I want my children to be able to pick up one of my books years from now and hear my voice. I hope they recognize the way I tell a story and find a few things about me that never came up around the dinner table. They know me as Dad, and through my books, they can also get to know the man who spent years writing whenever he could find a quiet moment.
During my Navy career, I wrote on deployments, while standing duty, and during time in liberty ports. I saved those drafts on my computer desktop, knowing that once my sea-duty years were behind me, I could give them the attention they deserved. Seeing my books on Amazon now takes me back to those early pages. I remember what it felt like to have an idea I couldn’t wait to get down, even when I knew it might be years before anyone else would read it.
My books reflect different sides of who I am. Family Affairs gives me room to explore the complicated relationships that can exist among people who love one another. In Charting the Course, I write about leadership and the decisions that shape the direction of our lives. Then there’s the part of me that loves a good scare. I get to follow that imagination in the Night Walker Trilogy and the Blood Moon Trilogy, which begins with Prince of the Night, continues with People Who Never Sleep, and concludes with The Blood Moon War.
That freedom is one of the reasons I love being an author. I can spend one morning writing about a decision that changed someone’s life and the next imagining what a character hears on the other side of a locked door. Some days I work through the same scene until I finally get it right. Other days, a character says something I never planned, and the whole story opens up. I still look forward to finding out what happens when I sit down to write.
When I think about leaving a legacy for my children, I think about the books they’ll reach for and the parts they’ll want to share. Maybe one of them will find a passage in Charting the Course that speaks to a decision they’re facing. Maybe another will finish a horror novel and call to ask how I ever came up with that ending. I hope they’ll also see that the work I loved began in small stretches of time and grew because I kept coming back to it.
One day, I’d love for one of my children to pull a book off the shelf, turn to a page they’ve marked, and say, “Let me read you something Dad wrote.” That’s the legacy I’m writing toward.
Dr. Paul Samuel Young
Explore my books and learn more about my work at paulyoungauthor.com.
