4^th novel for Bill O’Connor

Former BJ movie critic and Franciscan friar Bill O’Connor has published “St. Leo,” the second book in his planned trilogy.

Bill O'Connor during two stages of his life

The first was “The Era of Long Thoughts,” which had the Beacon Journal newsroom as its setting, but with an alias. Since once of the characters was Guy Daynor, and most of us who watched Donn Gaynor go through his paces on the copy desk for decades, that wasn’t tough to figure out.

"St. Leo" “traces the results of a story written by the protagonist of the first book,” Bill tells me.

“St. Leo” is available from Amazon and on Kindle.

Bill’s previous novels are “Bums and Hershey Bars,” which began as a master’s thesis at Bowling Green State University, published in 1965, and “The Legend of Horn Mountain,” an adventure story written for those in their early teen years, set in Montana where Bill lived for more than a decade and was dean of students at Montana State University in Northern.

Long after growing up in South Philadelphia, Bill joined the BJ in the spring of 1979.

Bill did his undergraduate work at St. Francis College and got his master's degree at Bowling Green.

He and his Swiss miss wife Elsbeth (since 2002) throw almost Gatsbyesque parties at their Rambling Way home in Bath Township.

They both have four adult children from previous marriages.