John was born in Limerick, Ireland, in 1959, and grew up in Dublin. He attended the Institute of Marketing in Ireland and, in 1979, moved to London. There, he worked as a night manager at a hotel. He met Meg in London and moved to the U.S., where they were married a year later.

In the early '80s, John trained as a cabinetmaker and eventually ran his own woodworking business, a restoration company that served the needs of St. Paul's historic Summit Avenue, and the Kenwood district in Minneapolis. He also helped a friend set up a coaster-making business, when he wasn't busy restoring the couple's 1883 Victorian home.

At a night class at Century College, a history instructor encouraged John to write how-to articles and news stories for local weeklies. That led to freelance work with trade publications such as Woodworker's Business News and Woodshop News. By the mid '90s he was writing full-time and working as an assistant editor at Today's Woodworker, the publishing arm of Rockler Companies. He was also helping raise two sons, building a new home in the suburbs and getting much more involved in photography.

In his years with Today's Woodworker (which eventually merged with Woodworker's Journal), John's technical writing matured under the guidance of Larry Stoiaken, the magazine's editor-in-chief. John eventually became editor of Woodworker's Journal.

In 2000, the family decided to realize a long-time dream and move back to the West. Meg missed her family and those wide open spaces. Their eldest son, Tyler, was becoming quite a horseman (he eventually qualified for three consecutive National Finals Rodeos, and in 2006 became the Wyoming State champ in bareback riding). Ty currently trains horses and starts colts at his own facility in Belle Fourche.

John, Meg and their younger son Shay (a musician, snowboarder and rock climber) live in a typical '70s ranch-style house on half an acre on the outskirts of Spearfish, South Dakota. It's a university town at the mouth of a beautiful canyon, located in South Dakota's famed Black Hills. Although extremely proud of his U.S.citizenship, John misses Ireland every now and then, so the family makes frequent pilgrimages across the pond.

When they're not traveling, John runs the Black Hills School of Woodworking, where he teaches week-long, one-on-one classes for beginning through advanced woodworkers, and also some evening and weekend sessions for hobbyists. He continues to design and build magazine projects (primarily for American Woodworker), tests and reviews products, and creates woodshop photography for magazines and book publishers.