The child of an Air Force family, Stephen Watts was born in West Germany. He is the grandnephew of Harold Carleton, the main subject of Stephen's second book. Stephen began organizing his family's genealogical files, tracing his lineage, and transcribing the family correspondence in 1996. His English immigrant great-great-grandfather's correspondence inspired his first book, the award-winning Searching for Charles, published in 2022. Stephen grew up to serve in the Air Force himself. After nine years, he left to begin a three-decade career in the insurance industry before retiring in Georgia, where he lives with his still-tolerant wife, Karin.