Shane Norwood currently resides in Tanger, Morocco. From his balcony, where he habitually celebrates the glorious North African sunset with the sacred pint of Dedalus to his lips, he can see, across the bay, the house where Paul Bowles once lived. Unfortunately, the sky is not as sheltering as it used to be, but it will have to do. Norwood is an unrepentant Norse Gael barbarian from beyond the pale, whose behavior is voluntarily, and occasionally reluctantly, moderated by his love for the three rambunctious rapscallion little savages who are his sons, and for his beautiful enlightened Argentine wife, without whom he would, in all probability, be well croaked by now. Deprived of his ability to comport himself as his wild blood dictates, Norwood channels his sentiments and his philosophy into his writing.Although trying to speak with his own voice, he joyfully attempts to pay homage to his last remaining heroes. These being Tom Waits, Cormac McCarthy, Herman Melville, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Joseph Conrad, Jimi Hendrix, Charlie Parker, Keith Richards, James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway.

He attempts to be, above all things, entertaining. He is not trying to save the world or change it. He describes his writing style as oblique and unexpected. Jazz with a drunken drummer. Or like fighting Sugar Ray. Bobbing and weaving and feinting. Waiting for the reader to drop their guard. And then bam! Right in the kisser!

Norwood is also an accomplished public speaker, able to lecture on the island of Rapa Nui and its relevance to the modern world, and on team building by proving that there’s no such thing as a team. In order to validate his writing, Norwood is at pains to point out that he is a former deep sea fisherman, lifeguard and carpenter, who has lived and worked on five continents and oft times made his living with his hands, and when not engaged such in honest and honorable toil, has spent many years impersonating a casino manager and lying through his teeth while secretly pretending to be Sean Connery. His work is therefore the work of a man of not inconsiderable life experience. The settings for his novels are, by and large, accurately depicted, speech patterns are faithfully reproduced, characters are drawn from close observation of real people, and, with a little poetic license thrown in, some of the events described actually happened. And those that didn’t, should have.