I didn't plan on becoming a writer. For most of my life, I was a soldier, then a security consultant --careers that pulled me through over a hundred countries, into war zones and remote places few people ever see.
What I carried out of those places wasn't just the memories of conflict, but the persistent question: how do people find order when the world around them falls apart? How do they build loyalty, exercise power, or even just survive when the old rules are gone?
I spent my twenties and thirties travelling -- for work and for pleasure -- across more than a hundred countries. As a soldier, and later as a security consultant, I found myself in war zones and remote places that few people ever see. What struck me most profoundly in all of those places wasn't the violence or the hardship, but the people -- and how they made sense of their circumstances, how they survived, and sometimes even thrived in situations that seemed impossible from the outside.
That question -- how people create meaning in the face of chaos -- is at the heart of everything I write. Whether it's fiction, history, or graphic storytelling, I'm drawn to stories where formal structures have collapsed, where chaos reigns -- and where people still make choices that define them. Writing is the way I make sense of that chaos myself. It's how I try to bring clarity to what first appeared senseless.
When I began writing seriously in my forties, I found myself returning again and again to these themes. My work explores loyalty, friendship, ethics, and how power is exercised when institutions are weakened or destroyed. These are universal ideas that humanize places and situations we might otherwise see as foreign, or dismiss as unknowable. For me, stories are always centred on the human experience -- even, or especially, in the midst of conflict.
I've written novels, history, and graphic storytelling, all rooted in these concerns. Along the way, I've also edited a regimental oral history and co-founded a literary journal. I studied at the Royal Military College of Canada, Humber College, and the University of Gloucestershire. I hold graduate degrees in Defence Studies and Creative Writing, as well as a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing. The forms of my ongoing investigation may change, but the questions remain the same.
Today, I split my time between writing and coaching other writers. I live in Saint John, New Brunswick -- far from the places that first taught me that chaos always has its own kind of logic, if you know where to look.
