T. Ó Domhnaill
Author, podcaster, military veteran, skilled tradesman, and world traveler
Author Bio
I am American 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. 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 poverty until I left home.
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'd had at home. I left for basic training a week after graduating from high school in 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 have been a master level marine diesel mechanic (boats), a refrigeration mechanic (HVACR), a low voltage electrician (appliance repair), and an IT technician/IT network engineer. I still do the occasional IT gig jobs now and again even at my age. During my multiple deployments overseas (8), I had the opportunity to see and live in a lot of famous places around the world. I've been to Europe, the far east Pacific, south Pacific, the middle east, and north Africa while I was in the military. 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 produce and host a weekly podcast, The Village Oak Tree, and write fiction short stories and novels.
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 page. But it seemed that not many people wanted to read stories about Irish folklore or military exploits in 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 keep producing the podcast and find time to write more books in this series. After Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president again in 2022, I came up with the idea for this story. 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 are leery of buying a hard copy or paperback directly from me on my eCommerce page or through all major retailers, I'll share this link, 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
