The Power of Purpose-Driven Storytelling: A Conversation with Paul D. McDonald

In a world full of distractions, it's refreshing to find books that not only entertain but also inspire. In this blog, we’re diving into the journey of Paul D. McDonald, author of the Clarity Twins Mysteries series, whose stories weave faith, character-building, and family dynamics into gripping mystery adventures.

As a homeschool mom of nine, I’m always on the lookout for books that foster godly values and provide wholesome entertainment for young readers. Paul’s books stood out to me for their ability to entertain while subtly teaching life lessons and deepening the understanding of faith.

Watch my interview with Paul at: https://youtu.be/HokwDlLYodU

From Young Writer to Published Author

Paul's journey into writing began at the age of 15, when he wrote his first book after an inspiring high school English teacher encouraged him to turn an essay assignment into a short story. The passion ignited, and Paul continued writing, channeling his love for mystery series like the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. However, Paul wanted his stories to reflect more of his own identity — one that was Irish-American and Catholic.

“I wanted to create characters who were like me,” Paul explained. His characters, Pat and Patty Flaherty, fraternal twins with a knack for solving mysteries, embody the kind of individuals who grow through their experiences. While the stories start with characters who have only a surface-level connection to faith, as the series progresses, the Flahertys will deepen their understanding of spirituality and purpose.

Character-Building Through Mystery

While Paul’s primary goal is to entertain, his books are full of subtle character-building lessons. For example, in the first book, Mystery at the Haunted Castle, the twins help a young girl uncover the truth about her family’s mysterious history, learning that love can conquer all. In Mystery on Campus, a character who initially dismisses rules learns the importance of accountability and mercy. These lessons are weaved seamlessly into the mysteries, encouraging young readers to think critically about their actions and the world around them.

Through these characters, Paul shows that faith isn’t always about grand gestures but can be found in everyday decisions. Whether it’s recognizing love in unexpected places or understanding the consequences of one’s actions, these lessons will stay with readers long after they turn the last page.

Faith and Family at the Heart of the Stories

What makes Paul’s books stand out is the subtle infusion of faith. While the Flahertys may not be overtly spiritual in the beginning, as the series progresses, faith becomes a more prominent theme. This resonates with families looking for stories that encourage values like honesty, kindness, and integrity, all while keeping kids on the edge of their seats.

“It’s about worldview,” Paul shared. “If your worldview is godly, it will show in everything you create.” This is reflected in the Clarity Twins Mysteries, which, although not overtly religious, offer readers a sense of purpose and connection to something greater than themselves.

The Future of the Clarity Twins Mysteries

Paul is currently working on the third book in the Clarity Twins Mysteries series, Lost on Black Mountain, and has big plans for the series’ future. He aims to show how the characters evolve, not only as detectives but also as individuals deepening in faith and understanding.

Despite the challenging process of writing, publishing, and balancing other responsibilities, Paul remains committed to his characters and the lessons they impart. As he shared, "It took me 50 years from when I started my first book to finally publish it," reflecting both the perseverance and passion that he brings to his writing.

A Book for Every Family

As parents, we want books that entertain, challenge, and inspire our children. Paul’s books do just that. They’re the perfect mix of mystery, character development, and subtle lessons on faith and life’s values. Whether you're a homeschooling parent like me or just looking for books to inspire your children, the Clarity Twins Mysteries offer a refreshing alternative to the mainstream literature available today.

In conclusion, Paul’s series teaches young readers that faith and family are foundational, but it also allows them to enjoy a good mystery, filled with suspense, twists, and a bit of humor. The books grow with the characters, allowing readers to connect not only with their adventurous spirits but also with the deeper moral lessons embedded in each story.

Learn More and Get the Books

Want to dive into the Clarity Twins Mysteries and experience these exciting, purpose-driven stories? You can find Paul's books and learn more about his work through the links below:

Clarity Twins Mysteries Website: https://www.paulmcdonaldbooks.com/

Book 1: Mystery at the Haunted Castle: https://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Haunted-Castle-Clarity-Mysteries/dp/B08S8F9DW2

Book 2: Mystery on Campus: https://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Campus-Clarity-Mysteries-Book-ebook/dp/B08R8QDN53

Whether you're reading for fun or looking for stories that reinforce important life values, Paul D. McDonald’s books are a great choice for young readers.

