After several decades of a highly successful New York marketing career, film school, professional writing, public speaking, and travel blogging experience, Alfred O’Neill (THAT’S ME!) has always been a collector of stories and dreamed of writing novels. But it took the tragedy of losing his wife to cancer — and homage to their love — to push him to finally get around to writing novels.
His debut novel, Even a Pandemic Can’t Stop Love and Murder, is a romance/thriller that takes place in the mid-2020s and is based on a true story. It was highly reviewed by Kirkus, among others. Told to O’Neill by his father years before, the plot centers on a robbery at a mob-owned bank and the violent consequences that follow. Reviewers were torn between which they liked more: the wit and banter of the romance between Ginger and Alby or the dark and evil mundanity of the killer, Jagger.
Even Climate Change Can’t Stop Love and Murder, Vol. 2: Paying the Price continues the adventures of Ginger and Alby, as they fall in love while always immersed in troubles that just seem to find them. With their search for love at the story’s core, they face the realities of their journey crossing America in 2026, including insurrectionists, white supremacists, and a hitman they believed was dead. This story of the forces of evil and good, and love and murder culminates in a violent climax at Tuzigoot, the national Pueblo monument in Arizona. Unfolding in Vol. 2 is the unveiling of Ginger’s dark past and a close-call look at how the destruction caused by climate chaos impacts many of the current societal and personal divisions — two themes that will continue as parts of the upcoming Vol. 3 of this trilogy.
Funeral of Lies, a stand-alone psychological thriller, is O’Neill’s newest published novel and like Vol. 1 of the Love and Murder series is also based on a true story — though heavily fictionalized. After being banished by his family for a dubious crime, a man returns home years later to help his uncle run for mayor, only to fall deep into a mire of dirty politics and family lies.
O’Neill is currently outlining a novel entitled Jonny Paramitas, also based on a true story of his father’s, this one about his federal trial court case and conviction and its aftermath. In addition, author O’Neill is in the plotting-out stage of a cozy detective series entitled The Blow-Ins about an American couple who is forced to hide out in a small Irish town. Between navigating the quirks of the Irish and the couple’s current status as complete strangers, AKA blow-ins, trouble just seems to find them!
