Bill VanPatten
Bill is an award-winning author whose books have received critical praise from a variety of venues. His first novel, Seidon’s Tale, won the Kops-Fetherling Silver Phoenix Award for best new voice in fiction, and his second novel, Looks Are Deceiving, received the Readers’ Favorite International Bronze Award for LGBTQ fiction and was also a Distinguished Favorite in the Independent Press Awards. This third novel, A Little Rain, won the bronze medal from the Self-Published Book Reviews International Book Awards for general fiction and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award Grand Prize for fiction.
Bill writes both novels and short stories, mostly contemporary adult fiction. Gay and Latino characters figure prominently in his work, not because they’re trendy but because Bill believes they are a necessity. He loves to rip the bandage off his characters’ secrets and expose them raw to the reader.
Prior to writing fiction, Bill had a very successful academic career with an international reputation in the field of second language acquisition and teaching. He walked away from that because the calling to write was too great to resist. Boy, does he love storytelling.
​ He lives in a small town in California's Central Valley, which has served as the inspiration for the fictional town of Mañana where many of his characters live, work, love, and on occasion, kill.
​
*Referenced from https://www.billvanpatten.net/about
The dark side of the post-Roe era . . . Jesse Pérez’s fifteen-year-old pregnant niece from Texas shows up on his doorstep in Central California seeking help. Still grieving from the death of his husband while raising their son alone, he is plunged into the politics and law of a post-Roe era and a showdown with his estranged evangelical family.
*An award-winning novel* Sixteen-year-old Alexander Chance’s love of another boy has turned into an obsession—and the consequences have pushed his family to the brink. Sitting in a courtroom, he reflects on the past four months and what led him to the present situation. His father watches a quiet and dissociated son during the proceedings, forcing him to confront his own secretive past. Alexander’s mother keeps a diary and confesses how her sublimated rage at her ex-husband drove a wedge between her and Alexander, and to a pill-popping, wine-drinking existence. In the end, the judge listens to expert testimony and must determine Alexander’s fate. But Alexander is hiding a secret—a secret that would have profound consequences on the judge’s decision.
*An award-winning novel* Forty-nine-year-old Will Christian stumbles across a body during a routine bicycle ride. As bodies pile up—all Latino, all gay—Will wonders if his town is confronted with a series of hate crimes. Driven by insatiable curiosity, a commitment to the first victim's family, and the haunting memory of the unsolved murder of his best friend, he enlists the help of his new boyfriend, José Torres, to track down the killer using a gay dating app—setting him on a search for a killer in the secretive underside of the down-low lifestyle in a small, Central California town.
Award-winning author, Bill VanPatten takes the reader on a journey in and around the Central Valley of California. From the titular story, “There Go I”—in which a man studies a woman and ponders what made her the bitter soul she is—to “Buzz”—about a young girl in 1951 who dreams of being another Amelia Earhart—VanPatten deftly weaves past with present as characters’ lives are laid bare on the page. These stories are small-town California like most readers have never imagined.