Steve Parks, 94th District Court judge in Delta County, holds his debut novel "The Serenity Gang." It will be available on Amazon starting Monday. (Sophie Vogelmann | Daily Press photo)

ESCANABA – Delta County’s 94th District Court judge has written a novel set to come out Monday.

Steve Parks, 70, has been working on his first novel since 2019, and “The Serenity Gang” is finally ready to make its debut.

“I always wanted to write a book” Parks said. Upon turning 64, Parks decided it was time to put pen to paper. “I realized, you know, I’m not getting any younger and if I’m going to do this, I really need to do this,” he said.

Parks’ novel is set in 2019, which happened to be the 50th anniversary of Woodstock. The characters in his novel are all from the generation that listened to ’60s rock and were Woodstock attendees.

When asked to describe the book, Parks said, “For one, it’s about those people that are like me. They’re in the later stages of their life.”

Parks also said the average life expectancy for a white male in Michigan is about 75 years old. “That means you’re about 90 percent dead. So with that in mind, these are all people from that era (’60s and ’70s),” he said.

“It’s about friendship. It’s about letting go of the past so that you can live for the future. Every one of the people in the book, just like normal people, have impediments to happiness, whether it be guilt or regret, things they wish they would have done. As a group, they help each other overcome those things,” Parks said.

Parks said the book also emphasized the importance of community and friendship, noting, “When you’re in the same boat and you have the same struggles, there’s strength in that.”

Parks was elected judge in 2014 after a lengthy law career. His district court has the highest volume of cases in Delta County. Even the most serious felonies begin in district court.

Before that, he spent 20 years in private practice at what used to be Butch Quinn Rosemurgy Hardis, a local law firm, then was Delta County prosecutor for a decade.

During his time as prosecutor, he saw a spike in prescription drug use in the county. Parks became co-founder of the Coalition for Prescription Safety. He then ran his campaign for judge on creating the Delta County District Drug/Sobriety Court, which has now seen almost 50 graduates.

“Running the district court, particularly running the drug and sobriety court, has really been the most gratifying work of my career.” Parks said.

Parks found the switch to creative writing “a challenging transition for me because legal writing is way different than writing fiction,” he said, adding he tried to find “a happy medium between including just enough detail to keep readers engaged but not too concise to where too many details are left out.”

This transition was made easier by his mom, Marian D. Parks. “All the ideas are mine, the story is mine, but she worked like an editor for me,” he said. “She kind of, she was, my editor.”

Marian Parks was an avid reader, writer and educated to be an English teacher. But she never worked as a teacher, as she met his father and became a stay-at-home mother to five children, which Parks mentioned was not uncommon at the time.

When discussing how a judge would find the time to write a novel, Parks said, “It was a very long process, but that’s why it took me so long. It’s very hard to do something like that when you’re working full time.”

Parks adopted an early morning routine that included writing in the morning before heading to work. He would send what he wrote to his mother and circle back at the end of the day to review her annotations and notes.

“She would have out the red pen and we’d talk about this or that,” he said.

Parks lost his mom in April at age 96. Even in her 90s, Parks described her as sharp and educated. She would drive to Manistique to meet in a writer’s group.

She developed a terminal heart condition, moving into assisted living last November. Doctors and caregivers were transparent about how much time she probably had. One day in March, Parks got a call from the hospice worker who cared for his mother, telling him that his mom was insistent on living until June so she could see his book be published.

When Parks received his first copy of the book in June, a photo of his mom popped up on his phone. IPhones often have images from its camera roll that circulate at random on part of the screen, and that day the image was his mom sitting and smiling at the camera.

Parks dedicated his novel to his mom. “So now, when I look at the book now that she’s gone, the beautiful thing for me is that I can look through there and there are phrases or sentences or memories that I remember (she wrote),” Parks said.

Another memorable moment involving his mom, Parks said, was his efforts to get the term “Yooper” defined in Merriam-Webster. When it was argued that regional terms do not get added to the dictionary, Parks’ mom, an avid crossword puzzle solver, found the term as a clue in the Boston Globe’s crossword.

Parks used this as evidence it was no longer a regional term. After 12 years of sending letters under the pen name “Clayton Park,” Parks got a call from an analyst at Merriam-Webster in Boston telling him it would be added to the dictionary.

The humor Parks included in his many letters to Merriam-Webster can also be found in his novel.

“There are some serious, tender moments in this book, but there’s also a lot of fun, too,” Parks said.

“The Serenity Gang” will be available to purchase on Amazon starting Monday, in both ebook and physical copies.