William J. Jackson was born in Rock Island, Illinois, home of the Rock Island Lines railroad. He studied acting at the Goodman Theatre, Art Institute of Chicago, and performed in Summer Stock and at the American Shakespeare Festival, Stratford Connecticut. He has lived in New York City, in northern Vermont, in California and other parts of America, and has spent a total of three and a half years in India. He studied traditions and languages of India at Harvard University, where he earned his PhD. He taught courses on Comparative Religion, Asian Religions and Indian culture for 25 years at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. He is the author of several books about south Indian musician-saints, three of them published by Oxford University Press. He published Vijayanagara Voices with Ashgate Publishing in England. He has published a book about fractal geometry in cultures (Heaven’s Fractal Net, Indiana U. Press), and one about generosity in America (The Wisdom of Philanthropy, Baylor U. Press). He has published a book of short stories in India, Worldviews Kaleidoscope, (BR Publishing, New Delhi) and a novel set by the Mississippi river, Diving for Carlos. He began working on The Singer by the River, an historical novel (published by Sruti in Chennai) while researching Tyagaraja—Life and Lyrics (Oxford University Press). He published American Tricksters, with Cascade Books, in 2015. His academic studies are informed by wisdom traditions of the Perennial Philosophy, and studies in Depth Psychology (C.G. Jung and James Hillman). Visual archetypal imagery has is a key element in his writing and teaching. Collage-making has been a quiet passionate avocation of his for five decades. He won a research grant at the Rockefeller Bellagio Center in Italy in 2000. He now lives in the rolling hills of Western Massachusetts with his wife, Marcia Plant Jackson. Gypsy Escapades is the first of a series of Escapades novels on issues of our times with international settings and characters.