Author Bio
I am an American of Irish descent citizen and I've been knocking about the world most of my life, in one fashion or another. My paternal great, great Irish immigrant ancestors came over from Mayo, Ireland in the 1830's to Canada, then my great grandfather immigrated to Maine later in the same century. My maternal immigrant great grandfather (also Irish) came to Maine, USA in the late 1800's. That's as much as I know about them so far.
As a kid, we moved around a lot as my late father was in the military. After my paternal grandmother passed away in 1968, we eventually settled on an old farm in Aroostook County, Maine in 1969. As a teenager, I learned how to farm, hunt for food, and live poor, although I didn't understand that I was living in such abject poverty until I left home a week out of high school.
To get away from it all and see the world, I joined the U.S. military. They offered me a much better standard of living than what I ever had at home. I left for basic training after graduating from high school in June, 1974, and travelled to many countries around the world, some that were pretty dangerous. I also learned a lot of blue collar trades through the years courtesy of my military service. I retired from active duty military service in November of 2004.
During my many years of work, I was a marine diesel mechanic (think boats), achieving master level after nearly 20 years, a refrigeration mechanic (HVACR) and low voltage electrician (appliance repair) for another 20 years, a small business owner for 10 years (appliance repair) and an IT technician/IT network engineer until I retired from full time work at age 66 in 2022. I still do the occasional IT gig jobs now and again even at my age.
During my multiple military deployments overseas (8), I had the opportunity to see and live in a lot of different places around the world. I've been to Europe, far east Asia, the south Pacific, the middle east, and north Africa during my career. I've also visited or lived in forty nine of the fifty states, travelled to half of the Canadian provinces and northern Mexico, plus a few Island nations in the Caribbean.
I currently live in central Virginia, USA, where I write fiction short stories and novels, write in my blog and a couple of corporate online platforms, saying whatever's on my mind, and I travel around the country photographing whatever comes to mind.
Growing up, my late Mother always encouraged me to read books since we spent a lot of time indoors during the long, cold Maine winters. I am a ferocious reader, even now. I think it's this love of reading that led me to think about writing stories. I've written some short stories over the last few years and published them on Medium.com and my Substack pages. But it seemed that not many people wanted to read stories about Irish folklore or military exploits on these sites, so I stopped posting them. I'll just turn them into anthologies someday and publish them on my own.
My future plans are to find time to write more books in my series. After Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president again in 2022, I came up with the idea for Fugitives in a New United States. All of this chaos motivates me to want to create more stories about regular Americans living under a fascist Christian theocracy. The second book in the series, The Camps, has been started so stay tuned.
For anyone interested in reading my books, but don't want to read a hard copy or a paperback, I'll share this website, Books2Read.com, that has links to the major book retailers that are selling eBook copies for people to read.
Visitors may reach out to me using the social media links in this web site or through the contact page to ask questions or to just say hello. Sláinte
Chat With Me
Click one of the links above to reach out, or I can also be found on Bluesky at T. Ó Domhnaill@todomhnaill.substack.com
