What began as scraps of paper with advice from family and friends became a self-help book published in early February by Joey Khoury ’18. The book currently has a five-star rating on Amazon.com.
Despite its humble beginnings, Khoury said he is excited with how well his book, Aevum: The 14 Laws that Govern Action, Thought, & Influence has performed since its release.
“I am absolutely blown away by the amount of support that my readers are giving me and by the amount of hype that Aevum has picked up in such a short time,” he said. “After its release, I was overwhelmed to see so many people enjoying it. As friends and colleagues on campus come up to me and spark conversation about Aevum, I find myself in the most humbling situation I’ve ever been in.”
Aevum is a collection of lessons that “aims to provide insight into the human nature behind action, thought, and influence,” Khoury said.
Khoury’s inspiration for his book began early during his middle school years, Khoury said.
“Back in my awkward middle school and pimply high school days, I would fold up a piece of paper into a small square and use it as my agenda,” he said. “As I grew older, I started learning lessons in life from my parents, mentors, friends, and so on … in an attempt not to forget these lessons, I would write them down on this folded piece of paper that I kept in my pocket throughout the day. And so it was, my stack of folded papers grew.”
Khoury said he eventually began to see a pattern in his large stack of life lessons.
“At one point I had so many folded pieces of paper with little bits of wisdom on them that I had no option but to type them,” he said. “Once I got them into a large word document, I started noticing patterns and trends in the little bits of wisdom. After sorting and cataloging the lessons, I ended up with the skeleton for Aevum.”
Even though his book was published just a few short weeks ago, Khoury said that he is already looking ahead to its sequel.
“I will admit that the next project is already in the works, and has been for quite some time now actually,” he said. “I only used a fraction of [the pieces of paper] for Aevum. I haven’t told anybody what the next book is about because I don’t want to be pressured into finishing it prematurely, which would sacrifice the quality of it.”