First Person: Pilot by day, writer by night

Maj. Steve Beattie flies unmanned aircraft for the Air Force and in his spare time, he wrote, illustrated and published a children’s book. And, he’s working on a master’s degree. But Beattie said he and his family always make time for each other in their busy schedules.

Put it in writing: For a long time I wanted to write a book. It was going to be a cookbook for men. I talked about it for a long time and while we were stationed in Maryland, the base there had a seminar on how to publish your first book. The twins were about 4 months old at the time and my wife, we all went and sat in the seminar. The twins were kind of the inspiration for it becoming a children’s book. I had some poems I’d written for them and just took one of them and turned it into a book.

Home one and home two: We call Missouri home. I’m an Army brat so I moved around a little bit as a kid, but Missouri is where I grew up and my wife is from there as well. We moved to Clovis in April and we love it.

Pilot by day, writer by night: It took a long time to get the book finished. I did all the illustrations myself as well, (mainly ) in the evening time. I am also working on a master’s degree so I would spend some time drawing the pictures and getting them edited and colored and everything. The poem didn’t take long to write.

Weekly agenda: We try to do something once a week as a family. We go to the zoo a lot. We’ve been hiking and fishing in the lakes here. We just make sure we spend sometime together.

The book: It’s called “These Are My Sensors.” It’s about the sensory organs. It relates what the organ is and what you use it for. For example, it says I use my nose to smell. And it’s got some colorful pictures to go along with that. I got the idea just playing with the twins as babies, pointing out their different features and turned it into a poem.