About

Raised in the East Texas badlands by a pack of vicious yet nurturing prairie dogs, Bryan Farrell knew from a young age that…

Wait, let me try that again.

Theorising that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Bryan Farrell stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished... He woke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own, and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is AL, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Bryan can see and hear. And so Bryan finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home…

Pretty good, right?

Yes, I know I’m stealing it from Quantum Leap, but still…

OK, fine, here we go.

Raised in the not-too-bad-at-all-lands of Ireland’s sunny south east, Bryan’s early years were spent barely surviving the love of his mother and siblings, frolicking in ancient woodlands, sitting too close to the television (they were much smaller back then) and devouring every book he could get his hands on, even when they were a little too grown up for him, as was the case when Bryan first read the phrase “tantalisingly erect nipples” from a lurid plain-clothbound book he found in his grandparents’ house while said grandparents engaged in mundane activities nearby, not noticing that the 9-year-old boy quietly reading on their couch had started poking at his own tiny teats, wondering how or why they would ever get erect, never mind to a tantalising degree. When he wasn’t enjoying pulpy 60’s erotic crime thrillers within erect nipple distance of his family, favoured reading during Bryan’s early years featured series such as The Hardy Boys, The Three Investigators, Just William, and Enid Blyton’s Five Find-Outers, authors including Philip Pullman and Edgar Allan Poe, and comics of all shapes and sizes from Beano and Dandy, to Batman, X-Men, and classics like Tintin and Asterix.

After a frustratingly happy childhood, Bryan relaxed into the warm embrace of teenage angst, moving from his pleasant, mixed-gender country school to secondary education in a cold, dishwater-grey, slightly more urban, and 100% less mixed-gender school where the walls were damp, the learning even more so, and most classes were taught by priests, including biology where a two week period focusing on the female reproductive organs was successfully escaped with the Father in question never once slipping up by mentioning the words girl, woman, clitoris, vulva, or vagina. Reading during this period broadened to take in Tolkien, King, Toby Litt, Joe R. Lansdale, Robert Harris, Martin Cruz Smith, and Lovecraft.

And yes, Bryan acknowledges that is a lot of middle-aged-to-old white men but in his defence, Ireland did not become a multicultural society until he was out of his teens. Up until then, apart from a family holiday to Morocco, Bryan’s nearest brushes with anyone who wasn’t white, Catholic, and somehow related to him came from TV shows like Diff’rent Strokes, Heartbreak High, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Moesha, Kenan and Kel, and Desmond’s, which taught Bryan that in other parts of the world, three litres of tea per day was not considered essential to survival, and salt and pepper were not considered exotic spices.

Bryan finished his secondary education, winning his school’s senior writing award but refusing to attend the ceremony because by now, thanks to a bootleg double-CD of “Greatest Punk Anthems Ever” and bands like Green Day, Blink-182, Misfits, and the Ramones, punk rebellion was fomenting in Bryan’s soul and he knew that only a real sucker would accept the plaudits of The Man, especially at an after-hours school-based event. Here follows an excerpt from Bryan’s winning piece, a poem titled “His Second City”.

Bombs drop

White hot screams

Was it ever worth it?

Hope only in dreams.

Heavy, man, heavy *clicks fingers*

It is worth noting that Bryan’s father Pat, who passed away at a much too young age, was a very accomplished poet and the greatest pleasure young Bryan took in this win was the sense that perhaps it, and his rock n roll response to it, would have pleased his Dad, a bit of a rebel himself, who had once hung upside down from a local rail bridge to graffiti it with the words “Pink Floyd”.

Having been successfully weaned of even the slightest interest in learning anything by now, Bryan forwent a third level education and spent some years travelling, working, and drinking around Ireland where he made many friends, even more mistakes, a handful of enemies, and all in all had a great time.

A chance invitation to travel saw Bryan head down under to Australia for a year, which somehow lasted 156 months.

While living deep within the Australian Outback, in a “town” with an official population of 12, Bryan met his future wife. Any accusations that selection of her mate was forced in part by limited choice are as offensive as they are potentially accurate. Not long after relocating to the Big Smoke aka Adelaide, South Australia, Bryan had the idea for his first novel, the main characters and plot coming to him one morning in bed, after which he explained his idea at his mildly perplexed but wholly supportive wife.

The idea in question was born of Bryan’s love for buddy cop movies, punk music, horror fiction, and all things paranormal (see the How To Contact The Living – Special Features page for more info as well as photographic proof of Bryan’s unassailable credentials in this field). Eking out drafts over lunch breaks, work commutes, and late evenings at home, the idea became a story which slowly, very slowly, excruciatingly slowly, became How To Contact The Living!

Now living in Ireland once again, with his beloved, still wholly supportive but now even more perplexed wife, Bryan continues to write, though you’d think he’d know better by now.

13 Stories, his follow up to How To Contact The Living, collects his earliest short stories as well some more recent totally-non-filler entries that make up, you guessed it, thirteen short stories. Filled with philosophical cowboys, light-stealing Armageddon beasts, demon-fighting ex-punk rockers, and a ghost named Philip, think of it like the “Greatest Hits” of a band you've never heard of.

As a dual Irish-Australian citizen, in the event of a zombie apocalypse catching him unawares overseas, Bryan has the privilege of running to either the Irish or Australian embassies to be shot down by the people in power as they make their escape in golden helicopters. Despite having travelled extensively, Bryan maintains that while he is fairly certain he has been to Paradise, or at least had connecting flights through it, he has never been to himself and has no plans to visit anytime soon.

Growing up on TV, books, and movies from North America, Britain, Ireland, Australia, not to mention Europe (yes, Ireland is a part of Europe and yes, that does mean we are technically “incontinent”), Bryan’s fiction is as likely to take place in a salt-grimed Stockholm alleyway as it is a cheerfully efficient Cork morgue, a sun-kissed, seemingly innocuous Adelaide suburb, or a disused Brooklyn subway tunnel. Bryan appreciates your patience and understanding with this, just as he is grateful for your indulgence of him writing about himself in the third person.

Bryan hopes you enjoy his books, this website, and your life…though not necessarily in that order.

Bryan also wants to remind you that positive reviews and ratings are the best form of advertising there is - or at least the cheapest - so if you’ve enjoyed any of Bryan’s books, please feel free to yell at people about how good they are on Goodreads, Amazon, Instagram, any other social media, street corners, etc.

Having considered including one of his classy, standard “deep-thinking author stares moodily at tree in black and white” headshots, Bryan felt the below images provided a more accurate representation of what goes on inside his head.