WICKETT, Texas — Paul Smith Peter might seem like just an ordinary West Texan in Monahans.
"I work here at Winch & Wrench [in Wicket, TX] as a crane operator," said Peter.
But how many crane operators have a book published to their name?
"When I got off of work, I would go home and start writing," Peter said. "Sometimes I only wrote a couple of sentences or paragraphs, other days I wrote a couple of pages."
He kept writing, until eventually, he finished his first book: Jude.
Peter, who uses the pen name P.S. Granville, recently had his book published by the Dorrance Publishing Company.
"Jude is basically about a man who finds himself thrown into a world where he's no longer fighting his battles on a spiritual plane. He's fighting them physically," Peter said. "So basically his spiritual demons have manifested in the flesh, so he has to conquer these things one by one, basically, and for him to die physically is the same as his spiritual death."
Inspired by authors like Cormac McCarthy and Charles Dickens, 49-year-old Peter found his passion much later in life than most.
"Shoot. I might have four or five or six books in me that I might be able to get out there," Peter said.
He figured this passion out when he was at his lowest.
"I started writing Jude after my divorce, struggling with a lot of things, alcoholism and just depression generally and I just really needed to grab a hold of something," Peter said.
And what he grabbed ahold of, was pen and paper.
"[I] just started writing the book and the more I started writing, the more it just came to me," Peter said.
For Peter, his 10-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son are also helping him on this writing journey.
His daughter Reagan is dyslexic but goes out of her way to read her father’s work, having read about 28 pages of Jude.
"It is pretty neat that because she's so excited about it she wants to read it," Peter said. "I think because it's her dad, she's definitely doing her best to get through the book and read it."
And much to his daughter’s approval, Peter’s next novel, Cowgirls Don’t Cry, has a teenage girl as the hero, heavily inspired by his favorite girl in the world.
"I have to dedicate this book to my children because when I first spoke to my kids about what I would write next, I put it on the back burner for a while and my daughter, you know, being 9, she's like 'dad, when are you going to write Cowgirls Don't Cry?' She just wouldn't let me let it go. She refused to let that go," Peter said. "And so, it was basically like, okay I'm going to start writing it."
Making his children happy while also finding his passion, turning a time that was negative in his life into something positive.
"I wasn't looking for this, I was just looking for a way to save myself," Peter said. "Finding whatever it is that you're passionate about. If you can grab onto that and want that more than you do the addiction or the problems that you're going through in life, if you can grab ahold of that and it can overpower those other things [...] There's got to be something that you want more than that addiction or that problem that keeps dragging you back down."
And for Peter, that’s his kids.
"I don't ever want to stop doing this," Peter said.
To learn more about the book, click here. To contact Peter, click here.