I was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1978 to Thomas and Barbara Manley. It wasn’t easy on my mother. It took three doctors, one C-section and lots of morphine. The doctors’ names were John, Clark and Anthony. Soon after being born I peed in Dr. John’s face. To make it up to him, my parents decided to call me John. Clark and Anthony became my middle names. I’ve always felt relief I didn’t pee in Clark’s face (as I’m not fond of the name), and rather regretted I didn’t aim for Anthony.
My ancestry dates back to the first European settlers in sixteenth-century Canada, carrying a blend of Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and French genes (with a little First Nation from my great grandmother). I was raised Catholic, disliked school, and have been writing speculative fiction since I was nine years old.
Graduating a year early from high school, I moved to a Hindu monastery in the mountains of Southern California where I studied Eastern philosophy, practised yoga meditation and was almost eaten alive by a mountain lion.
Three years later, I moved to Italy where I trained as a fine artist at an academy in Florence. Two years later, I found myself back in Canada, where I struggled as a portrait artist in downtown Toronto.
In 2001, I married, moved out of the big city into a small town, and began work as a freelance ghostwriter and copywriter; while penning short stories, collecting rejection slips from publishers and raising our son Jonah.
In 2018, I began writing my first full-length novel, an urban fantasy set in Stratford, Ontario; but when the lockdowns began in 2020, I put down that project to pen a short dystopian story about where I saw these so-called “public health” measures going. That short story grew into the full-length novel, Much Ado About Corona.
I’m currently working on the sequel, Brave New Normal, while living in Stratford Ontario, with my son Jonah (of JonahsWorld.net). My wife Nicole passed away on September 20, 2022 (you can read more about her life and death on the Sunflower Page).
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