OSCAR F. ORTIZ was born in Matanzas, Cuba (1959) but was raised in the United States of America. From an early age he showed his vocation for Art and Literature and (to the same extent) his disdain for collective sports, business, science, and mathematics ─thus becoming “the black sheep of the family”. He spent most of his youth studying Commercial Art & Advertising, also reading as many Spy thrillers and Detective Noir stories as he could get his hands on. Mr. Ortiz’s writing style is vastly influenced by the great classic masters of the genre, such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Eric Ambler, Ian Fleming, Donald Hamilton, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Mickey Spillane and the late Ignacio Cárdenas Acuña. After graduating from Miami High School, Ortiz initiated a career as a Commercial Artist & Illustrator, first working for a design studio named Drago Artistic Designs, Inc. of Hialeah Gardens as a freelance illustrator of record album covers, then as staff designer for some of the major Silkscreen Printing companies in South Florida. His artistic career lasted 30 years, during which in the last 10 he performed as Art Director / Design Editor. In 2oo6 Ortiz attended and graduated from a 3-month intensive course in Film Writing at Miami-Dade College; he was awarded the “Sole Second Prize” in the 2006 ENRIQUE LABRADOR RUIZ INTERNATIONAL STORYWRITING AWARD competition, with his crime story La culpa fue de Hammett (It was all Hammett’s fault) and was declared “Finalist” in the 2006 TELEMUNDO WRITERS WORKSHOP competition. In 2007, his crime story Settling of Scores was published by Akashic Books in the anthology entitled Havana Noir, a book of crime stories written by the most sought-after Cuban writers of the moment. Ortiz has worked as a freelance screenwriter for the Telemundo-Puerto Rico Network and the Cubana de Television Studios, in Miami. He is currently retired and resides with his wife Karyna in South Florida, U.S.A. Read more about this authorRead less about this author