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| Gordon Ryan was born in Brooklyn, New York, the only child
of Thomas Ryan and Eleanor Hansen. He is the second generation of Irish and
Norwegian grandparents. He spent his early years in Staten Island, New York,
the middle childhood years in Tampa, Florida, and his teenage junior high
and high school years in San Antonio, Texas. He holds a Bachelor of Arts
degree with honors in Political Science and has completed graduate work in
public administration. As a young man of nineteen, Gordon served with the
1st Recon Battalion, United States Marine Corps. Several years later, after
a mission to Norway with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints,
he served with the United States Air Force during the Vietnam conflict,
assigned to a medical facility in Bangkok. Gordon has lived overseas for many years in Norway, England,
Thailand, Taiwan, New Zealand and Dublin, Ireland, where he was assigned to the
American Embassy in the tumultuous mid-70's. He has also lived in about a half
dozen states on both the east and west coasts of America, including the far
reaches of Alaska. |
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After twenty-five years of municipal administration, with
appointments as a City Manager in Washington State and Alaska, and local
government and electric utility management experience in California and Utah,
Gordon is currently working as a consultant to local governments and
organizations. He
wrote his first novel in 1993, while living in New Zealand, as he now recalls
it, ". . . to do something new and different before I turned fifty." Despite the
early morning reluctance to get out of bed, a hectic schedule that Gordon (and
thousands of other writers) find necessary to assure a daily quiet time to
write, once the writing bug took hold, " . . . I wondered why I hadn't
discovered the joys of creating fiction many years earlier."
Following the publication of Dangerous Legacy, Gordon hit his stride and jumped
to the best seller list with the phenomenal Threads of Honor, a true story of an
incredible American flag and the American space program. That success was
followed by a robust family saga in three-volumes, entitled Spirit of Union, the
historical chronicle of a feisty Irish immigrant to New York and a Norwegian
girl whose family had joined the LDS church, destined for Utah.
The first words that eventually became Dangerous Legacy have now expanded to six
published novels, two additional manuscripts with Mapletree
Publishing Company, Highlands Ranch, Colorado, and "more stories in my head than I will
ever have time to write," he says. He continues to write almost daily,
describing his role as a published novelist as "one of the more fulfilling
experiences of my life."
Books by Gordon Ryan:
Dangerous Legacy (Deseret Book, 1994)
The Spirit of Union Series
Destiny (Deseret Book, 1996)
Conflict (Deseret Book, 1998)
Heritage (Deseret Book, 1999)
Upon the Isles of the Sea (co-authored with Kate Armitage,
self-published)
Threads of Honor
(Mapletree, 2004)
A Question of
Consequence (Mapletree, 2004)
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