Author Paul Taylor sitting at table writing in book

Paul Taylor: This Is Getting Old — A Memoir of Love and Aging

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This month’s Author Spotlight features Paul Taylor, a former newspaper journalist and public opinion researcher from Lake Luzerne, New York. His memoir, This Is Getting Old: Two Boomers and Their Generation at Dusk, is part love letter to a 55-year marriage and part unflinching generational reckoning. Equal parts tender and sharp, it’s the kind of book that makes you nod, laugh, and maybe squirm a little—often on the same page. We’re proud to have been part of bringing it to life through Publish Pros.

About the Author

Paul Taylor spent 25 years as a newspaper reporter and another 25 as a public opinion researcher, demographer, media reformer, and public speaker. He describes himself as a “raging empiricist and cockeyed optimist”—someone who spent decades studying how Americans think, feel, and behave, and who now finds himself both heartbroken and hopeful about the state of the country he loves.

He and his wife, Stefanie, have known each other since they were toddlers and have been married for 55 years. They make their home in Lake Luzerne, New York, nestled in the Adirondacks—a place that figures prominently in the heart of this book.

About the Book

This Is Getting Old: Two Boomers and Their Generation at Dusk is two stories woven into one. On the surface, it’s a love story—the account of a long-married couple navigating the very real, very unglamorous adventures of growing old together. Beneath that is a generational reckoning: a clear-eyed look at the legacy the Baby Boomers are leaving for future generations to inherit.

It’s a memoir about aging, yes—but it’s also about lasting love, family, and what we owe the people who come after us.

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Why This Book Matters

The seed for This Is Getting Old was planted during one of the hardest stretches of Paul and Stefanie’s life together. After years of caring for Stefanie’s parents—who both passed at 96, deep in dementia—Paul found himself watching his wife’s eyesight fail despite dozens of surgeries for glaucoma. She was going blind.

“If getting old sucks this much for fortunate folks like us,” Paul remembers thinking, “maybe there’s a book in it.”

That instinct led him somewhere unexpected. What began as a personal reckoning with aging grew into something bigger—a chance to write about the Adirondack summers where his grandchildren now swim in the same lake and build castles in the same sand he played in as a child, and to take an honest look at what his generation has passed down to them.

The Writing Process Behind the Book

Paul started writing in 2020 and finished in 2026—six years of what he describes as “countless starts and stops.” The challenges were both personal and structural.

The personal ones were significant: writing about deeply intimate things doesn’t come naturally to someone trained in the just-the-facts discipline of journalism and research. His family, including Stefanie and their kids, were quietly mystified by the whole endeavor. Frankly, he admits, so was he.

The structural challenge was more unusual. In a traditional coming-of-age memoir, the author writes with the benefit of hindsight—they already know how the crisis resolves. Paul was writing what he calls a “coming-of-old-age story.” He knew the crisis. He wasn’t sure, even as he finished, that he knew the resolution.

How does an author end a coming-of-old-age memoir? It’s a question that shaped the entire writing experience.

When the manuscript was finally ready, the agent who had handled his previous book reached out to a dozen major publishing houses. They responded—he notes with characteristic dry humor—with “the loveliest rejection notes.” That path led him to explore self-publishing, and ultimately to Publish Pros.

Working With Publish Pros

Paul came to Publish Pros with a clear sense of what he needed and what he didn’t. He wasn’t looking for editing help—the manuscript was his. What he needed was someone to handle everything else: getting the book between two covers, placing footnotes and photos correctly, designing a cover, and navigating the world of Amazon KDP, IngramSpark, Bowker, and ISBNs.

“I did some research on Google, talked to a few companies, comparison shopped, and then made one of the best decisions of my writing life—to hire Publish Pros,” he says. “They’ve been superb tour guides and sources of wisdom, start to finish.”

What made the biggest difference? “Having someone handle all the tech stuff was indispensable. They solved tech problems I didn’t even know I had.”