Transcript:

Okay. Are we live yet? Yes. I think it is.

I think we're live. Right? Alright.

One second.

Hello. Shalom, friends. Smyme here again, and I'd like to welcome you to the Aruka Holistic podcast where we explore holistic approaches to wellness transformation and empowerment.

And at aruka.com, we're passionate about empowering individuals through our holistic healer certification program where students learn naturopathic herbalism, holistic life coaching, and online business and marketing.

Our mission is to inspire, educate, and equip holistic healers who are ready to make a difference in the world.

Today, I'm thrilled to introduce a guest whose journey in literature aligns with our vision of holistic growth and empowerment.

Paul d McDonald has dedicated his life to inspiring young readers with his Clarity Twins Mysteries series, if I pronounced that correctly.

Paul's books not only bring adventure and intrigue to life, but also subtly weave in character building moments, faith, and family dynamics that resonate deeply with readers.

A storyteller from an early age, Paul is now a seasoned author with multiple books in his series that are loved by kids and adults alike.

In this episode, Paul will share his journey from writing his first book at age 15 to bringing a series to life that he hopes will inspire the next generation.

Join us as we dive into the world of the Flaherty twins discussing the importance of values, personal growth, and purpose driven storytelling.

Hello, Paul. How are you?

I'm fine. How are you?

Good. Thank you. So the reason why I wanted I mean, I don't normally bring in fiction authors, um, to talk on my podcast, but I, um, I'm a homeschool mother of 9, and I'm always looking for good books with, um, godly values.

And, um, we're Jewish. I know you're Catholic, but your books aren't you know, they're not only for Catholics.

Right? Yeah. They're just about, um, well, let's why don't you talk about what they're about?

What they are is, uh, simple, uh, teenage sleuth mystery stories. That's the heart of the books.

Uh, it just so happens that my characters happen to be Irish American and Catholic, but that's not significant nor is that a focus of it.

It's just kind of a background thing that, uh, is for the stories to give you a sense of who the characters are.

Alright. And can you tell us about how how you got started in writing when you were 15 and how that's evolved to the the mystery series?

Sure. Actually, uh, my first foray into writing was in grade school.

I was in grade school, and we had a contest to write a a story on pollution.

And I wrote a short story and won first prize.

So, um, but for some reason, I don't think the writing bug bit me back then.

It wasn't until I was in freshman English class, and, uh, the teacher that I had, I guess he inspired me.

Um, he had asked us to do an an essay on an object lesson.

And instead of an essay, I wrote a short story.

And when the short story was finished, I just knew I wanted to be a writer.

Uh, and so that was probably, well, 9th grade, I was probably 13 or 14.

Um, so it took a little while before, um, I developed the Flaherty twins, but it was not very much longer after that.

I was an avid reader. I love the Hardy Boys book series.

Uh, I used to also read when my sister brought her Nancy Drew books home from the library, I would read those as well, so I read those as well.

Uh, and I like those stories, but I wanted to get something that was a little closer to who I was.

We all we all wanna see ourselves in the stories.

And so my characters ended up being Irish American and Catholic, and they're about as Catholic as I was back then, which was not very.

Um, I was more, I guess, what you call culturally Catholic.

Um, I attended church and all that kind of thing, and I liked going to church.

It wasn't that I disliked it. And our family did devotions together and things like that.

So faith was very much a part of my life, but it wasn't deep. It was very surface.

And at that time, I really, um, I actually explored other spiritual avenues, some of which are occult, which was not good.

But, um, um, I eventually had an experience of an encounter with God in my junior year of high school that kind of changed everything for me.

And I started the first book at age 15, uh, so it was already finished when I had that experience, and I was actually already started, I believe, working on the second book at that point.

