Hello! I’m Bill Adams, writing as William X. Adams (the “X” is silent).

After a lifetime writing academic nonfiction that few read, I thought it wouldn’t be too hard to tell stories that others might enjoy reading. Easy transition!

But no. Turns out, few skills transfer from nonfiction to fiction.  It’s like starting over. My publications are under the menu item “Books4U” and at www.PsiFiBooks.com. I blog on Psi-fi topics at www.Psi-fi.net. (“psi-fi” being psychological sci-fi).

Here is a summary of my career points which matter not a whit, but which are customarily presented as biography.

Until recently I was an adjunct Professor at Chapman University College, which became Brandman University, an online division, so I left the classroom and taught online, never meeting the students face-to-face. It’s really not a bad experience.

Chapman is a 150 year-old private liberal arts institution located in California, with numerous campuses on the West Coast. Brandman is the name of a guy who donated millions to purchase immortality. Brandman University serves the “adult learner,” people who have families and jobs and yet somehow take college courses at night or online. I respect those students enormously for their efforts.

Online teaching and learning is neither better nor worse than the classroom type. It is simply a different species. I taught a wide variety of courses, including Personality Theory, Cognitive Psychology, Abnormal (“mental illness”), Developmental (“child psyhology”), statistics, and critical thinking.

It was grading the relentless flow of statistics homework that finally got to me.  Instead of exploding, I reluctantly quit.

In the 1990’s I was the Manager of Information Services for The Casey Family Programs, a nonprofit organization providing long term care to homeless children throughout America (www.Casey.org). I designed and implemented a national information network for them, hired  and ran the IT department from headquarters in Seattle.

Prior to becoming meaningless middle management, I had been a productive software engineer with various technology firms. Information technology was my second career after teaching, the one that paid the bills. However, the bureaucratic, quasi-governmental, corporate environment was not for me. I spent 50% of my time resolving “personnel issues,” the other 50% creating and wrestling the annual budget, and the third 50% in meetings.

Prior to my IT adventure I had taught psychology, sociology, and statistics at the University of Wisconsin, University of Maryland, and The College of Idaho. With University of Maryland’s University College, I traveled around the world for several years, living in Tokyo, Izmir, Venice, London, Luxembourg, and Heidelberg; with long journeys through China, Thailand, and India. I often wonder about people who haven’t traveled much. What do they think about the rest of the world? What you see on TV is not it.

Education-wise, I have a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology, with a specialization in computer science from The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I did a postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell University with James Gibson in perception and cognition. I didn’t fully understand my own doctoral dissertation until the 1980’s and I couldn’t properly evaluate Gibson’s contribution to my thinking until the 1990’s.

I am married, coming up on a 45th anniversary, although I am unsure of the exact date (uh-oh!). I have no children, or as I think of it, I am child-free.  I live in Tucson now. (Yes, it’s hot, but you don’t have to shovel it.)

Currently my passion is writing fiction, though the siren song of philosophical psychology is not entirely silent.

Your comments are appreciated. Without feedback, I’m a blind mole-rat groping in a deep cave.