Banker by day, wordsmith by night, travelophile and aspiring author of fiction and romance, Rashad Pharaon is a Saudi-American who lives in Miami, Florida. His passions include traveling, working out, satisfying his bottomless craving for Starbucks and, last but not least, cozying up on a couch and writing.
A writer is a foreign country.
Marguerite Duras
After college, he moved to Orlando and pursued a career in banking management. Following the economic crash of 2008, coupled with a life-changing armed robbery at his home, he was struck by an Eat Pray Love moment and took a one-year hiatus to pursue his dreams: traveling and writing.
Rashad recently finished When Kings Fall, his debut historical-romance novel set during the Arabian kingdom wars of the early 1900s, which depicts the journey and hardships of a physician and his wife in exile. He also hosts a new blog, The Traveling Bedouin, which follows his travel and writing adventures. Blending his trekking experience with a foreign literary style, his writing touches on universal themes such as family dysfunction, compromised values, and fundamental sacrifices with a flair for the poetic and an elegant voice.
Rashad's nomadic lifestyle has taught him four languages: English, French, Portuguese, and Arabic. He uses the latter when visiting his roots in Saudi Arabia, where his grandfather, of the same name, served three successive monarchs as head advisor, first health minister, and senior delegate to the United Nations. This ultimately lay the groundwork for his novel, When Kings Fall.