- a novelist, short-story author, comic book writer, pop-culture commentator, critic, anthologist, martial artist, and person who doesn’t get enough sleep
Readers, thanks for checking out another Author Spotlight Interview. Let’s give a good, hearty welcome to this week’s guest!
Keith R.A. DeCandido has written more than 60 novels, more than 100 short stories, around 50 comic books, and more nonfiction than he’s comfortable counting.
His fiction has been in both 30+ licensed universes including TV shows (Star Trek, Supernatural), movies (Serenity, Cars) games (World of Warcraft, Resident Evil), and comic books (Spider-Man, Thor),and also in worlds of his own creation, including fantastical police procedurals in the fictional cities of Cliff’s End (Dragon Precinct and its sequels) and Super City (The Case of the Claw and a bunch of short fiction) and urban fantasies in the somewhat real locales of New York City (the Bram Gold Adventures) and Key West (the tales of Cassie Zukav, weirdness magnet).
Recent and upcoming work includes Supernatural Crimes Unit, a new novel series; the Resident Evil comic book Infinite Darkness: The Beginning, the prequel to the Netflix animated series; Phoenix Precinct and Feat of Clay, the latest in two of his fantasy series; the Star Trek Adventures RPG module Incident at Kraav III (with Fred Love); the short-story collection Ragnarok and a Hard Place: More Tales of Cassie Zukav, Weirdness Magnet; the serial-killer tale Animal (written with Dr. Munish K. Batra), which is both a novel and an upcoming graphic novel; and short fiction in Star Trek Explorer magazine, in the Phenomenons shared-world anthology series, in the anthologies Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weird, Sherlock Holmes: Cases by Candlelight Volumes 2 & 3, Sherlock Holmes: Eliminate the Impossible, A Cry of Hounds, Thrilling Adventure Yarns 2022, Joe Ledger: Unbreakable, and The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny, as well as in two anthologies he also co-edited, Double Trouble: An Anthology of Two-Fisted Team-Ups (with Jonathan Maberry) and The Four ???? of the Apocalypse (with Wrenn Simms).
Keith also writes about pop-culture for a variety of sources, including Tor.com and his own Patreon (patreon.com/krad), as well as for magazines and essay collections. In what he laughingly refers to as his spare time, Keith is a fourth-degree black belt (he trains and teaches regularly), a musician (currently with the parody band Boogie Knights), a freelance editor (for clients both personal and corporate), and a baseball fan (who is very disappointed in how his beloved New York Yankees performed in 2023).
Keith, thanks for agreeing to be here today. Most author spotlight interviews start off with the boring stuff, but I know what readers REALLY want to know.
If you could have any pet (real/fantasy/no-allergies/no worries about feeding it) what would it be?
Probably a Hundun, like Morris in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
I had to google that one, but what a snuggle-bug/cutie!
What do you write? And how did you get started?
I write genre fiction, a mix of fantasy, science fiction, mystery, horror, superhero, and thriller.
The second question is a longer answer. I’ve always wanted to write, going back to when I was a wee tot and my librarian parents read to me and then gave me stuff to read on my own when I was old enough to do so. My first writing was a small book I wrote (and produced on construction paper) called Reflections in My Mirror when I was six years old. (I still have it; it’s horrible — I mean, I was six — but it’s a fun artifact to keep around.)
In high school and college I wrote for school newspapers, and in the latter case also became an editor. That led to doing some nonfiction writing for Library Journal, The Comics Journal, Publishers Weekly, Creem, and some other places, and also led to employment as an editor, first in the magazine field, then for the late book packager Byron Preiss.
In 1994, John Betancourt and I were the editors of a new series of novels and short-story anthologies based on Marvel’s superheroes that Byron was co-publishing with Boulevard Books. (A year later, John left the company, and I was the editor in charge of the line until 1999).
My first published work of fiction came about in a particularly non-replicable fashion. We were putting together a Spidey anthology as part of that line, and we needed a Venom story. Venom was Spidey’s most popular villain at the time, he was on the cover of the book, and six straight proposals by six different authors of Venom stories were rejected by Marvel. Marvel then gave us a logline and — it being past the eleventh hour at this point — John and I just wrote the damn story ourselves in about three days.
Wow! A combination of skill, hard-work, and being in the right place at the right time!
What do you like to read?
On those vanishingly rare occasions when I have time to read, I gravitate toward mysteries, SF/F, books about baseball, and superhero stories.
Alas, most of what little reading time I have tends to be taken up with research for whatever my latest writing project is. (For example, right now I’m reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger novels — The Lost World and its sequels — in preparation for writing a Challenger story for A Cry of Hounds.)
Having read a few of your works, why am I not surprised?
What do you drink when you write/edit?
Coffee if it’s morning. Iced tea or water if it isn’t. Wine, Scotch, or bourbon when I’m done.
You sound like a classic author!
Do you snack when you write/edit? What are your favorites!
I rarely snack while writing or editing, though on those rare occasions when I do, it’s often grapes. Or ice cream. But mostly grapes.
What a healthy selection! I’m mostly chip-fueled. And chocolate truffles.
Name one commonly accepted piece of writing advice that doesn’t work for you
Don’t have a prologue.
Most of my 60 novels have prologues. Also, any writing advice that’s extreme (always do this; never do that) is automatically bad advice, because there are almost always exceptions, and just one disproves the rule.
