I was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1969, the same year The Troubles started. At 17, after a UK-wide search with more than 600 applicants, I was chosen to be the first-ever trainee for The Sun, the highest-selling, English-language daily newspaper in the world. My journalism career took me all over England, then I returned to Ulster and bought a travel agency. I spent 12 years traveling the world, visiting more than 100 countries, the 50 US States, and all seven continents.
In 2004, I moved to New Orleans, and a year later while evacuated from Katrina, I started Finn McCool’s Football Club, a memoir about my experiences before, during, and after the storm.
In 2018, my second book World Cup Fever about the international soccer tournament was published. Following the release of Finn McCool’s Football Club, I was asked to teach a fiction-writing class for the Walker Percy Center at Loyola University. More than a decade later, I organize and teach my own courses. And continue to write.
I have written for Chelsea Football Club, the National World War II Museum, and newspapers, magazines and websites, both domestically and internationally. Now in my fifties, I spent the pandemic lockdown working on Ozzy & Me, released in November 2025 by Simon and Schuster.
