(RIGHT CLICK THE IMAGE TO SAVE THE EPISODE TO YOUR COMPUTER)
Keith gets the opportunity to sit on the other side of the Chronic Rift table as a guest. His latest Star Trek work, The Klingon Art of War has just been released and he sits with John to discuss the development and writing of the book. Take a listen as Keith explains all including what is happening with his Dragon Precinct series on a new Spotlight episode.
Comment on this episode here or by writing john@chronicrift.com. Please rate the episode using our star system at the bottom of this entry.
International best-selling author Keith R.A. DeCandido was born, raised, educated, and still lives in the Bronx. His Mom and Dad fed him a steady diet of Robert A. Heinlein, Ursula K. Le Guin, J.R.R. Tolkien, and P.G. Wodehouse, which corrupted him for life -- not only instilling in him a great love of science fiction, fantasy, and silly British humor, but also likely being responsible for his pretentious insistence on using both his middle initials all the time.
Keith has published over thirty novels, most of them in the realm of media tie-ins. The majority of his work has appeared in the worlds of Star Trek: Keith has written novels, novellas, comic books, short stories, and eBooks, and also edited several anthologies that cover all five TV shows as well as several prose-only series -- one of which, the Corps of Engineers eBook series, he co-developed. Several of his Trek novels have hit the USA Today best-seller list, and received critical acclaim from all over the map, both online and in print. Keith edited the monthly Star Trek eBook line from 2001 until the line came to an end in 2008.
He has also written in the worlds of Blizzard Games, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Command and Conquer, CSI, Doctor Who, Farscape, Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, Marvel Comics, Supernatural, Young Hercules, and many more.
In 2004, Dragon Precinct, Keith's first non-tie-in novel, was published. It's a police procedural in a standard elves/dwarves/magic fantasy setting -- picture Law & Order meets Lord of the Rings. Stories in the same setting have appeared in the anthologies Murder by Magic, Hear Them Roar, Bad-Ass Faeries, and Pandora's Closet.
Keith's editorial career started in college -- serving on Fordham University's award-winning alternative newspaper, called, simply, the paper -- and includes a stint at Library Journal magazine and five years as an editor for the late Byron Preiss and his various companies (Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Byron Preiss Multimedia, BP Books, and ibooks inc.). Among his accomplishments in the latter job were editing a highly successful line of novels based on Marvel Comics's super heroes and helping bring Alfred Bester back into print.
From 1998-2006, Keith owned and operated the company Albé-Shiloh Inc., a provider of writing and editing services. ASI's most visible project was the Nebula Award-nominated anthology of original novelettes called Imaginings: An Anthology of Long Short Fiction. Keith has edited over a dozen anthologies since 1995, from the acclaimed OtherWere: Stories of Transformation in 1996 to the Star Trek anthologies Tales of the Dominion War and Tales from the Captain's Table in 2004-2005 to Doctor Who: Short Trips: The Quality of Leadership in 2008.
For four glorious years, Keith worked on The Chronic Rift, a New York City public access talk show on SF, fantasy, comics, gaming, and other genre issues. Working with his best friend, Executive Producer and Director John S. Drew, Keith was cohost and Producer of the Rift, doing 100 half-hour episodes that aired in New York from 1990-1994.
Keith is a professional musician, currently the percussionist for the parody band the Boogie Knights. He's played on five CDs. From 1996-2000, he was with the Don't Quit Your Day Job Players, and besides his gigs with the Knights, he has been occasionally active in New York City clubs, backing up the Randy Bandits, Steve Rosenhaus, and the late David Honigsberg.
Besides all this, Keith is a student of Kenshikai karate (a brown belt, as of February 2008), and an amateur actor and voiceover actor (you can hear his work on some of the audio dramas produced and directed by his erstwhile Chronic Rift cohort John S. Drew).
