Paul was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the first of six children, on August 17, 1946.

To this he adds: “I started writing in high school, filling spiral notebooks with prose influenced by Jack London and Harper Lee.

I could quote a famous writer by describing my coming of age as the best and worst of times. Soviet missiles in Cuba. The death of a president in Dallas. The Beatles’ arrival in New York. Thank God for the British invasion.

After high school I joined the Air Force.  They sent me to a SAC base in Limestone, Maine for two years, then on to Vietnam where I spent the year 1967 on the Da Nang perimeter as a sentry dog handler.

Back in civilian life, I married a girl from Boston. We settled on the north shore of Long Island, New York.  I went to school on the GI Bill and got into health care.  We were together twenty-seven years when she passed away.

I married again, this time a girl from Long Island…with five children.  A year later we had six.  I was still writing, leaning toward poetry now but afraid I wasn’t good enough. Then I read Jane Kenyon.  It was like discovering Harper Lee all over again. I was past fifty, but the flame was glowing. That was three books ago (not that long), and here I am, working on number four, doing what I wanted to do all along.”