Formal education at the hands of The Sisters of The
Presentation Order, the Jesuits and the Irish Christian Brothers.
Informal education through travel along with successes and
failures as actor, director, writer, soldier, management consultant, businessman, husband, father, grandfather and all the human
drama involved.
WHAT I WRITE
I am 78 years old and have served as Partner in two major international management consulting firms and as General Manager of a subsidiary of one of the world's largest financial institutions. As such, I have traveled and spoken extensively while serving clients on four continents. I am also a combat veteran of The Korean War. (As a source of pride, the Combat Infantryman's Badge I earned in Korea is second only to my wife, my children and my grandchildren.)
I mention all of this ancient history because I agree with those who hold that all writing is autobiographical to some extent. My stories tend to be set in places I know well, populated largely by people with whom I have interacted and based on situations that possess large measures of reality.
I have finished my first novel, THE LION DOMINION. (I'm not sure that 'finished' is the proper word, for, as Oscar Wilde is reported to have said, “Books are never finished they are merely abandoned.”) THE LION DOMINION is set during Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie's actual visit to the Caribbean island-nation of Jamaica in 1966. The story involves assassination, intrigue, betrayal and redemption in the resort towns and back roads of this beautiful island, full of beautiful people. It rose out of my combat and intelligence experiences in Korea and a brief friendship I had there with 2 Ethiopian soldiers, Bekele Kebede and his brother Pesate (see photo below), along with frequent visits to Jamaica since 1964, including having the Emperor as a fellow guest at our hotel in 1966.
THE LION DOMINION is "....a suspenseful political thriller, with a setting and time frame intriguingly different."
I am working now on two other stories. One, THE POWER AND THE PRICE is set in Mexico City during the 1968 Olympics (I was doing a lot of work there at the time) and deals with the beginnings of the oil crisis and a covert CIA plan to counteract OPEC. The other, THE POPE'S APOTHECARY, is set in an ancient Abby in a small Italian village south of Rome (my wife Maria's birthplace). The story begins in the 13th Century, concludes in the 20th Century and deals with Alchemy and lost bible text.
I am also working on a memoir (what the hell does he have to memoir about?) entitled MEMOIRS OF AN AMNESIAC and subtitled "...a stumbling trip down memory lane with a shortcut through Sardi's Restaurant."
> Should you be interested in discovering more about THE LION DOMINION, I invite you to read about the genesis of the story. To do so, just step over into THE READING ROOM and I'll have it waiting for you.
KOREA - 1953
Bekele Kebede, Jack Deeney, Pesfate Kebede
Bekele Kebede, Jack Deeney, Pesfate Kebede
WHAT I READ (AND RE-READ)
Anything by Graham Greene,
John le Carré - up to 1991
How The Irish Saved Civilization by Tom Cahill,
Robert Benchley,
S. J. Perelman,
James Thurber,
The Fountainhead,
Atlas Shrugged,
Robert W. Service (The Poet of The Yukon)
> Lyrics of A Lowbrow
> Ballads of A Bohemian
Books written by friends and acquaintances who were good enough to inscribe my copy:
>David Chanoff - A VIETCONG MEMOIR
>Charles Collingwood - THE DEFECTOR
>Bill D. Ross - IWO JIMA
>Sidney Zion - THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ROY COHN
WHAT I'D PAY TO WATCH
Beat The Devil
Casablanca
Anything with Bogart
Scaramouche
Tales of Hoffmann
The Red Shoes
Shane (with Alan Ladd & Walter Jack Palance)
Great Expectations
Inherit The Wind
The In-Laws (not the remake)
Pork Chop Hill
Inherit The Wind
To Kill A Mockingbird
The Third Man
Our Man in Havana
Smiley's People
> Should you be interested in the works in process, THE POWER AND THE PRICE or MEMOIRS OF AN AMNESIAC, the opening pages of each are available in THE READING ROOM.
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