Follow-up Call: Aviation Memoirs & Story Development

The opening

Lehan had read the manuscript before the call. Not skimmed — read. He opened by reciting it back: the earthworms in the garden soil, the magnifying glass, the jambugaha tree. "You and I have a very rare set of similarities," he said. "I remember this fresh from my own memory."

He had stolen a magnifying glass from a relative's office near the Air Force base on Reid Avenue. He had used it to burn leaves in the garden. He had climbed the same kind of tree.

The subject had written something that made a stranger remember his own childhood. That was the first thing established on the call.

The factory

During COVID, he didn't close. Not a day. With 250 people at the Green Soils plant — cocoa peat, growing media, export — he drove in himself daily. Workers and supervisors lived on-site. Salaries went out on time. By 2019 the plant had become the highest-profit company in the group. Then the owners' third generation arrived and began running things.

He mentioned it like a footnote. He had already moved on.

The military

In a batch of 96 cadets across Army, Navy, and Air Force, he was the first sent abroad — three months in Pakistan. He went to the Air Force. He started the first research and development programme his unit had seen. He later lectured at IPMI and as visiting faculty at a second institution.

He said he had stage fright with large crowds. He also said he was a very good public speaker. Both were true.

The book

He described his own story in one sentence: "A village boy who broke the shackles."

The memoir begins in a kajan-thatched village — mud walls, no electricity, no cement floors, buffalo milk at breakfast, earthworms in the garden. The environment was the barrier. His mother qualified for a civil service position and gave it away so she could stay and help him. He found out later.

He had tried Huffington Post. Rolling Stone. Neither responded.

He found AngryPages by searching. "All of a sudden your name came out."

What AngryPages built

Lehan walked through the platform live — 180 story cards formatted from the manuscript before the call. AI-generated images mapped to the village setting: mud walls, kajan roofs, children at the paddy field, no power lines. He corrected one immediately — the roofs must be kajan-thatched, walls mud, no tile.

He selected a style: watercolor illustration. "With my write-up, even this picture, you go. I'm trying to depict something in somebody's mind." He had understood the visual argument before it was made.

He proposed a paywall structure Lehan had not heard before: give the opening free, give the ending free, paywall the middle. "When I go to a library, I go and read the first and the end." He had worked out the hook mechanism on his own.

Pricing settled at $7.50 — reachable for the Sri Lankan diaspora, credible to a US audience. The author keeps 80% of direct sales. Ad revenue splits 50/50. AngryPages handles distribution. Stripe handles payment in any currency.

The parachute story

A friend of his was doing a display jump into Sugata Stadium. Halfway down, the wind pulled the parachute off course. He was heading toward high-tension lines. He cut the chute the wrong way, hit a wall, and broke both legs. He was handicapped for years.

He is now a general manager.

"Something quite new," the subject said. He wants to put it in the book.

Outcome

He agreed to source images — the kajan-roof houses, children at the paddy field, the village as he remembered it — and to send completed chapters for card formatting and review. The memoir runs from village childhood through military service to executive leadership. Management and leadership writing follows as a second track.

He mentioned Stephen LeBrooy, who ran the Dutch Burger Union on Reid Avenue. Anthony Bourdain had come there once and asked how arrack was made. The subject knew the answer.

There is an audience already forming. He knows where they are.