After an idyllic childhood in England, college education and a very successful working life as a scientist, corporate manager, and entrepreneur in America, I ‘retired’ to the Bahamas in 2015 for the next phase of life as an author. My wife’s poor health required a return to the United States in 2018, however, but by 2019 I was up and running again with my writing. Currently I live the life of a snowbird, spending winters at my Bahamas home and the remainder of the year in Ohio.
Writing had always been an avocation and I had published in several genres in the past, including both fiction and non-fiction, but my primary focus now is on what I am calling The Pirate Project. There are three aspects to this project. The first is a series of novels about the actual lives and motivations of the Golden Age pirates which is based on historical research rather than conventional wisdom about them. The second is a series of novels about how the American colonies depended upon piracy from the end of the golden age through the American Revolution. The third is a non-fiction series addressing the politics of piracy in the Caribbean.
I find the study of history and historical people fascinating and recognize that people are really no different now than they were even thousands of years ago in terms of their motivations, desires, prejudices and biases. My Historical Fiction novels are well researched for historical fact, and it is my intention that, through the characters, readers will be put inside the heads of the people who there, living that particular life.
I am a strong advocate of individual freedom and its requisite companion, personal responsibility, and you’ll find these traits expressed throughout all of my writing. In addition to the pirate project, I also share my views on individualism in the modern world through a personal philosophy called existential humanism.
I genuinely enjoy the process of writing and can be totally immersed in whatever world I am creating for hours at a time. But when not at my desk writing, I’ll be out walking, either in the forests of Northeastern Ohio or on a Bahamas beach.
On a personal note, in my non-fiction book, Finding Out Will Change Your Life Forever, I share the personally traumatic experience of discovering that I had been face blind all of my life and how that knowledge changed the direction of my life. It was the contributing factor to leaving the United States and becoming a writer living in the Bahamas. I recently began considering writing a sequel, sharing how I managed being required to give up my island paradise and once again deal with the life I had previously escaped from in the United States.