About Michael: The author of fifteen novels, a number of stories and poems, and the late, lamented “Mythical Realism” travel blog, Michael Williams has been writing and publishing over the last thirty years. Michael Williams has written a number of strange novels, from the early Weasel’s Luck and Galen Beknighted in the best-selling Dragonlance series to the lyrical and experimental Arcady, singled out for praise by Locus and Asimov’s magazines.
His most recent work is the acclaimed City Quartet, centered on a city both realistic and mythical: in Trajan’s Arch, stories fold into stories and a boy grows up with ghostly mentors; Vine: An Urban Legend mingles Greek tragedy and urban legend, as a local dramatic production in a small city goes humorously, then horrifically, awry; Dominic’s Ghosts takes up the story of a son in search of his father in the midst of a murky conspiracy involving a suspicious scholar, a Himalayan legend, and subliminal clues from a silent film festival. Tattered Men is the account of a disheveled biographer, writing the life story of a homeless man who may have been more than he ever seemed.
Williams was born in Louisville, Ky, and spent much of his childhood in the south central part of the state, the red-dirt gothic home of the Appalachian foothills and stories of Confederate guerillas. Through good luck and a roundabout journey he made his way through New England, New York, Wisconsin, Britian, and Ireland, and has ended more or less where he began. He has a Ph.D in Humanities, and taught at the University of Louisville until 2022, where he focused on the Modern Fantastic in fiction and film. He is married to Rhonda Williams and they have two grown sons.
He is currently at work on a long narrative poem set in the world of the City Quartet. Because what’s a quartet without a fifth?
Books
The City Quartet
Dominic’s Ghosts
Dominic’s Ghosts is a mythic novel set in the contemporary Midwest. Returning to the home town of his missing father on a search for his own origins, Dominic Rackett is swept up in a murky conspiracy involving a suspicious scholar, a Himalayan legend, and subliminal clues from a silent film festival. As those around him fall prey to rising fear and shrill fanaticism, he follows the branching trails of cinema monsters and figures from a very real past, as phantoms invade the streets of his once-familiar city and one of them, glimpsed in distorted shadows of alleys and urban parks, begins to look uncannily familiar.
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Vine: An Urban Legend
Synopsis: Amateur theatre director Stephen Thorne plots a sensational production of a Greek tragedy in order to ruffle feathers in the small city where he lives. Accompanied by an eccentric and fly-by-night cast and crew, he prepares for opening night, unaware that as he unleashes the play, he has drawn the attention of ancient and powerful forces.
Michael Williams’ VINE: AN URBAN LEGEND weds Greek Tragedy and urban legend with dangerous intoxication, as the drama rushes to its dark and inevitable conclusion.
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Tattered Men
Synopsis: When a body washes ashore downstream from the city, the discovery saddens the small neighborhood south of Broadway. A homeless man, T. Tommy Briscoe, whose life had intertwined with a bookstore, a bar, and the city’s outdoor theater had touched many lives at an angle. One was that of Mickey Walsh, a fly-by-night academic and historian, who becomes fascinated with the circumstances surrounding the drowning.
From the beginning there seems to be foul play regarding Briscoe’s death, and, goaded on by his own curiosity and the urging of two old friends, Walsh begins to examine the case when the police give it up. His journey will take him into the long biography of a man who might have turned out otherwise and glorious, but instead fell into and through the underside of history, finding harsh magic and an even harsher world. Despite the story of Tommy’s sad and shortened life, Walsh begins to discover curious patterns, ancient and mythic, in its events—patterns that lead him to secrets surrounding the life and death of Tommy Briscoe, and reveal his own mysteries in the searching.
Tattered Men is one of the novels of the City Quartet, an interrelated group of novels that can be read in any order that also includes Dominic’s Ghosts, Trajan’s Arch, and Vine: An Urban Legend.
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Trajan’s Arch
Synopsis: Gabriel Rackett stands at the threshold of middle age. He lives north of Chicago and teaches at a small community college. He has written one novel and has no prospects of writing another, his powers stagnated by drink and loss. Into his possession comes a manuscript, written by a childhood friend and neighbor, which ignites his memory and takes him back to his mysterious mentor and the ghosts that haunted his own coming of age. Now, at the ebb of his resources, Gabriel returns to his old haunts through a series of fantastic stories spilling dangerously off the page–tales that will preoccupy and pursue him back to their dark and secret sources.
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