Author Bio
I am an American citizen of Irish descent 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 County Mayo, Ireland in the 1830's to Canada, then my great grandfather immigrated to the U.S. 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 had been career military until early 1968. 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.
At age 18, I joined the U.S. military to get away from my dysfunctional family and see the world, They offered me a much better standard of living than what I ever had at home. I left for basic training a week 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 finally 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 of those years (appliance repair) and I became an IT technician/IT network engineer at age 59 until I retired from full time work at age 66 in 2022. I still did the occasional IT gig jobs now and again until my 70th birthday.
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 this blog and a couple of corporate online blog platforms, saying whatever's on my mind, and I travel around the country photographing landscapes and famous places.
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 my Medium.com and 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'm turning them into anthologies and someday I'll publish them on my own.
My future plans are to find time to write more books in my Fugitives in a New United States 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
