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Mary-Margaret Gillen/submitted
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This story was corrected on Jan. 19, 2012. An explanation follows the story.

Neal Gillen recalls when mostly Irish-American families inhabited the area where he was born and raised. Woodside, a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens, had Irish-owned bars and pubs on nearly every corner.

While a number of those old watering holes remain, the bar culture in Queens has changed, as has the ethnic diversity of the area, Gillen says.

In his eighth novel, “Lonely No More,” released last November, the Potomac resident brings to life Kevin Conroy, an ex-NYPD officer who frequents those old haunts all too much before a wake-up call from an attractive woman urges him to get a grip on his alcoholism.

In building the story and Conroy’s character, Gillen drew on memories and experiences from his youth.

“Where I grew up, 90 percent of the people in our neighborhood were Irish Catholic,” Gillen says. “There were so many people with drinking problems, sort of maintenance alcoholics. It was part of the culture, sort of bred in them, like they felt they had a right to drink a lot.”

“Lonely No More” is a continuation of a short story Gillen wrote years ago about the personality-types that frequented a particular bar near his home in Queens.

“There was gloominess about it, and those who frequented were bitter, unloved and uncaring people who seemed to have given up on life,” he says. “They’d sit there all day, griping and whining about the welfare state and how they were screwed over; when in reality, most of them were on some type of civil service pension.”

He remembers a particular instance when he returned to Woodside as executor of his mother’s estate.

“I had made arrangements for repairs on her apartment, but I got a call saying things hadn’t been done right, so I got my tools and went to work on it myself for a few days,” he says. “One day, with coveralls on, I bought a pizza and took it to the bar across the street. I ordered a beer and sat down next to a guy that I knew had been sitting in that same seat for 45 years. He turned to me and said, ‘You look like a kid who grew up here, went to Washington and became a big shot.’”

He had him pegged. Gillen graduated from New York University following a three-and-a-half year tour in the U.S. Navy, where he served with the Naval Security Group. In 1961, he moved to Washington, D.C. to attend Georgetown Law School, earning a Juris Doctorate in 1964. He met his wife Mary-Margaret while both were attending Georgetown and has lived in Potomac since 1971. Neal and Mary-Margaret have two daughters, both successful attorneys.

Protagonist Conroy is a composite of a number of Gillen’s acquaintances and close friends.

“A lot of the kids I grew up with became cops and firemen, and in that particular cohort of people, they had two things happen their partner became a surrogate wife, took on a more important role on the job, and they lived two separate and distinct lives. I always found this an interesting phenomenon,” Gillen says. “I saw many of my friends’ relationships strained because of this. In the book, Kevin’s wife left him because he cared more about the job than he did about her.”

When Conroy awakens with a less-than vague recollection of the previous night’s activities, he is intrigued by a message left by Linda Gray, a woman he met the night before. He soon finds in her a reason to embrace sobriety and reverse the ill-effects of his many years as a functional alcoholic.

“Kevin needed some kind of guidance and order, and when he left the police force he didn’t have that,” Gillen says. “He was just moving about aimlessly when she became in effect his surrogate mother, lover, shrink, therapist, etc.”

In researching how to best portray Conroy’s rocky, but inspiring path to sobriety, Gillen says he sat in on a number of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

“I went to meetings, and made comparisons of the different types and groups of people you see,” he notes. “I had a lot of people at a book signing open up to me and ask, ‘I’ve been in AA for 30 years, were you?’ I wasn’t, but I’ve been amazed at the number of people who’ve since shared that with me.”

Semi-retired, Gillen is currently the International Cotton Advisory Committee’s (ICAC) permanent representative to the United Nations Committee on International Trade Law. He was appointed by the Departments of State and Agriculture to serve as the first U.S. Representative to the Private Sector Advisory Panel of the ICAC and for many years, represented the American Cotton Shippers Association and its federated associations as executive vice president and general counsel.

In his commercial travels, Gillen has visited more than 50 foreign countries and come to know many places and people he considers ample material for novels.

He began writing about 10 years ago, at age 65, and has continued to write “just for pleasure.” He has taken a series of writing courses at The Writers Center in Bethesda, where he serves as board vice chairman. He’s also a member of the board of the American Independent Writers.

“I do it for the enjoyment, the challenge,” he says. “It keeps me chasing ideas. All my life as an attorney, I was writing on a constant basis, but in a legal argument, you can open up by saying what the situation is, describe the situation and resolve it with your conclusion. When you write a novel, you have to tell a series of stories, with each chapter being a different story, and with continuity. It’s a really unique process.”

“Lonely No More,” Infinity Publishing, $14.95, www.buybooksontheweb.com, amazon.com or by order at retail bookstores

Correction: Neal Gillen is a member of the board of the American Independent Writers, not a co-chair.