Boston's James O'Brien began writing early in life. In 1994 he left college for a year and lived in Framingham, Mass., where he worked in a gargoyle studio three days a week and wrote four days a week. During that time, he published his first short story "Jesus and May Ellen Frost" in Haunts magazine (issue #33).

In 1995, O'Brien returned to school, attending Clark University in Worcester, Mass. as a screen studies/philosopy major. He left the university in 1996 when finances were exhausted. That fall, he re-enrolled at Framingham State College and finished his Bachelor's of Arts in English by spring 1997.

Boston-based sculptor Jason Karakehian introduced O'Brien to acoustic singer/songwriter environs in 1996, at which point O'Brien switched his writing focus from fiction to song. In 1997, O'Brien moved to Mission Hill in Boston and has lived in the city since.

O'Brien was a touring songwriter from 1998 to 2004. He shared stages with underground luminaries such as Dan Bern, Freedy Johnston and Howie Day ... and with cult heroes like Tanya Donnelly, Kay Hanley and Juliana Hatfield. In those six years he released three albums and logged hundreds of thousands of miles on the road. In the winter of 2005, O'Brien brought his touring career to a close. He now plays the occasional solo concert, the most recent of these was Sept. 1, 2006.

Journalism became a supplemental income for O'Brien in the winter of 2005 and 2006. After freelancing for several online music magazines and an Eastern Massachusetts newspaper, he was hired to write for the Norwood Times in Norwood, Mass. O'Brien became editor of the Norwood Times in spring 2006, and his career in journalsm seemed set. James O'Brien is currently managing editor at Boston's Bulletin Newspapers. He works specifically with the West Roxbury Bulletin, the Hyde Park Bulletin and the City Edition of the newspaper which covers the neighborhoods of Jamaica Plain, Allston-Brighton and the North End. O'Brien also reports for all of the Bulletin newspapers, typically filing an article per week.

On Oct. 31, 2006, James O'Brien opened www.Cinescare.com the world's first academic/film criticism site devoted entirely to the intelligent and provocative study and promotion of horror cinema as a valuable drama. Eschewing fansites and gore-freak photo mags, Cinescare approaches genre film as an important cultural signifier - a place where societal freakouts and human neuroses meet and fuse with old (the oldest, in fact) and powerful story-types.

James O'Brien is currently writing two books: A ghost story, Ghosts Upstairs, and biography of civil rights lawyer, Christopher King, titled American Lawyer.