Sidney Williams worked as a newspaper reporter for eleven years. In his early days as a general assignment reporter, his shift was 1 p.m. to 10 p.m., so he wrote fiction in the early morning hours, completing most of his work from midnight until 2 a.m., ironically an appropriate time for dark fiction.

He completed the book that would become his first published novel when he was 26. The book took a few years to sell, but several additional novels followed, and eventually three young adult novels were published under the name Michael August.