Patrick Quinlan was the youngest child in a big, noisy New York Irish-American family. Ten minutes late to supper and the food was all gone.

Other kids in the neighborhood wanted to be cops, or firemen, or crime kingpins. He wanted to become Jimi Hendrix. At an early age, he became an accomplished and incorrigible liar, eventually finding work that made good use of his talent, journalist, political operative, copywriter, and now novelist.

He lives on the coast of Maine with his wife, Joy Scott.