Michael Banister

My Writing Career

While a law student at Golden Gate University, I served on the Law Review

and published an article, “Qualified Immunity for INS Church-Busters? Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) v. United States.” Ninth Circuit Survey, Volume 20, Number 1, Spring 1990.

I practiced law for 23 years at the California Attorney General’s Office in San Francisco.

During that time, in addition to arguing criminal cases in the California courts, I taught for 13 semesters in Golden Gate University’s “Appellate Advocacy” program part time as an Adjunct Professor.

In 2000 I published Asmara, A Memoir, part of the “Peace Corps Writers” anthology,

“Eritrea Remembered: Recollections and Photos by Peace Corps Volunteers.”

I retired in 2011 and began writing fiction and memoirs.

My first piece of fiction was a self-published novella, My Brother’s Keeper, loosely based on my younger brother’s murder.

Next came a novel, Stolen Identity, published by Andrew Benzie Books in 2015.

Its sequel, Unfinished Business, (Andrew Benzie Books) came out in 2017.

Trial and Error (self-published), the third novel in the trilogy that began with Stolen Identity, came out in 2021. I have since extended this novel and it has been published by Andrew Benzie Books as Blind Justice in 2026.

My self-published novel The Mystic and the Warrior also came out in 2021.

My novel A Time Away from Time (Andrew Benzie Books) came out in 2023.

Its sequel, The Starlight Commune (Andrew Benzie Books), came out that same year.

The sequel to A Time Away from Time, A Voyage through the Interstice (Andrew Benzie Books) came out in January 2024.

My novel, Tales of Nicolas Flamel, Time Traveler (Andrew Benzie Books) came out in 2023.

My memoir, The Happy Wanderer (Andrew Benzie Books) came out in 2024.

My short story, “One More Race Before We Die,” was published in 2019

in the University of Hawaii “eZine” Vice-Versa. I included that story in

my Collected Stories (self-published, 2021).

In addition to The Happy Wanderer, I published three other memoirs in 2021:

A Pirate Forever (self-published);

From Librarian to Lawyer (self-published); and

Life as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ethiopia and Eritrea, 1972-74 (self-published).