Shaun J. McLaughlin began writing at 13 when his father, John, gave him an old typewriter to dabble in fiction. Again, his father nudged him along the writer’s path by convincing Shaun that journalism was a great way “to learn writing from the ground up.” He graduated with honors from journalism program at Humber College in Toronto in 1975. Over the following 33 years, Shaun worked as a journalist and a technical writer. Ottawa’s Carleton University awarded him a masters degree in journalism in 1994. He earned a third Dan black belt in Taekwon-do in 2005 at the age of 53 just to prove old guys can kick ass.

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Shaun retired from regular employment in 2008 and began writing books, focusing on history and historical fiction. Chieftain of the Thousand Islands is his third book on aspects of Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River history. Shaun maintains a history blog on Bill Johnston, the Thousand Islands legend, at www.piratebilljohnston.com. He lives on a hobby farm in Eastern Ontario where he is either shovelling snow, cutting firewood or swatting mosquitoes.