01WORK IN PROGRESS
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Pink Diamonds and Blue Fire
Shadows of the Serengeti
A luxury safari turns into an international chase through Tanzania and Amsterdam—where a camera captures what powerful people meant to keep buried.
Writer · Sailor · Photographer · Explorer
Stories for people
who are still going.
I’m Richard McGarry. I write about second acts, open water, complicated people, and the roads that change us when the original plan falls apart.
FICTION✦ADVENTURE✦SECOND ACTS✦OPEN WATER✦PHOTOGRAPHY✦CURIOSITY
Selected stories
Books & works
in progress.
Adventure with something human at stake. These projects move from the Serengeti to the Camino, from Lake Erie to a marina hidden in the Georgia mist.
02WORK IN PROGRESS
✺
A road back to yourself
Fisterra
After work, marriage, and identity fall away, Dakota rides an e-bike across the Camino and meets eight ways of seeing what remains.
03WORK IN PROGRESS
⚓
Divorces, Drunks & Dysfunctional
D Dock
At a marina missing from every cruising guide, broken boats and bruised people drift together—and somehow become a community.
04WORK IN PROGRESS
△
Twelve Sundays on Lake Erie
Point Abino
Two teenagers race a Lightning sailboat through one unforgettable summer of class divides, first love, and impossible choices.
Now available: The Modern Privateer, a handbook about building wealth, freedom, and entrepreneurial thinking.
View on Amazon ↗RM
About Richard
I’ve learned that a life can have more than one first chapter.
I began in the computer world, building a career around systems, people, and problems that needed solving. When that chapter ended, the route ahead became less predictable—and much more interesting.
I lived aboard a sailboat, traveled, photographed wild places, rode unfamiliar roads, and began turning experience into fiction. My stories are about reinvention without easy answers: people who lose the map and keep moving anyway.
“The road doesn’t care how you get there. It only asks whether you keep going.”
35 ft.Home under sail
4+Novels taking shape
∞Curiosity remaining
Beyond the page
Things that keep
me curious.
The best material usually appears when I’m doing something else.
Life under sail
Years aboard Dancing Lion, a 1980 O’Day 35, taught me that every harbor has a story—and every repair has a sequel.
Travel with a lens
I’m drawn to wildlife, unfamiliar roads, and the revealing moment just outside the frame. Photography often becomes the first draft.
The long way there
Whether by e-bike, freighter, sailboat, or safari vehicle, I believe the detour is usually where the real story begins.
CURRENTLY
Writing toward the next horizon.
Developing new fiction, refining book covers for publication, and collecting scenes from a life lived near the water.
WritingSailingPhotographing
Get in touch
Have a story, a question,
or a good dockside recommendation?
I’d be glad to hear from readers, fellow travelers, sailors, photographers, and curious people of every kind.
[email protected] ↗