Tirrell, Art 1941-

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Tirrell, Art 1941-

PERSONAL:

Born May 27, 1941; children: Cayleen (daughter). Hobbies and other interests: Sailing.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Oswego, NY E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Tirrell's Appliance Company, Oswego, NY, founder, 1974—; novelist.

AWARDS, HONORS:

United States Yacht Racing Union Sportsman of the Year; honorary member, Oswego High School Sailing Club.

WRITINGS:

The Secret Ever Keeps (novel), Kunati Inc. (Largo, FL), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Art Tirrell draws on the adventure-filled history of the Lake Ontario region in his first novel, The Secret Ever Keeps. Set near Oswego, New York, on the southern shore of Lake Ontario, the book combines a contemporary love story with a plot that features Prohibition-era smuggling, treasure hunting, and the 1780 wreck of a British warship that may implicate George Washington in a scandal. Real events, according to Tirrell, provided all the inspiration he could want for a tale of intrigue. "Oswego has an incredibly rich history," he told Steve Yablonski in the Oswego Daily News. "Amazing things happened here during Prohibition. I'm surprised more writers aren't taking advantage."

A lifelong resident of the Oswego area and an accomplished sailor, Tirrell wanted to become a writer ever since his eighth-grade teacher praised his talent with words. But Tirrell did not begin writing seriously until 1997, when he could take time away from running his successful appliance dealership. Joining an online writing group, he learned the craft of writing fiction and completed the manuscript of The Secret Ever Keeps. The book, according to Yablonski, is "brimming with the flavor of local history." Carol Haggas, writing in Foreword Magazine, praised the novel's intricate plotting and sympathetically drawn characters, and deemed the book "an accomplished and assured fictional debut."

Tirrell told CA: "My goal as a writer is to perfect my craft and entertain the reader. If occasionally from these efforts a moment of deeper understanding arises, it's all the better, then, isn't it?"