Michael Williams

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-08-06

Michael Williams is an American fantasy author born in and long associated with Louisville, Kentucky, who has also lived in Vermont, New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Ireland, and England over the course of his career. In January 1984, following a wave of layoffs at TSR, he co-founded the game company Pacesetter alongside CEO John Rickets and several other industry colleagues. Williams is best known as an author of Dragonlance novels, beginning with his debut, Weasel's Luck (1988), a picaresque entry in the Heroes subseries, and continuing with Galen Beknighted (1990) and later contributions to the Villains sequence, including Before the Mask (1993) and The Dark Queen (1994). Beyond Dragonlance, he expanded into literary and urban fiction with novels such as Arcady (1996) and Allamanda (1997), and returned to fiction after a hiatus with Trajan's Arch (2010), Vine: An Urban Legend (2012), Dominic's Ghosts (2018), and Tattered Men (2019), the latter titles reflecting a shift toward literary horror and character-driven urban fantasy. Across more than three decades of publishing, Williams has maintained a reputation within the Dragonlance fan community for prose that is more stylistically ambitious and psychologically complex than much of the tie-in fiction of its era, distinguishing his contributions to the shared-world franchise.

Universe(s)

Books

• Kender, Gully Dwarves, and Gnomes (1987) · Dragonlance Expanded Canon
• Love and War (1987) · Dragonlance Expanded Canon
• The Magic of Krynn (1987) · Dragonlance Expanded Canon
• Weasel's Luck (1988) · Dragonlance Expanded Canon
• Galen Beknighted (1990) · Dragonlance Expanded Canon
• Before the Mask (1991) · Dragonlance Expanded Canon
• The Oath and the Measure (1992) · Dragonlance Expanded Canon
• The Dark Queen (1994) · Dragonlance Expanded Canon

Aggregate across all universes

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 17 books
• Award recognitions across all universes: 0 (None recorded)

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