That kind of changed everything for me.

It made me really step back and say, what do I wanna accomplish with these books?

Do I just wanna tell fun stories that are exciting to read, or do I want to do something more with them?

And I think what I discovered was I definitely wanted to do something more. The stories are chronological.

There's some elements that follow from one story to the other, so you could read them in order.

You don't have to. They are stand alone stories.

But purpose now is that I decided after, uh, all that was that I wanted to have characters that would also grow in their faith as much like I had done.

And so they start out barely Catholic.

And as the series progresses, they will have more and more experiences that will deepen their faith as well.

So faith will become very much a part of the stories. Again, the main thing is mysteries.

They're solving mysteries. Sometimes faith does not appear at all in the stories.

Other times, it's more important in the stories. I've written 7 books so far.

I've only published the first two. I'm working on getting the third one published now.

Uh, so I've kinda got a sense of that progression already with the characters, and I'm excited about it because I want to see them grow in their faith as well as in their detecting skills, as it were, um, even though neither of them wants to be, uh, their brother and sister, uh, fraternal twins.

Neither of them wants to be a detective.

Um, Pat, the the boy, Patrick, wants to be a a journalist, and his sister Patty wants to be a lawyer.

So, um, they definitely aren't thinking about being detectives.

They just happen to walk into situations where this mysteries are, uh, foisted upon them and they deal with them.

Um, and so we get to see a little bit of that too, how they enjoy it, but it's not their main thing.

But I think that's still that's that gives you the sense of who they are too because they they will develop as people through the series.

So I'm excited about that. Um, have I answered the question?

Yes. Awesome. So, um, what kind of lessons do they learn in in the story?

Can you it's like, how do you learn, you know, character building through mystery stories?

Because I I've never really I don't think I've ever seen that done.

Oh, it it's not it's, again, it's not a critical part of the story.

It's kind of almost secondary.

Um, in the first book, I think the one lesson that they learn is that love conquers all.

Um, they're they it's called mystery at the haunted castle, and spoiler alert, the castle is not haunted.

But, um, there is one point where, um, the owner of the castle has a dream, and her deceased grandfather visits her in the dream.

And that perhaps is an actual encounter with the supernatural.

And, Patty, at the end of the story, says to the girl, she says, I don't know why that happened or how it happened, but I think it just shows how much your grandfather loved you.

So it's it's that kind of thing. Very subtle.

In the second story, Mystery on Campus, uh, the main character, Ted, is he's a real character.

He's, um, he's a football player, and he's very full of himself.

And he doesn't like rules, and he doesn't follow them.

He thinks everybody else should, but he doesn't.

Um, and he learns a little bit at the end about well, I wouldn't call it humility because I don't think he's gained that yet, but he's learned the importance of the choices we make and how they can affect things and the understanding of maybe mercy in his situation where he doesn't have to pay the consequences for his sins.

So, uh, those kind of lessons. Um, the 3rd book let me see.

That's, um, Lost on Black Mountain, it's called.

That one doesn't exist yet, at least not in published form.

Uh, I actually have my cover designer working on the cover right now, so, hopefully, by next year, it'll be out.

It's takes a little bit of a process to get the whole book done.

Um, in that one gee. I'm not sure what they learned.

Oh, I know what it is. Um, again, your actions have consequences.

A couple of the characters do some things that are not so good, and they end up paying for the consequences.

And the twins point that out to them at the end of the book.

So it's that kind of thing where, you know, life lessons that are not a major part of the story, but, uh, are definitely woven in to the mystery.

Mhmm. So So the the primary purpose of the books are entertainment?

Uh, I'd say yeah. Yeah. I guess that's a good a good way to put it.

They're mostly entertainment. They're definitely just fun stories that have cliffhanger chapter endings, so they keep you turning the pages.

They're exciting stories. They get in jeopardy a lot.

Um, they have to use their brains and luck to get out of a lot of situations.

And but, you know, every once in a while, they do learn something too.

They're both flawed characters, which is one thing I did not like about Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys was they were kind of perfect.

