Kelly Ryan Harriger grew up in a military family that rarely stayed put for more than a few years at a time when he was young. His father was an Air Force base commander, and his mother a former Marine turned journalist. He spent much of his early life near the sea, first in Hawaii, and then in the Florida Keys, and developed a deep love of the ocean and boating during those formative years. He always dreamed of returning to the ocean, and upon leaving college in Texas, he returned to the Keys, determined to make a life for himself while living the boating life and writing about it. 

He partially succeeded at making that dream a reality, and eventually gave it up to return to college and move into the field of marketing and advertising, where he became a copywriter and editor with ad agencies and marketing groups. He eventually landed a job with the William Morris Agency in Los Angeles as a book analyst and story consultant for five years. 

Upon leaving Los Angeles, he returned to his family home in Pennsylvania, where he turned his writing efforts toward personal interests. He’s written several books and three screenplays, and continues to focus on new projects, including a novel and a historical book based on the exploits of an ancestor who’d been captured by a native Pennsylvania tribe during the Revolutionary War. In his spare time, he enjoys bicycling, motorcycling, hiking and camping in the northwestern Pennsylvania wilds.