Now I’m tempted to add one of mine back in…
Name one commonly accepted piece of writing advice they can pry out of your cold, dead hands
Finish what you start.
The ratio of stories that are started to stories that are finished is about eight billion to 0.5. It’s real easy to start a story, but you’re not a writer unless you finish them.
Indeed!
Shameless Self-Promotion time!
Precinct (1-6)
Dragon Precinct #1
Humans and elves, dwarves and gnomes, wizards and warriors all live and do business in the thriving, overcrowded port city of Cliff’s End, to say nothing of the tourists and travellers who arrive by land and sea, passing through the metropolis on matters of business or pleasure—or on quests. The hard-working, under-appreciated officers of the Cliff’s End Castle Guard work day and night to maintain law and order as best they can.
Gan Brightblade is one of the world’s greatest heroes and a personal friend of the Lord and Lady of Cliff’s End. So when he’s brutally murdered in grubby lodgings in Dragon Precinct, on the eve of a great quest, the Captain of the Guard puts his two best investigators on the case. The half-elf Danthres Tresyllione and ex-soldier Torin ban Wyvald soon discover that the crime scene is empty of any forensic evidence—physical or magickal. They have no clues, and heat is on.
The Lord and Lady want their friend’s murder solved—now. The populace is mourning the loss of a great hero. The ever-unhelpful Brotherhood of Wizards could take over the case at any minute. And then another member of Brightblade’s party turns up dead….
The Four ???? of the Apocalypse
We all know about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Death, War, Famine, and Pestilence riding on pale horses and all that Book-of-Revelation stuff. But why does it have to be four guys on horses?
Why not the Four Cheerleaders of the Apocalypse? The Four Cats of the Apocalypse? The Four PTA Moms of the Apocalypse? The Four Lawyers, Librarians, or Lunch Ladies of the Apocalypse? The Four Drummers, Rock Stars, or Opera Singers of the Apocalypse? Or even the Four Squirrels of the Apocalypse or the Four Emojis of the Apocalypse?
And so we present The Four ???? of the Apocalypse, as twenty-nine brilliant authors give us alternate takes on the legendary quartet of end-of-the-world avatars.
Double Trouble:
An Anthology of Two-Fisted Team-Ups
Batman and Superman. Alien and Predator. Zatoichi and Yojimbo. The Six-Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman. Carol Danvers and Kamala Khan. Hercules and Xena. Iron Man and Captain America. Team-ups have been a part of storytelling for as long as stories have been told, from Enkidu helping Gilgamesh to the coming together of the Avengers.
As writers of licensed fiction, one of the most enjoyable aspects is to put together various combinations of characters that don’t always get together. But one thing we rarely get to do is team characters from different milieus. Sure, it happens sometimes—in 1998, Simon & Schuster published a Star Trek: The Next Generation/X-Men crossover novel, and the comics company IDW has an impressive recent history of mixing and matching some of their licensed universes—but for the most part such pairings are left to the realm of fanfiction.
But what about characters who are in the public domain? The sky’s the limit there.
And so we as co-editors decided to get some of our favorite tie-in writers together to see what team-ups of classic characters they could come up with.
So sit back, relax, and enjoy these terrific tales of two-fisted team-ups!
The Kellidian Kidnapping
Star Trek Explorer #8 is here, ensuring Star Trek Day celebrations carry on long after September 8!In the unmissable 100-page issue you’ll find… Ed Speleers, who played Jack Crusher in Star Trek: Picard on whether he’ll be returning to Star Trek; Celia Rose Gooding reflets on playing Nyota Uhura in the first and second seasons of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds; and there’s the second half of our 2-part interview with Jonathan Frakes.
Behind-the-scenes we meet composer Nami Melumad to learn about creating the music for Star Trek: Prodigy and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds; and Star Trek: Picard Production Designer Dave Blass tells us about developing the vision for the Federation’s 25th century aesthetic.
There are TWO all-new and exclusive short stories in this issue – Tuvok comes to the rescue in Keith R.A. DeCandido’s “The Kellidian Kidnapping”, and in David Mack’s “Lost and Founder” we find Odo in a reflective mood….
Ragnarok and Roll
Cassie Zukav has always been a bit of a weirdness magnet. Strange things always happened to her, even before she came to Key West for vacation and never left.
She’s dealt with sea monsters and nixies and dragons, and shares her room with the ghost of an old wrecker captain, whom only she can see and hear. Now she spends her days leading scuba diving jaunts and her nights at Mayor Fred’s Saloon watching the house band, 1812, rock the joint. But when 1812 takes a break, they’re replaced by Jötunheim, a band everyone but Cassie loves. Their lead singer is Loki, the Norse trickster god, who is trying to bring about Ragnarok-the end of all that is. Cassie learns that she’s a Dís, a fate goddess, from Odin himself, the Allfather of the Norse gods. She’s the only one who can stop Loki from destroying the world.
And then things get really weird…
Here are eight stories of Cassie’s adventures in Key West, from her encounter with a rock and roll star who’s not what (or who) he seems, to stopping a water elemental from killing one of her friends (by marrying her), to the ghosts on the island all becoming active (and destructive), to a surprise appearance on the island by Thor, the thunderer.
Check out Keith R.A. DeCandido across the web!
Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube | Patreon | BSky | Goodreads | Amazon
WRITING TIPS & WRITERLY MUSINGS 
2 Comments
Comments are closed.