Nancy could never do anything wrong.

She was talented at everything she did, and she, of course, excelled and was better than everybody else.

And I just found that unrealistic. My characters

Kind of annoying. Right?

Yeah. A little bit. I mean, you still rooted for them and you still enjoyed the mystery, but it kind of put them off a little bit from me.

Whereas Pat and Patty are definitely flawed characters.

Um, I I actually heard someone describe Pat as a brute.

He can be pretty point blank a lot of times, and he says what's on his mind.

And oftentimes, he does it before he thinks about the consequences of what he's saying.

Uh, Patty is very critical of her brother, and so they they can go at each other a little bit every once in a while.

But at the same time, they definitely love each other, and they show that.

So there's that familiar bond there that, uh, you know, keeps them going in the straight right direction.

Plus, I also added, um, and this is probably from my earlier days of delving into other spiritual things, uh, they have a psychic connection.

As twins, they are very close to each other, but, um, this psychic connection will come out periodically in the stories as well that they can kind of they know what's going on in each other's head sometimes when most people wouldn't.

So it's it's kind of little extra twist in there.

I've heard of that. Yeah. I've heard of that with twins.

Usually, it happens with identical twins. So fraternal twins is less usually.

Okay. But it's a it's a it's a story, so you can you can do whatever you want there.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Uh-huh. That's

Yeah. Actually, I've, um, um, they say you're supposed to write what you know, and my first book takes place in France.

I have never been to France.

Uh, I had 5 years of French class when I was in high school and college, but that's not quite the same thing.

Um, so that was a mistake I made of not choosing to write something I know.

But you live, you learn.

Um, my second book takes place at college, and I actually wrote it while I was in college.

And although the places I choose, other than France, are not real places, I choose to make them, uh, imaginary places so that I can have some license to do things that are you know, somebody said, oh, that's Penn State you're talking about there.

Um, they would say, but that didn't happen at Penn State that way or that place that building wasn't located there or whatever.

And when I I make it, it's Penn State, but it's not Penn State.

So, um, that way, I can choose to move the buildings up I want to. So but yeah.

So I have that that that liberty to do that with fiction.

So Yeah. Absolutely.

I've chosen to keep doing that too.

So, like, in the 4th book, it takes place in a little city in Florida that I made up.

So it may resemble another city there, but it's definitely a made up city.

Alright. Awesome. Yeah.

My my, um, my oldest son, he is gonna be 21 soon, and he when he was, I don't maybe 4th grade, 3rd grade, something like that.

He was he was doing really good in other subjects, but he was doing very poorly in English.

Not that he didn't, um, and I homeschooled them.

Um, not that he didn't know English well or anything like that, but just he just hated the work.

He just hated doing that particular he hated writing most of all. He hated writing.

And I remember we're like, you know, you need to write more.

He got really mad, and he, like, ran away, not forever.

He just, like, ran into the neighborhood and didn't come home for a while.

And he just really, really hated it.

And then we found a really good, uh, writing curriculum called IEW in the Institute For Excellence in Writing.

Mhmm.

Um, for we tried that for homeschool curriculum, and the teacher of that program was just so inspiring.

It and, um, he really loved it.

He really started enjoying writing that that from from that moment on, and they made him write a lot of short stories.

And then when I think it was in 8th grade, he there was an assignment or maybe 9th grade.

There's an assignment to, um, to write a book, a fiction book.

Oh, wow.

And and then he he loved it, and he wrote 1.

And and it was about he combined, like, superpowers with the holocaust and a boy who was there during the holocaust, and he had superpowers, but they weren't, like, too crazy where he could just, you know, end it all.

You know, he could still get killed. He could still get hurt and stuff like that.

And he was and he wasn't he wasn't that brave. You know?

He was kinda fearful, which made it which made it, you know, kinda captivating because it was, um, yeah.

Relatable. It's very it's a it was very much more relatable. Yeah. Oh, that's really cool.

I I hope he that he didn't really he didn't wanna be an author, though.

