W.H. Cameron Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

W. H. Cameron
W. H. Cameron was born November 19, 1963 in Cincinnati, Ohio and grew up mainly in southwest Ohio. He shapes his unruly words into some captivating people that are caught in some harrowing situations, when he isn’t busy tending to his backyard chickens. Cameron lives in Oregon, where he enjoys bird watching and craft beer.

When he was a kid, they moved around a lot. He spent some memorable years in Pawtucket, Rode Island, and Savannah, Georgia in between stints in Ohio. He attended three different high schools in the greater Dayton area. Then he went to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and lingered in the area for a few more years before he relocated to Oregon, where he has lived since the year 1990.

When he was in the fourth grade, he penned his first short story. During this same time, her began writing a series of “newspapers” that told the stories of Herman the Ant, who is a giant arthropod that ruined a city in each edition. Cameron actually typed these stories out in a three column format with an ancient manual typewriter, and a hand-drawn masthead with at least one picture of Herman eating possibly the Statue of Liberty or some building. He believes his taste for blood began early on.

By middle school, he was an avid reader, reading through things like Nero Wolfe, Nancy Drew, and Hercule Poirot to classic sci fi like Doc Savage, J.R.R. Tolkien, as well as others. By the time he made it to high school, he had found authors like Dorothy Sayers and John D. MacDonald, and after that there was no looking back for him. Every single thing he had read, in some way or other, as an inspiration. He just loved stories and wanted to tell his own.

By high school, he called himself a writer with strong confidence. Cameron felt, in some ways, more confident of calling himself a writer during this time, decades before he became published, than he is currently.

He continued writing through his high school years and majored in creative writing during college. However, he didn’t publish his first bit of fiction, a few short stories, for quite a few years. At the time his first novel came out, in the year 2007, he had been writing for more than thirty years.

Cameron’s wife will scold him when he is asked what he does when he talks about his day job, then mutters about how he writes mysteries. Slowly, he has learned to tell people he is a writer first and foremost, however.

His stories have appeared such places as: Portland Noir, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Lee Child’s First Thrills anthology, as well as other places.

Under the name of Bill Cameron, he writes the acclaimed “Skin Kadash” series of mysteries.

He has said that his first published novel was actually the fourth novel that he had written, and uses the tale to encourage other authors.

Cameron’s work has been nominated for the CWA Short Story Dagger, the Left Coast Crime Rocky Award, and more than once he has been nominated for the Spotted Owl and for his novel “County Line”, he won. “Property of the State”, his YA mystery novel, was named as one of Kirkus Reviews Best Books in the year 2016: Teen.

The first novel Bill wrote under the name of W. H. Cameron, called “Crossroad”, was released in the year 2019. His work is from the mystery genre, and was published by Crooked Lane Books.

Cameron set “Crossroad” in Barlow County, Oregon. The county is fictional, but is based on the history and landscape of central Oregon, even down to taking its name from an Oregon Trail pioneer Sam Barlow.

“Crossroad” stars a character named Melisende Dulac, who also appears in a short story called “Hey Nineteen”. It is a story that takes place around six months before the events of “Crossroad”.

“Crossroad” is the first novel in the “Melisende Dulac” series and was released in the year 2019. Out on a desolate road out in the Oregon high desert, an apprentice mortician comes across a terrifying car crash. It plunges him right into a vortex of long-buried secrets, treachery, and a growing menace.

Melisende Dulac, after relocating from the East Coast to a tiny community in the Oregon high desert, is now a fish out of water. Currently, she is at a crossroads with her life, as she is trying to put her life back together and is unsure about working as an apprentice mortician. Right when she begins thinking about Barlow County as her home, her life takes quite the ominous turn when she finds the grisly multiple car wreck and three shattered corpses on a remote road just outside of town.

Close to the scene, Melisende stumbles over a fourth corpse, that of one newborn girl that lies a physics-defying distance away from the wreckage. There is nobody to claim this infant, or even a clear indication that she was part of this accident.

The crash offers up plenty of opportunity for this apprentice mortician, however, once the victims’ bodies are stolen out of her family’s mortuary, it is Melisende who gets branded the number one suspect. A Portland lawyer, named Kendrick Pride shows up at the scene on the behalf of a victim’s families. So he claims anyway. Melisende starts seeing that there is a lot more to this enigmatic figure than meets the eye at first.

While the shadows start to gather and the mystery runs deeper, Melisende has to race in order to find out the truth or get swallowed up by the darkness.

Fans found this to be an immersive read and a you-are-there page turner. This is funny, truly mysterious, and dark, and some found themselves loving Melisende right from the very beginning. The book is intensely atmospheric, complex, and compelling with some unique, gritty characters and masterful writing. Readers found themselves getting caught up in this interesting mystery. This one sets things up quite nicely for future installments and some cannot wait to check out what Melisende will do in future stories.