W.M. Driscoll

Born on the shores of Lake Michigan north of Chicago, Illinois, as a boy William was more at home on the beaches, local playing fields or exploring the woods 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 discovered 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.

During his high school years, now an avid reader, William became a student of science fiction/fantasy, mythology and folklore and would seek out similar works by Robert A. Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Roger Zelazny, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Stephen R. Donaldson. Graduating from college with honors, he received his first awards 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 family and friends he married the love of his life, rock singer and part-time journalist for the Soho Weekly News, Kelly Andersen. Together they have three wonderful children, Shae, Erin and Erik. While William wrote, Kelly went on to a long successful third career as a restaurateur and is currently a sought-after health and lifestyle coach.

Throughout his writing life, William has always considered himself a poet having written seven books of poetry, along with a number of short stories, three movie scripts and an Off Broadway play. At the same time, 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 that first note was taken, he decided to pull it all together and began Godsfade, a high science fiction/fantasy series set in a dystopian future, The Living Gods, Awakening in the Hollow and The Dark Gate being the first three installments.