A veteran journalist, John Ireland, a native of Langley, B.C., is in the fifth year of his Damn The Retirement Fund World Tour. After living and working in the Cook Islands and New Zealand, he currently lives in Northern California, where he's employed as a copy editor with a daily newspaper.

All this traveling has provided fodder for John's imagination, resulting in his first novel, Brown Girls, published in 2004 by PublishAmerica. While this suspense thriller (set in the Cook Islands) is now out-of-print (after receiving rave reviews from readers not even related to the author!), John is working with a New York-based manuscript editor in an attempt to place the novel with a larger publishing house.

John has also collaborated with award-winning photographer John Gordon to produce the book Langley, B.C.: Familiar Places, Familiar Scenes (available from www.johngordonphotography.com).

Among his ongoing writing projects, John is focusing on the sequel to Brown Girls, tentatively titled The Blue Beneath.

Web page (in dire need of updating): www.john-ireland.com

E-mail address: 11cubans@gmail.com