Dan Willis Books

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Dan Willis is an American author that writes YA and fantasy. In some circles, he is best known for the work he has done on the Dragonlance series. Born in 1967 in Washington, DC, Dan spent his childhood in rural Maryland. He read a lot.

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His dedication to storytelling paid off when he joined Wizards of the Coast, adding his voice to the Dragonlance series. The Dragonlance novels he wrote were eventually hailed as some of the best the series had ever seen.

The author has also written original novels set within worlds that he created. One example is the ‘Arcane Casebook’ series which follows a detective that has to fight everything from mobsters to powerful sorcerers in 1930s New York.

In ‘The Dragons of The Confederacy’ series, Dan uses an engineer and a spy to explore the Civil War through a steampunk lens. The author has occasionally used the considerable experience he has accumulated to help aspiring authors.

Dan, who is self-published, supports Amazon’s work. He appreciates the fact that the self-publishing field has given ordinary writers the tools they need to publish whatever they write without going through the traditional publishing system.

Though, he has admitted that self-publishing is difficult. From his point of view, authors have to sell anywhere between 5,000 and 10,000 copies of every book they write to earn a decent living, a target that sounds impossible until one realizes that Amazon attracts over a hundred million visitors every single month.

Dan has encouraged aspiring authors to keep their prices between $2.99 and $4.99 because that range is more likely to encourage impulsive buys. Dan has cited the stiff competition as Amazon’s biggest challenge. Standing out is difficult because the platform receives so many submissions from both traditional and self-published authors.

But this is why Dan Willis expects new authors to create a strong online platform, one they can trust to funnel curious readers towards their novels on Amazon. He also expects beginners to make more of an effort to write because the more books one publishes, the easier it will become for them to earn a living from their work.

Dan has discouraged self-published authors from self-editing their work. As far as he is concerned, professional editors are essential. The author will pay his own editor up to $1000 on occasion to get the best possible results. But he doesn’t want new writers to waste money on editors that cannot enhance their manuscripts.

From Dan’s perspective, the interests matter. He doesn’t see the point in hiring a romance editor to fine-tune a science fiction novel. Every self-published author requires an editor whose experience and talents fit the author’s genre.

Unlike some of his peers, Dan Willis does not fear YA and fantasy tropes. If anything, he is convinced that tropes are a relevant tool in a writer’s arsenal because they give the writer an idea of what the readers expect. However, that is not an excuse to write predictable stories. Even though he leans into some of the tropes, Dan always makes an effort to introduce a fresh take.

Best Dan Willis Books

The author is a father and husband. Besides writing, he also works as a columnist, programmer, and web designer. Dan’s best books include:

In Plain Sight: Alex had a difficult task on his hands. Someone had unleashed a magical plague in a soup kitchen and the private detective had to identify the culprit before he repeated the massacre. But the police and council of sorcerers in Depression-era New York were far from patient.

Once his ties to the soup kitchen surfaced, Alex became the primary suspect. Now, the detective has to clear his name before the authorities can saddle him with a crime he did not commit.

Ghost of a Chance: A ghost killer is haunting New York. The police have failed to catch him because they cannot make heads or tails of the culprit’s locked-room murders. Alex, a private detective, cannot rely on his magic to solve the case because his abilities are not working quite as effectively as they used to.

But the ghost killer is just one among many problems that Alex has to wrangle. A shadowy cabal is on the loose in New York and their magical gifts are unlike anything Alex has ever seen.

When Does The Next Dan Willis book come out?

The next book by Dan Willis is Gangster and will be released on September, 15th 2025. It is the newest book in the Arcane Casebook Series.

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