William Browning Spencer Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Anthologies

William Browning Spencer is best known as a multiple award-winning short story fiction author and novelist from Austin Texas. His horror and science fiction works are often surreally and darkly humorous.
His novel “Resume With Monsters” conflates soul-destroying jobs with the H.P. Lovecraftian horrors that are just as soul-destroying. He would be nominated for Best Short Story at the BramStoker Awards in 1995 for “Death of the Novel,” a short story he had written a year earlier.

In 2002, Scott Smith the director, and Eric B. Anderson the renowned short film writer turned “Pep Talk,” William Brownining’s novel into a film. The movie made its premiere in 2006 at the Santa Fe Film Festival.
He made his novel writing debut in 1990 when he published “Maybe I’ll Call Anna,” which was the winner of the New American Writing Award.

Over the years, he has made a name for himself writing eclectic, eccentric, and quirky novels that are on the border of black comedy, fantasy, and horror.

The author was born in Washington and currently makes his home in Austin, Texas.

Even though William Browning Spencer has become quite a successful author, he began his career working as a typesetter and graphic artist.

However, just like with writing, Spencer never had any formal training in graphic artistry as he had majored in English in college.

In his senior year, he dropped out of college and headed to Munich. He had then gotten drafted and came back to the US to face a court martial for insubordination for which he was found guilty and was jailed in the Army stockade for five months.
Some of his experiences during this time may be found in “Maybe I’ll Call Anna” his first published novel. When William Spencer made his return to the civilized world he worked all manner of jobs that included graphic artist, emergency room orderly, photographer, and clerk typist.

He decided to pursue a career as a graphic artist since a friend of his hired him to work for him since he had been hired as an editor for a magazine. He learned much of what he now knows while on the job and even became very good before he decided to quit and become an author.

William Browning Spencer had always wanted to be a fiction author given that he was an eclectic and voracious reader that had an intense attraction for the Writer’s life.

Since he has never been a morning person, he believed becoming an author would make it possible to sleep in and not have to wake up by an alarm clock. As such, wanting to sleep was just another reason why he decided to become a fiction author.
Before he got his first novel published, he had penned more than five full-length manuscripts having started writing in college. His first attempt in college was a work that was half written in free verse that he believed must have been awful.
He then penned another about a psychiatrist who left his practice in New York to go to a small town in Florida to run a laundromat only to encounter an alien egg that somehow can corrupt people.

Most of these early works will never see the light of day if he has anything to do with it. Ultimately, he would get Maybe I’ll Call Anna published even though by then he had published a range of newspaper pieces and essays.

“Irrational Fears” by William Browning Spencer is the story of Jack Lowry, an ex-literature professor that has twice visited Hurley Detox.
However, he is not a man who sticks to things and after remaining sober for about five months he has to be brought back. He needs to once again work with Wesley Park the counselor who has a reputation for having the emotional resources of a mollusk.
Even worse, he believes he is falling for Kerry Beckett a fellow patient. It is a one-sided relationship he is sure is doomed right from the get-go. Nonetheless, the changes of recovery are nothing compared to the threat to sanity and life that the local cult “The Clear” presents.

The leader of the cult has claimed that all drunken men are the descendants of an ancient tribe of aliens who needs to get themselves ready for a cosmic battle. Initially, the cult seems more of a nuisance rather than a danger, until people start going missing.
A fellow patient named Hinkle manages to get out of the clutches of the cult only to end up dead inside a malevolent toilet. Just like in his previous works, William follows the characters as they live their mundane lives and reluctantly confront far superior malevolent forces.

William Browning Spencer’s novel “Zod Wallop” follows the life and times of Harry Gainsborough a children’s book author. Since the death of his daughter by drowning three years ago, he has been living a quiet life of desperation.
His agent has been pressuring him to write but he has so far been unable to write or even try to sell the rights to his phenomenally successful novel Zod Wallop. He is not in the mental space to write or attend any meetings with anyone or even have any contact with the outside world.

However, he just cannot avoid Raymond Story who had been hospitalized at the nearby asylum for mental issues. Story is so taken by the novel “Zod Wallop” that he escapes from the asylum and finds Harry to inform him that the characters from his novel may be coming to life.
Initially, he believes these are just the ramblings of a lunatic but soon starts to take him seriously. Creatures from fantasy he had plucked out of the air in his writings seem to be coming to life.
They are engaged in antic destruction as they run the paint on the author’s car and even blow up a helicopter.

The line between imagination and reality is even further blurred when it comes to light that Harry may have become acquainted with Raymond when he had been hospitalized for his own psychiatric issues.

“Maybe I’ll Call Anna” by William Spencer Browning is the author’s first novel that draws its readers into an obsession with romance that spans two decades. The lead is David Livingstone, an aspiring artist who currently moonlights as a hospital orderly.
He is intrigued and fascinated by Anna Shockley, a self-destructive woman that he met in the emergency room after she was taken there following a drug overdose. He begins living in Anna’s boarding house and while living there he is a silent but very frustrated observer of how violent the relationship she has with her boyfriend can be.

Soon enough, Anna and David become lovers but the former is often shaky in her grasp on reality. They ultimately decide that she needs to see a psychiatrist while David joins the army.
But Anna is a woman with fatal femininity and soon enough, the psychiatrist is taken by her and the entire drama explodes in 1986 when David gets wind of the relationship.