Meet the Author....

As a child, I had three goals in life - become a historian, travel to interesting foreign lands, and write novels. I have achieved the first two goals, and now I am in the process of achieving the third goal.  All three of these dreams have been interconnected for as long as I can remember, and I expect they will remain interconnected.

My grandmother, in middle age, was cook for a British public school (i.e., a private academy) in the 1940s, after her Irish husband's death. During World War II, she traded petrol and cigarette rations for things her family needed, including - at one point - a children's encyclopedia set.  One of the volumes, entitled "Our Indian Empire," was my favorite book as a child. I became fascinated by India and its history, and eventually I trained in South Asian Studies and earned a Ph.D. in South Asian History. I now teach Indian, Islamic, and World History at a public university.  Madras - or Chennai, as it is known today - is my home-away-from-home in India, and a place featured frequently in The Adventures of Henry Innes.

Since my fictional works closely parallel my research interests, the two activities cross-pollinate. Information and ideas I encounter researching my novels become academic papers; academic research, meanwhile, may be distilled into fiction, at some point. Once I realized what was happening, and became comfortable with it, I allowed the two activities - career and hobby - to form a symbiotic and (so far) very productive relationship. 

Sometimes, I teach a course on historical fiction writing for my university.   

The Adventures of Henry Innes will be a series of novels, so settle in for a long journey.  However, I can promise you a fantastic tale, which took years to conceive and more revisions than I can count to craft into the novels I am writing and editing today. My goal is to submit the first novel, soon, to literary agents. My goal, right now, is to pursue traditional publishing. 
   

© William Lailey, 2026.