I am told that a writer becomes an author when his writing is published. So, I became a book author in 2017 when "ill gotten gain" was published. I was 75 years old. I entered the field of writing novels late in his life. I retired from corporate America and started an award-winning video production company for ministry and mission organizations. It won a bunch of awards but every who had a smartphone could produce videos. So I gave up the visual business and finished a novel I had been working on and off for some 40 years...mostly off. The first publisher I submitted the manuscript to accepted it, so I became an author in 2017. Three other books have been published since and three more are in the works.