ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chip Williamson is an architect, artist, photographer, and novelist whose stories explore the enduring relationship between people and the places they inhabit. For more than thirty-five years, his work as an architect has centered on listening—to clients, communities, history, and the land itself. That same philosophy now shapes his fiction.
A lifelong journal writer, Chip brings the same careful observation to his novels, exploring memory, faith, loss, and the quiet ways places preserve the stories of those who came before us. His completed literary novels, The Property Psalter and Indwelling, are currently seeking publication and reflect a lifelong fascination with landscapes, homes, and the unseen threads that connect generations.
Chip lives in Dayton, Ohio, with his wife, Jen, where he continues to write, paint, photograph, and design. He is currently at work on Oddfellow, a literary novel exploring the relationship between memory, obsession, and madness.
He believes that places remember us long after we've left them.
The Property Psalter
An architect's purchase of a quiet stretch of land along Indiana's Whitewater River becomes far more than the family retreat he imagined.
Across four interwoven timelines spanning nearly two thousand years—from an Adena settlement and a Shawnee healer to nineteenth-century pioneers and the present day—the same sacred landscape shapes the lives of those willing to listen to it.
As personal tragedy forces the narrator to confront grief and loss, the property becomes a place of remembrance, healing, and hope.
The Property Psalter is a literary novel exploring memory, faith, family, and the enduring relationship between humanity and the places we call home.
Seeking publication this Fall.
The Property Psalter
"I have always believed that places remember.
A house, a river, a forgotten cemetery, or a quiet stretch of woodland can become more than a setting
—they become witnesses.
My novels explore the lives that unfold within those places and the memories they quietly preserve across generations."
Featured Works
Indwelling
For centuries, a remarkable house in Key West quietly bears witness to the lives, loves, and losses of those who pass through its doors.
Its first unseen resident is Curiosity, a young Calusa girl whose spirit becomes bound to the mansion after her ancient burial site is disturbed. As Hoodoo practitioner Patience, the steadfast Amos, the ambitious Silas Black, and others leave their mark on The Meridian, Curiosity observes a story of love, loss, forgiveness, and redemption unfolding across generations.
Indwelling is a historic Coastal Gothic novel that asks whether homes remember those who have lived within them—and whether love endures long after the living are gone.
Seeking publication this Fall.
Indwelling
Oddfellow
Behind the stately walls of Maddox Manor, every room holds a story—and not all of them should be remembered.
Bernard Maddox welcomes an unexpected visitor into a house filled with music, memories, and ghosts of another kind. Through a series of intimate conversations, Bernie recounts the extraordinary story of his brother Charlie, a gifted but troubled man whose fascination with secret societies, anatomy, and death set him on a path toward murder.
As Bernie wanders the decaying mansion, the boundaries between memory and reality begin to blur, revealing long-buried family secrets hidden beneath one of the city's most respected families.
Oddfellow is a literary Gothic novel exploring family, memory, obsession, madness, and the dangerous power of hidden histories.
Expected completion early 2027.
OddFellow
Why I write
Stories aren't invented—they're discovered. At least that's how it has always felt to me. The simple answer is this: writing fiction is fun. Where else in your life do you get to let your imagination run free to explore new places, meet new people, and discover the intrigue and mystery between them? I’ve loved storytelling all my life.
It started as a kid writing Halloween scenes for my annual neighborhood performances. Not much gore but plenty of scare. Building the characters, the setups, and the surprise scares took me weeks to create. And I loved that part. Even beyond the spooky characters and story arcs was the trick-or-treaters reaction to my inventions. Their shudders and screams melding into laughter at the trick left me wanting for more. It was a shame that Halloween was once a year.
Those simple little one-act scenes turned me into an avid movie fan. I still am. So I thought, for just a minute, I’ll become an…act-or! Then one look in the mirror convinced me otherwise. I had a face for journalism. Through high school I practiced my writing on the school newspaper. Volunteering annually at the local Kiwanis haunted house so as not to lose my fix for scaring.
I had a decision to make at graduation, continue writing or follow my desire to be an architect. My mother told me that I could write on the side while a practicing architect but it’s not feasible, and I later discovered, not legal to design buildings as a hobby.
Architecture school taught me that good design follows the same principles as songwriting, painting, photography, and storytelling. Different mediums. Same creative impulse. I've never cared what the canvas was—as long as I was creating something.
Fast forward 30 years. Now married, with six grown children and 4 grandchildren and an architectural career beginning to wind down, I decided to write again. The real beginning wasn't a novel—it was a journal. For nearly thirty years I filled notebooks with observations, questions, memories, and half-formed ideas. They were never meant for publication. They were conversations with myself, a legacy I imagined my family might someday discover.
That journal led me to writing a novel. A tale for its own sake, for others to read and not kept hidden, was my invitation, and I haven’t looked back since. That first sentence as a novelist was thrilling. And it’s still a thrill to me, and sometimes an obsession, to share a unique story. A story is found for me, it’s discovered in the corners, parlors, attics, fields, forests and rivers of my heart and soul. An old sea story resurrected, or a modern lived family tragedy transformed, my desire remains the same – to share it.
Every novel begins with curiosity. Somewhere along the way, curiosity becomes discovery. If readers discover something about themselves before the final page, then I've done my job. That's why I write.
Writing lets me spend time with people who never existed, in places that somehow feel real. If I'm fortunate, readers will close one of my books feeling as though they've walked beside an old friend for a while. That’s why I write.
I believe writing is the most generous thing I know how to do. It is my way of sharing a lifetime of observations, questions, joys, losses, and imagination with people I've never met. If, for a few hours, we walk together through one of my stories, then we've both been given a gift. That's why I write.