Roman Van de Lay

Roman Van de Lay is the pen name of Louisiana-born author and retired U.S. Army veteran Scott Bourque, whose service includes Desert Storm and three combat tours in Iraq between 2003 and 2009. After nearly two decades in uniform, he returned home to Youngsville, Louisiana, where he now lives surrounded by family and the quiet rhythm of everyday life.

A father and grandfather, Roman finds peace in the same simple routines that often appear in his fiction. His years in service gave him a deep respect for endurance, faith, sacrifice, and quiet courage, qualities that now shape both his characters and the stories he tells.

Roman writes gritty, emotionally grounded fiction focused on ordinary people facing extraordinary hardship. His stories are known for their raw realism, restrained humanity, and unflinching look at consequence, survival, grief, redemption, and the quiet strength required to keep moving forward. Whether writing historical fiction, contemporary drama, or morally complex character studies, he avoids sensationalism in favor of honest human experience.

His work often explores overlooked lives, broken people searching for meaning, veterans carrying invisible wounds, families shaped by hardship, and individuals trying to endure in worlds that rarely offer easy answers. Faith remains present in his stories—not as sermon, but as something lived quietly through action, endurance, forgiveness, and perseverance.

For Roman, writing is more than storytelling. “It calms me,” he says. “It connects me to people who endured difficult things and kept going anyway. That’s the kind of strength I understand.”

Roman Van de Lay writes with the perspective of a man who has seen the world at its hardest and still believes there is dignity in endurance and hope in simply continuing on.