"I don't know that I'm a great writer. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm not. I think I'm a pretty good storyteller, like Louis L'Amour, my favorite author - the kind you might find yourself listening to while sitting at a lonely camp fire in the Old West. If I am indeed something like that, I am exactly what I want to be."

 - Gregory Leigh Lyons

​I grew up in Venezuela, Ecuador and Iran, before heading off to college in California to earn a degree in Earth Science. I then spent the next three decades as a geologist and business executive, becoming an alumnus of Harvard Business School in the meantime. My career took me and my family to live in many places, including Bolivia, Argentina and Mexico.

The financial crash of 2008 took my consultancy with it so, for some strange reason, I decided to write fiction while pondering out my next steps. Writing turned out to come naturally to me, and I think it had a lot to do with the experiences and adventures I had to draw from; both from my formative years in Latin America and also from the ones a had traveling the world as a businessman. My experiences as a globe hopping adult have, no doubt, influenced my writing. My second book, Achilles Wept (a recently released espionage thriller), is certainly a reflection of those experiences.
 
And yet, the events that really left the greatest impressions on me were those that took place during my formative years growing up in South America. Those are the ones that inspire me the most, and they are the ones I weave into most to of my stories, including my first book, Avery McShane (released March 2012 by Bloomsbury)  and Xingu (early 2023), and there is more to come soon.