(Seguin) — A Seguin native is back home in Texas to share a few pages out of his new book “Tarnished Tiara: The Mysterious Death of an Ingenue.”
Paul Scopel, a member of the Seguin High School Class of 1967, not only spent the day on Tuesday signing books at The Shop Design Associates in downtown Seguin but he also spent the entire day on Monday talking about writing with students at Seguin High School.
Scopel, who now lives in Marietta, GA, says he appreciates the opportunity of being able to return to Seguin to share more about his passion on writing and on the success of his very first book which has already earned the prestigious title of being a #1 Best Seller on Amazon.
Scopel says his book is based on a real life occurrence — an occurrence that he couldn’t wait to get down on paper — even if it took several years to do it.
“It’s really about two young girls who are cousins. The older girl was stunningly beautiful so much that she was in beauty pageants. The other girl, her first cousin, looked up to the beauty queen and thought that she could do no wrong and that continued all through life until later in life, things started changing but the young lady that was a beauty queen went on to win the state pageant and then she went into a well known national pageant and she placed very high in it. Well, 45 years later one night, we received a phone call that this cousin had mysteriously died in our house. The authorities wanted us to come to where she was to find the papers that were important to the estate such as a will and also to handle any valuables that the family might want to keep,” said Scopel.
Scopel says the book unfolds, keeping the reader intrigued with its series of “surprising twist and turns” — giving wonder to the “outside world” of why the lives of these two women took “dramatically different turns.”
“Now 45 years after she was in the pageant, she had had four ex-husbands. She had a live in boyfriend at the time of her death and she had 22 cats. She was a proverbial cat lady, the animal hoarder that you read about and see on TV all the time. During the two weeks after her death and until we got out to where she was, the cats had free range of her house. They terrorized it. It was a mess and I went through that house and as I said it was the worst day of my life so that’s why I wrote the book,” said Scopel.
In addition to being a Best Seller on Amazon for two different categories, the book has also won the LiteraryTitan.com, Silver Medal Award which according to Scopel is an amazing honor for a “first time book.”
Now that Tarnished Tiara is on the book shelf, Scopel says he can now turn his attention to launching his second novel.
“The second one will be a sequel to this book. The last sentence of this first book is about a character who appears in the second book. It’s going to be mystery book also. It’s going to involve the dark web and the way people do transactions in the dark web whether it’s for contract killings, for drugs, for pornography and all sorts of things. Now, we are only going to deal with one of those which will probably be the opioid crisis,” said Scopel.
Scopel says he hopes his own journey of being an author inspires others to also pick up the pen and write. He says after so many years of having the itch to write, he is finally able to see his dream unfold page after page.
“But you have to take the time and focus and really develop your dream because it is a dream. It is something that is outside of everyday mundane life and instead of watching TV, all the time, you find an outlet for yourself to express yourself and give a message to the world that might help someone else that is in the same situation,” said Scopel.
Scopel will continue to share his novel at a pair of book signings this weekend at his alma mater, Texas A&M University. He will also be traveling to Pearland on Sunday for a book signing at Barnes & Noble.
Copies of his book are available for purchase on Amazon or at The Shop while supplies last. The Shop is located at 110 W. Nolte St.