He was like, I I don't wanna I don't wanna have to do it.

I only wanna do it when I want to do it. Like, okay.

So he's he actually went to computer science instead even though he Okay. He enjoys writing.

He still does that as a hobbyist.

But, see, that makes the the world of difference with having a teacher that inspires.

And I think that was the case with my teacher too in 9th grade.

I felt inspired by him, and that's kind of what set me off in the right direction.

So and I just I love writing, so it's not a problem for me to do that, and I've been doing it for years.

Uh, the first book, I actually I took from the start when I started it at, uh, age 15 with all the rewrites and all everything that I've done with it and finally getting it published took 50 years.

Wow. Wow.

So, yeah, from the it's when I started it till when I finished it, it was 50 years. So

Yeah. And when you had you had another job

Yes. I had several other jobs. I mean, but it's been there. So

What is your what is your main profession, at least right now? Oh, really? Maybe retired.

At least

Maybe the last one.

My last one was working at a marketing company.

Okay.

And I was their media director, so I did all their media buying for them.

Okay.

It's lots of fun. No. I'm I'm not a salesman, so I didn't really enjoy that part of it, which, you know, involved a lot of that kind of thing.

But I still, um, I love the company, and they they do some wonderful things.

We most mostly work with nonprofits and, um, religious organizations, and they, you know, help them write their fundraising letters.

They help them develop their websites, all that kind of thing.

And so I got to be a little part of that.

And also because of my background in writing, they also let me be their proofreader.

And in fact, I still do that part time for them on the side.

So I do a little bit of that for them.

And that's a lot of fun because I get to read some of the exciting things that are happening.

And our company is very pro Israel. Um, the owner of the company has been to Israel many, many times.

He's taking tour groups there. He's a pastor in addition to being owner of our company.

I don't think he's pastored a church in years, though.

But and he loves Israel, and, um, so we have we have a lot of clients that are Israel based or, um, Israel focused.

And I've learned a lot from doing that. So it's it's been pretty cool. So

That's very good to hear. We need we need allies right now for sure.

So I just heard of an organization called 1 Family that does, um, ministering to people that have been victims of terrorism in Israel.

Mhmm.

And I thought that was a really worthwhile organization from the sounds of it. So

Yeah. Yeah. I think everyone in Israel, um, know either has a family member or knows someone who either has has fought in the war or or has experienced a death, you know, or or some kind of trauma because of of of what's happened right now.

But that's a different topic for a different

Yes. It is. Sorry about that.

Yeah. No. No. No. No need to apologize.

Um, well, thank you so much for for writing, um, good in terms of, like, good books with good values, uh, for children.

We definitely need people, um, to be doing that, um, now and continually, um, things that teach, um, good values and good lessons while at the same time entertaining our children.

This is actually how children, I think, learn to read the the easiest is when they're reading entertaining fiction.

Mhmm.

So, um, I think

What it amounts to is worldview. It comes down to your worldview.

Everybody has a worldview, and, you know, that's how you see perceive things and how you think about things based on your experience.

And if your worldview is not godly, no matter what you create, it's gonna reflect that.

And at the same time, if your worldview is godly, then you will create godly things regardless of how didactic they are or, uh, how specifically spiritual they are.

They're they're gonna be godly just because of that.

And so I think that is something to to think about when you're looking for books for your children as to, you know, what is this writer like?

Who is this person? Are they someone that I would want my children to read their books? Mhmm.

And that's, I think, a key thing that you need to think about when you're looking for books.

So, hopefully, my books are something that people will look at and say, yeah.

I see a foundation of faith here. Yeah.

Even if it may may not be explicit in the stories, I see it anyways, and I I'm encouraged by it.

So

Yes. That's an excellent, um, closing statement. Those are great words to, um, to live by. Absolutely.

Thank you.

K. Okay.

Okay. Thank you again, Paul. And I'll add the links to, um, your your books and your sites, um, to the video description.

Okay. God bless. Thank you very

much. Shalom. Bye bye. Bye.