Born on the shores of Lake Michigan north of Chicago, Illinois, as a child Bill was more at home on the beaches, local playing fields or exploring the woods and ravines behind his house than in a classroom. Precocious and free-spirited, he was given to the rough and tumble of sports and other physical activities. All this changed the day he was introduced to what he would later call "the magic book - the first book that made the movie go in my head", J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. Devouring it, the Lord of the Rings and later The Silmarillion in consecutive readings, his life-long love of fantasy and poetry began. In his formative years, now an avid reader, Bill would seek out similar works and was influenced by many, including books by Robert A. Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Roger Zelazny, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Stephen R. Donaldson. Graduating from Lake Forest College with honors after completing his studies in English, history and art history, with electives in philosophy and psychology to round it all out, he received his first awards and publication in the genres of poetry and short fiction; while, all the while, his own fantasy world was slowly taking shape in his imagination. In 1988, surrounded by friends and family, he married the love of his life, a former rock singer and part-time journalist for the Soho Weekly News, Kelly Andersen, his wife of nearly thirty years, and together they have three wonderful children, Shae, Erin and Erik. While Bill wrote at home and generally looked after things, Kelly went on to a long successful third career in the restaurant business and is currently a health and wellness coach. Over the course of his writing life, Bill has always considered himself first and foremost a poet. He has written seven books of poetry, along with nine short stories, three movie scripts an Off Broadway play and an unfinished epic poem currently numbering upward of a thousand lines; while all the while, like some model train enthusiast lovingly shaping an H0 scale paradise in his basement, he was tinkering obsessively with his fantasy world which presented first as hastily written notes in a journal; these scratchings would later become notebooks and then computer files filled with detailed histories, maps, poetry, character sketches and stories. Twenty-two years after the first notes were taken, he decided to pull all of the disparate material he had written together and begin Godsfade, a high fantasy series set in a dystopian future, The Living Gods, Awakening in the Hollow and The Dark Gate being the first three installments.
