Jack O’Brien 
It’s Like This 

After serving in the 45th Infantry during the Second World War, John (Jack) O’Brien settled into a career of climbing scaffolds to paint murals on the walls and ceilings of cathedrals, churches and statehouses. In the early 1960’s an accident opening a coke bottle ended his career and ten years later he rented a tiny Spartan studio in Markham Village, Toronto, Canada and began a torrent of writing that would last more than three years. In the office was a single bed, a hook for his coat and an overturned wooden fruit basket he used as a desk. he wrote for catharsis to rid thoughts of war that tormented him. He brought a unique artists pallet of colors, compositions and textures to make readers ‘feel’ like they were with him in the battle, in the bedroom or in his mind. Soon he was elected President of the Canadian Writer’s Guild, though American, and often could be found in small packed venues reading his poetry and stories to to hushed and awed crowds. He never published though he was offered contract. Slowly, the burden of the memories of the war lifted and he stopped writing. In all he wrote Dog Star, about the war, It’s Like This, a book of poetry about life, love and death, the Golden Gumball on growing up in depression in a tight knit family in NYC and Terminal Assassins, his only fictional work which features veteran cancer patients, terminal, who form a group of assassins who target the heads of organized crime, corporate criminals and other untouchables. Years later in Florida he penned Valhalla Lost. John Joseph O’Brien (Jack O’Brien) was the center of attention in any room he entered. He could be bombastic, powerful, brilliant, outrageously funny and abrasive. He was, above all things, a consummate artist and lifelong mate of Susan, his wife and fellow artist.

THIS book, It’s Like This, is written directly to you, the reader, as if you are sitting there in his tiny Spartan studio hearing his first draft. He speaks to you about LIFE, LOVE and DEATH, three subjects he is well versed in. Here for your philosophical, romantic and mind expanding pleasure is the world according to Jack O’Brien, eccesiastical muralist, war veteran and soulmate of Susan. Bring a dictionary.