Author Bio
I am an American of Canadian/Irish descent on both sides of my family tree and I've been knocking about the world most of my life, in one fashion or another, mostly because of my military career. My Irish ancestors left County Mayo, Ireland in the 1830's, like so many others, to try and make a better life in Amerikay, to coin an Irish idiom. Which in the case of my ancestors, meant Canada. In time, some of their descendants immigrated to the United States for the same reasons. Canada in the late 19th century was not an economic powerhouse, so my Canadian great grandparents, both paternal and maternal, immigrated to Maine to find a better life around the turn of the twentieth century.
As a kid, we moved around a lot during the late 1950's and 1960's, as my late father had been in and out of the military himself from 1945 to 1968. He was a WWII (1945), Korean War (1952), and Vietnam War (1965) veteran and suffered massively from what we now call PTSD. 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 in June of 1974 to join the Navy.
At age 18, I enlisted in the U.S. Navy 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. Something I learned after arriving at basic training. After basic training, and some other advanced training, I travelled to many countries around the world, some of which were active war zones, during my more than twenty three years of active duty service. I also learned a lot of blue collar trades through the years, courtesy of the military, and I finally retired from the Army Reserves in November of 2004.
During my many years of working in the trades, I started out as a marine diesel mechanic (think boats and ships) in 1974, achieving master level competency by 1993. I left active duty in 1993 during the draw downs after Desert Storm, and in 1999, I used my G.I. Bill benefit to go back to school and become a certified refrigeration mechanic (HVACR) and low voltage electrician (appliance repair) through a VoTech college in Knoxville, TN. A field in which I worked in until late 2019.
I also enlisted in the Army Reserves right after I graduated from my HVACR school, and in January of 2002, my unit, the 489th Civil Military Affairs Battalion, was called up to deploy to Afghanistan to support Operation Enduring Freedom for a year. After I returned home in November 2002, and retired from the Army reserves a couple years later, I moved my family to Caribou, Maine. I started a small appliance repair business soon after we settled in, that spanned ten of those years from 2005 to 2015 (commercial and residential appliance repair). Then, in December of 2019, I was given another opportunity to go back to school in 2020, courtesy of my disabled veterans benefits. By the end of the year, I became a certified IT technician/IT network engineer at age 64. I've always believed that you're never too old to learn a new trade, so I embarked on my new trade. I had already been working in IT off and on, since 2000, so going to a formal school, and getting industry certified was just the icing on top. I graduated at the top of my class and went to work soon after.
Within days of my graduation in late October, we had sold our house in central Texas and moved to Virginia on November 1st, 2020 (we had been planning this for a bit before we moved). I started picking up IT gig work as soon as we got settled into our new house in central Virginia, until I went to work for the state of Virginia as an IT tech in April of 2021. I stayed until I retired from commuting to work every day at age 66 and a half. That was the year I became eligible for my full social security benefits. There were other reasons for leaving my state job when I did, but that's a story for another day. I went back to work part-time doing the occasional IT gig jobs now and again for this IT staffing company I had started with back in early 2021, until my 70th birthday. Now, I spend my time working on my own IT equipment and systems in order to keep my skills up, helping out family and friends occasionally, and writing as much as I can.
During my multiple military deployments overseas (8), some for 6 months at a time, some for a year at a time, 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. One of the things I also learned along the way, was tolerance for cultural differences. Something a lot of people around the world could use a large does of.
After my many deployments to the middle east, I returned home to the United States with a sense of unease. It wasn't until a few years after I left the military for good, that I realised that I was very unhappy pretending to accept the Christian religion. I had toyed with the old ways back in 1990, but struggled to find my way because I didn't have anyone to talk to about it then. I muddled along for years afterwards, seeking a spiritual connection through the Catholic Church, but never really finding it. In 2003, I discovered how corrupt the Catholic Church is, and left them, never to return.
In 2008, I finally found what I was looking for after talking to a Unitarian Universalist minister, and I've been a lot happier ever since. I started observing the old seasonal holidays in 2009, starting with Samhain at the end of October, the longest night at the winter equinox just before Christmas, Imolc in February, Beltain at the end of April or beginning of May, Lughnassadh in August, then Samhain to end the Celtic year with. When I lived on my little place outside of town in Northern Maine, I would light the bonfires and celebrate with a few friends. Since leaving Maine, I haven't found any others to celebrate with since. I kind of miss that at times. I still light a little bonfire in a patio brazier on the more important holidays, trying to keep things low key. I have found through the years, that the vast amount of Americans barely tolerate, or not at all, religions other than Christianity, so I try not to advertise my religious practices. I don't hide it, but I don't make a spectacle about it either. I leave that for the young people, such as the young folks who celebrate Beltain in Edinburgh, Scotland every year. There are a lot of small groups of people who celebrate the old ways around the western world, but they are scattered quite a bit apart from me, with the nearest being a small group from Northern Virginia who hold a Samhain celebration just a little ways north of me at a local campground. I thought about joining once, but I chickened out, and never gave it another thought.
I currently live in central Virginia, USA, where I write fictional short stories and novels, write in the crann-na-beatha blog and for a couple of corporate online blog platforms. I also produce and host a weekly podcast called The Village Oak Tree, and when I can, my wife and I travel around the country photographing landscapes and famous places we visit. Which I post photos of our adventures in the photo gallery in this website.
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'm 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 fictional short stories over the last few years and published them on my Medium.com and Substack pages. But it seemed that not many people want to read stories about Irish folklore or fictional military exploits on these sites, so I stopped posting them. I plan to turn them into anthologies and I'll start self-publishing them on my own someday soon.
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 2023, I came up with the story 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 buy a hard copy or a paperback, I now offer a eBook version in the book store in this website, if that's more appealing. I also offer links to the major book retailers from around the world, if potential readers are worried about shipping costs.
Visitors may reach out to me using the various links on the contact page, to ask questions or to just say hello. I hope to hear from you when you have a chance. Sláinte
