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CLEMMONS — Everyone has a dream, but few people are willing to leave the safe confines of their day job to chase them.

Former Winston-Salem broadcaster Cameron Kent is one of those people. He left behind a career in network broadcasting to pursue writing full-time.

Kent shared his life of storytelling at a Lewisville-Clemmons Chamber of Commerce luncheon on May 9. The son of an Air Force general, Kent hails from Alexandria, Virginia. After graduating from Wake Forest University, he embarked on a career in television journalism that spanned nearly four decades, receiving 14 Emmy nominations along the way.

He won an Emmy for his reporting on the Pentagon after 9/11. He devoted much of his reporting to military veterans, chronicling their stories from the battlefields of World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Kent left all that behind to follow his dream of being a writer.

“My passion in life has always been creative writing,” Kent said. “When I retired at Channel 12, I tried to do as much of that as I could.”

Kent indicated that he grew up in a household where literature was very important.

“My mother collects books so much that our house looked like an annex at the Library of Congress,” Kent said. “She would use books for furniture. That’s the kind of life I grew up in.”

In his second career as a writer, Cameron has published six novels: “The Road to Devotion,” “When the Ravens Die,” “Make Me Disappear,” “The Sea is Silent,” “Mayor Molly,” and his newest release, “The Oak Island Book Club.”

His other writing credits include four films that have aired on NBC, HBO, Lifetime and at the American Film Institute. He’s also written a Christmas musical, “Welcome to Virginia,” which has been performed at community theaters across the country.

In his spare time, he loves running, playing guitar and golfing. He is also active in Habitat for Humanity.

During his address at the luncheon, he shared a passage from “The Sea is Silent” about a man on the beach who plays chess alone.

The chamber meets on the second Tuesday of each month at the Historic Broyhill Office Suites in Clemmons at 3540 Clemmons Road.