Top 5 Facts - Gary J Byrnes

1. My goal is to write the great novel of the 21st century.

2. Pure Mad was nominated for the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger award, London, 2005.

3. 9/11 Trilogy reached number one on Amazon.co.uk, spent years on iTunes top 100 chart, continues to sell well.

4. Winner, Liberties Flash Fiction competition, Dublin 2015.

5. The story on which I'm working will be my fifth novel. I also publish shorts, distributing via Smashwords to iTunes and direct through Amazon.

An art school graduate, my early career was in media, including with The Big Issue, and as publisher of a successful consumer magazine, SixMag. After ad spend dried up post-9/11, I spent a few years writing novels, waiting tables by night. For the last ten years, I’ve been in software and web marketing. Now I work in content marketing and sales for a Californian space broadband and aviation software company, in its Dublin office. I travel the world, selling in-flight connectivity and flight operations software to commercial airlines. Working in commercial aviation gives me deep insights into air travel, aircraft and flight crew, and I have a complete understanding of the industry. I find it ironic that the glossy marketing of aviation never addresses the deep-seated fear that many feel when boarding an aircraft.

I enjoy reading work by Philip K Dick, Hunter S Thompson, David Mitchell, George Orwell and Roald Dahl. I was recently blown away by Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, which helped me to write this story, knowing that it has the power to inspire change.

I live near the mountains in Dublin, Ireland, with my wife and daughters. I enjoy beaches, forests, walking our Bernese dog, family holidays, travel and space. I’m an existentialist atheist and my political views are on the hippy side. I have always tried to inspire political change in Ireland and have scored some successes.

My life’s goal is nothing less than to write the great novel of the 21st century.