About R. Lauren
Some stories begin with imagination. Others begin with history.
For R. Lauren, they begin with both.
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Although his education led him down the practical path of engineering, graduating from Purdue University with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering, writing always lingered beneath the surface. An English professor recognized an unexpected gift for storytelling, but professional life soon took center stage. Over the next several decades, R. Lauren built a successful career in engineering, business, entrepreneurship, public service, and community leadership while his creative aspirations patiently waited for the right time.
Blending meticulous historical research with contemporary fiction, The Torrent follows two interconnected lives separated by more than a century—a Civil War veteran and his great-grandson. While one story unfolds during the defining years of the Civil War, the other explores the transformative decades of the 1970s and 1980s, an era that quietly reshaped modern life through the emergence of the microchip, personal computing, and a new generation of innovators. Woven throughout both narratives are themes of faith, redemption, family, and the possibility that divine purpose is often at work beyond our understanding.
Following the publication of The Torrent, R. Lauren returned to the first novel-length manuscript he had written years earlier. Now extensively revised, The Orphan is nearing completion, with The Cavalryman—a historical novel centered on the 1864 Atlanta Campaign—already planned as his next work.
Beyond writing, R. Lauren’s life has been shaped by a diverse range of experiences. Born in Richmond, Indiana, he and his wife, Pixie, have lived in six states while pursuing careers in engineering, entrepreneurship, and public service. He served two terms in the Florida House of Representatives and later on the boards of Enterprise Florida and the Florida Chamber of Commerce. As a lifelong distance runner and marathoner, he also enjoys sailing the Gulf of Mexico and the Bahamas, alongside fly fishing, hunting, and skeet shooting. Today, he and Pixie make their home in Gainesville, Florida.
Whether writing historical fiction or contemporary drama, R. Lauren is drawn to stories where history, faith, and the human spirit intersect — stories that invite readers to consider that sometimes the most extraordinary moments begin with the simplest question: What if there’s more to the story than we can see?
How I became a writer:
I can’t claim that I was born to write. At around ten years old, I began to notice the books in our built-in living room bookcase. My father had apparently bought a box of books mostly just to fill the shelves, but I became an avid reader. Among them was Winston Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples, which served as a virtual classroom for writing style, sentence structure, and vocabulary. Later in high school, I wasn’t assigned much writing, but I had no difficulty with sentence diagramming.
While studying engineering at Purdue, we were required to take an English class. Our instructor selected fifty difficult words, and we had to create a sentence for each one. I found it easy and quickly scored a perfect fifty out of fifty. Later, we were assigned a two-thousand-word essay. I chose to write about an incident in my life where I wasn’t particularly proud of myself. Out of thirty students, the instructor selected my essay to read aloud to the class.
After graduating, I was involved with two major corporations, and writing was never in my thoughts. After moving to Fort Myers, I decided to attend a writing class. My instructor was an editor for a local magazine. In the near past I had been actively involved in running competition, so I wrote an article about running and training. It was published in her magazine.
I then wrote an historical fiction story about a soldier fighting his way up the San Juan Heights in the Spanish American War. She was astounded, but didn’t publish it.
Later, my wife Pixie was involved with a local theater group. I decided to write a two-act play. Unfortunately, the theater closed before it could be considered. It was however, an excellent exercise in writing dialogue.
About five years ago, I had a wee hour’s inspiration about a boy born as an orphan, loosely based on an actual incident. As I lay there, my mind kept putting the story together. I got up at five AM and began writing. A few months later I had a rough draft that needed a lot of work and I was rather stuck.
Then in April of 2023, Pixie and I were riding with my brother and sister-in-law on the long trip from Florida to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Along the way my sister-in-law told me about her miraculous rescue from a flash flood. Her savior suddenly appeared, pulled her out the car window, carried her to a house on high ground, and then vanished. For her, convinced that she was saved by her guardian angel, it was a life changing event.
I was fascinated, so I started to put together the ideas for my book The Torrent. Leaving my first book on the shelf, I got to work creating a two-generation story about a great-grandfather, and his great-grandson, which has now been published.
My first book effort, about an orphan, is now back on my desk. With experience gained, it will be much improved. I hope to have it submitted to my publisher yet this year. A third book, about the life of a Civil War Cavalryman, is in the beginning stages.