William L. McGee… wrangler, writer, broadcaster, and award-winning WWII Pacific war historian
William L. “Bill” McGee’s writing career has spanned six decades. He has written 22 books… including five World War II Pacific war histories and five memoirs. During his 32-year career in broadcasting, he wrote twelve how-to guidebooks for broadcast sales and marketing.
Bill’s signature writing style is described as journalistic, spare, and “as precise and economical as a Mickey Spillane novel.” (Marine Corps League Magazine)
In the words of Barnaby Conrad, author and founder of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference:
“Bill McGee is no armchair historian. He’s lived what he writes about whether it’s joining the Navy in ’42 at age seventeen simply to get into the fight, or cowboying in the West in the postwar ’40s, or working in broadcasting in the early days of 1950s and ’60s television.”
Bill had a favorite saying about writing: “To anyone who has ever considered writing, there is only one way – ass in seat.”
In 2000, Bill began a successful writing collaboration with his wife, Sandra
When asked what it was like to work together as husband and wife, Bill and Sandra would look at each other, smile, and claim they seldom disagreed.
And Sandra had a favorite saying about writing: “The strongest drive is neither love nor hate; it is the urge to edit another’s copy.”