“The editorial team that reviewed the book said it needed more sexual content,’’ the 77-year-old Albury marriage celebrant said yesterday.

“I didn’t mind writing in the sex — imagination is a wonderful thing.”

Mr Young’s book The Undefeated contains more savagery than sex, reflecting the violence of an era that saw millions of Americans killed in the Civil War of the 1860s.

It relates the dramatic story of Lieutenant Caleb Stanton, who, like many of the exhausted soldiers, headed for the Western Frontier.

He became a bounty hunter and ultimately a fugitive.

Mr Young has never visited the US but is steeped in its history and the terminology of the times.

However, you won’t find bad language in the book.

The story also tells of proud Apaches scalping their victims, burning down homesteads and inflicting bloody revenge on living and dead soldiers.

But Mr Young is a writer of serious non-fiction as well.

His second book just published is a world away from the Wild West and is designed to comfort bereaved people.

Saying farewell to those to those we love is a sequel to his successful The funeral celebrants’ handbook, which has sold more than 4000 copies across six countries.

The new book contains poems, prayers and prose suitable to be recited at funerals.

“It’s a collection I’ve drawn from different sources but some of the poems I’ve written myself,’’ Mr Young said.

The Undefeated is published by Horizon Publishing and Saying farewell to those we love by JoJo Publishing.

Meanwhile, Mr Young is preparing to publish another Wild West novel, Hunter’s Moon.