My name is Thaddeus Paulk I am an African American writer from Columbus, Georgia and future graduate from California State University, Sacramento. I come from a military family, as both of my parents served in the Army. We lived abroad for most of my childhood, moving to Germany twice before coming back to the States. Once I finished high school, I went straight into the Air Force where I served over four years with Security Forces guarding missiles.
Life in the military is one of constant change. From the moment I was born, we moved every three or four years. One of the hardest things to do as a child was to say goodbye to your home and friends, just to do it again and again. It felt so unfair. It’s something I could not understand until much later. The uncertainty caused me to become introverted. I slowly withdrew from the world and started to create my own. I figured, the pain of losing friends could be avoided by not having any to be taken away. My mother was an avid movie buff and would take me to whatever local theater we lived close to. I was hooked instantly. Film and television would be my escape and the one constant in my life that would never change. I could take “Star Wars” or “Raiders of the lost Ark” anywhere and be comforted with the familiarity. Especially after I joined the Air Force. Whenever I would deploy, I would have my personal collection of DVDs for a trusted sidekick. I served in Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey before deciding to separate from the military.
Once I left the Air Force, I worked a couple of odd jobs that were adding up to absolutely nothing. So, on a whim, I used the G.I. Bill to pay for my commercial driver’s license and hit the road. I would spend the next fifteen years driving trucks through the lower forty-eight states and Canada. When it was all said and done, I had logged over one million miles of over-the-road experience. It was towards the end of my days as trucker that I came up with the concept of King Of The Road. However, many years would go by before I would put pen-to-paper to write. The pandemic of 2020 would change everything.
In early February 2020, I was fired from my job as a chef at a hotel I’d been working for a couple years. I was completely blindsided. It turned my life upside down. The first few months were some of the most miserable times I’d ever experienced. Thank God my wife was able to work from home, or we would have been on the street. It was during that time off that I started to write the first pages of K.O.T.R. It had always been a secret dream of mine to go to film school, but I never had an opportunity to pursue that dream.
