Well, we all have to start somewhere! Bill Denton is a native of Raleigh, NC, who spent his formative years in Southeast Arkansas.

His first foray into suspense/horror/supernatural fiction came in the ninth grade, with a short story titled The Silence. It was the tale of a young man trying to keep his fear in check as he makes his way across a graveyard on a dark night. He almost makes it, but trips and falls on a broken bottle. It closes with the line “As the scarlet ribbon begins to flow the silence rules again”. This earned him both an “A” and, needless to say, a trip to the guidance counselor’s office.

Prior to embarking on his full-time writing career, Bill pursued a variety of occupations, including flipping hamburgers while in high school and playing drums in local rock and roll bands.

Following high school, Bill became a disc jockey, working at radio stations throughout the South and on the East Coast. He also honed his fiction writing skills by scripting radio advertisements.

As times changed in the radio industry, disc jockeys were losing the freedom to be individually creative. So Bill shifted gears and began working as a designer/salesman in the civil engineering and fire protection industries. There he also wrote construction specifications, developing an ability to get to the point and tell it straight.

With the coming of personal computers, Bill again changed direction, becoming a programmer and one of the first Internet developers. While creating computer software and user manuals, he had the opportunity to work in a variety of styles in order to write instructions suited to a wide range of readers.

Through all of the twists and turns Bill’s life has taken, he has always written. Short stories, songs (lyrics and music), whatever format best fit the demands of the particular muse he was satisfying.

Finally, while living in Chicago, Bill decided that writing full-time was the career he was destined for, and as he puts it, “I spent three years learning how to write a novel, and one year doing it”.

Bill has now produced two novels, Surfer Girls and Welcome to New Tipton, as well as a novella, Fortune Cookies.

Bill believes that the greatest writing asset he has is all of the people who have passed through his life. “You take part of this person, part of that person, and put them in a story you have lived yourself or watched someone else live, and you can’t help but end up with a compelling read.”

In addition to writing, Bill continues to enjoy playing drums and guitar, writing and recording his original songs, and playing with computers from time to time.

Bill now lives in Pittsburgh, PA.