About the Author

Just before college, Ray won first place in the "National Pen Women Competition" for his fictional short story, Distinction, as well as winning second place in the New York "Best of City - The Written Word". While attending college, Ray Melnik's course on existential literature opened a whole new world for him with the study of writers such as Sartre and Camus.

He pursued a musical career as a singer and lyricist, after leaving college. In the early 1980s he was the lead singer for One Hand Clap and then Fine Malibus, with Steve Stevens, who later went on to be guitarist and song writer for Billy Idol. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ray was engineer and co-owner of MANNIK Productions, a recording studio in the Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island, New York. In addition to lyrics, Ray, wrote a monthly column about pro audio for a music trade magazine, American Liverpool, published by Tom Taaffe.

Later moving into the field of technology as a network engineer, he wrote for the technology panel of a regional newspaper, Times Herald Record, and was the primary writer of articles based on home technology for the website New Technology Home. Ray is currently a Senior Network Architect for a prominent law firm in Rockefeller Center, Manhattan, New York.

He has an insatiable interest in science and unbending commitment to reason. The Room, is the story of a life grounded in both. Ray Melnik's goal is simply to add an alternate point of view to our social fabric. He is currently writing his second novel. .........................additional info