electronic devices this generation has made it easier not to read and I think we’ve lost the genuine beauty of the written word.

TR: Tell us about your road to publication.
Initially I didn’t even realize I wanted to be published. I wrote purely for enjoyment and escape. When I moved to Georgia people began to read some of my short stories and suggested I do more with them. I had no clue where to start. I had no mentors, no information, and no contacts. I started looking at the publishing information on the back of books that I’d read and then blindly started submitting manuscripts to them. I got dozens of the same formatted rejections; we don’t take unsolicited manuscripts and if you don’t have a representative [agent] we don’t want to look at your work. Right about that time someone suggested self-publishing, so I tried my hand at that and produced THE MANSION. From there I continued to enter short story contests and submit my work whenever and wherever possible. In 2007 I met a woman who’d begun a start-up agency and she took me on as a client. Less than a year later ARLINGTON HEIGHTS had been released in trade paperback. I was over the moon excited and thought I was well on my way to a career that I never knew I wanted.

TR: Where did you get the idea for Darkness in the Mirror?
I wanted something really special to follow-up ARLINGTON HEIGHTS with. I felt I had begun to establish a voice in the literary area and wanted the momentum to continue. The story idea actually came to me in a dream. The premise had always been about two sisters fighting over the same man (a common theme in our literature), but what I felt made it unique was introducing one of the main characters as a schizophrenic and getting into specifics as to how the rest of the family might be affected. I interviewed a friend of mine who is a clinical therapist and another psychiatrist I Googled who was glad to share information with me about the disease and built the story around that.

TR: Mental illness is something that many African American families deal with on the hush. During your research did you find that families talked about a family member’s mental illness openly?
Yes and no. As you said it’s something rarely talked about among our society. I did a lot of online research and spoke to several Caucasian families about it, but it wasn’t until I interviewed a couple of friends who have had to deal with mental illness within their own families that the story really started taking shape and I knew I wanted Darkness In The Mirror to be both informative and entertaining.

TR: How long did it take you to complete this novel?
It took about 5 months after conceptualizing the idea, flushing it out in my head, and many rewrites I finally struck what I felt was the right chord with all the characters. Once I’m on a project it stays with me day and night until I feel it’s good enough to release.

TR: Will there be a sequel to Darkness in the Mirror? I would like to read more about Dexter and Ondie’s sister.
I actually have a working title to a sequel that I’ve done the specs for entitled COMING OUT OF THE DARKNESS. If you’ve read DARKNESS IN THE MIRROR this one sort of picks up several months after DITM leaves off. It’s mostly about Ondie’s sister Serita’s tribulations with Dexter. To quote Dexter’ “Karma is a bitch!”

TR: Please tell us a little about your other books. You have two other novels correct?
I actually count three. The aforementioned self-published MANSION which details the life of a family that is destroyed over a period of 30 years based on a lie that resulted in the accusation of a wrongly accused man being murdered and the cover-up that followed. Then there is ARLINGTON HEIGHTS which tells the story of a woman trying to escape her past and become something she’s not only to be knocked back down by the very family she’s ignored. That was actually a lot of fun. One of my best friends is from Louisiana and she gave me a lot of history that I incorporated into the book.

TR: What should we expect from you during 2011?
In 2011 I’m hoping for a new book deal. I have 2 new manuscripts finished and ready to go. OUTCAST and AVENGING ALEX (that’s the sequel to OUTCAST). If I can get those published and into the bookstores I can get back to concentrating on Serita and Dexter’s story. Any publishers out there looking for a unique voice? Call me!

TR: How can readers contact you?
I can be contacted through my website www.ericalewis.net or you can email me directly at lewiswriter@earthlink.net. I can also be found on Facebook.

Erica TR and our readers thank you for your time and wish you continued success.

Thank you, TRM. And thanks to all of you who have taken time to read this interview and support me by purchasing my books. Please keep it up and if you can’t find me in the stores please ask. As long as you want me I promise that each and every story I bring to you will be a satisfying literary journey with characters that are richly crafted and make you laugh, cry, love and hate.