Keith R. A. DeCandido

This week: Keith R. A. DeCandido

Interviewing Keith was super interesting - he introduced me to Tie-In Fiction. Honestly, I hadn't put much thought into who writes these novels that I see on shelves (personally I have C.S.I. novels), but whoa! So neat. Keith has written more than just tie-in fiction, so take a look and enjoy a peek into Keith R. A. DeCandido! 

Name: Keith R.A. DeCandido
Genre:  science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, superhero.

Where do you find inspiration?
Everywhere. I've taken inspiration from trips to Key West, from doing Census work in 2010, from episodes of TV shows, from single lines of dialogue, from weird questions I ask myself in the shower, from a song lyric, from a poem. The entire world is a great source of inspiration.

Which character in literature do you associate yourself with the most?
Honestly, there isn't a character in fiction I associate myself with at all. My favorite characters are all people who are nothing like me.

Which piece of your writing was the most entertaining/enjoyable to write? Why?
That's a tough one to narrow down, but I think I'm gonna go with Blackout, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel I wrote that came out in 2006. The novel focused on one of Buffy's predecessors as Slayer, Nikki Wood, who was established as working in New York City in 1977 before she was killed on a subway train by Spike. Writing a Slayer working in the Big Apple of the turbulent late 70s was a joy and a pleasure, as I got to basically relive my childhood growing up in NYC then (I was eight years old in 1977). Nikki was created as an homage to Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones and other heroines of the era, and I went full-tilt blaxploitation with Blackout, pretty much writing the book as if Buffy was a TV show created by Gordon Parks in the 1970s instead of Joss Whedon in the 1990s. Just a blast to write, with scenes at CBGBs in its heyday, Times Square at its grungiest, and Central Park at its scariest.

Was the first novel you published the first you ever wrote? What was? 
Oh, goodness no. The first novel I wrote was this awful piece of contemporary science fiction I wrote in high school, followed by a dreadful Star Trek novel. Neither have ever seen the light of day, nor will they.

When I’m not writing I’m usually…
sleeping, watching Yankee games, training at the dojo (I'm a third-degree black belt in karate), or teaching karate to little kids (I teach three after-school classes during the school year, and every Friday night, I teach a kids' sparring class). 

If you could tell or ask any character in literature or film anything, what would it be? 
I'd tell Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye to grow the hell up.

If you had lived a different life, made different choices, what would you be doing now? 
I dunno, I've wanted to be a writer since I was six. The only thing I could see being a different choice would be getting into theatre, as I did a lot of acting when I was in grammar school, and might have pursued it instead of going for writing.

What are five things you couldn’t do without? 
Coffee. Good food. Coffee. Stories in whatever form—literary, screen, theatrical, whatever. And coffee.

 What do few people know about you? 
There was a very brief period when I was in high school where I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. I had dreams of possibly someday becoming a writer or an actor or a baseball player, which wouldn't surprise anyone, but there was a time there when "lawyer" seemed like a good idea.

Are you working on any current projects?
Always. I'm a full-time freelancer, so I always have several projects going at once. I have one novel that I'm awaiting feedback on from my editor and the licensor (it's a tie-in novel), one novel that I'm doing a polish on, another novel that I've plotted and need to start writing, a set of tie-in novellas that I'm awaiting feedback from the licensor on the plots for, plus a bunch of other things at various stages.

 What work of fiction made you want to be a writer?
I can't narrow it down to one. When I was old enough to read things on my own, my parents gave me Ursula K. Le Guin's "Earthsea" trilogy, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, Robert A. Heinlein's YA novels, and P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves & Wooster stories. All of those deserve credit for making me the writer (and weirdo) I am today.

 What tools do you use for writing, organization, marketing?
My computer, my brain, my experience, other people's experience. I try to pay attention to everything and adapt as needed. My promotional efforts when I started in the 1990s are much different than they are now. But mostly, I try to cultivate a reputation as an interesting person, as someone who has cogent and canny (and sometimes humorous) things to say, and as someone whom other people will think is worth reading. 

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Author Bio: Keith R.A. DeCandido has been writing since he was six years old, though they didn't start paying him for it until much later. (Hey, c'mon, he was six.) His career spans more than two decades, which mostly makes him feel old. By the end of 2018, he'll have had fifty-six novels, a hundred pieces of short fiction, fifty-nine comic books, three reference books, and more essays, reviews, and other nonfiction than he's frankly willing to count published. His bibliography includes tie-in fiction for more than thirty different licensed universes from Alien to Zorro (in 2009, he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, which means he never needs to achieve anything ever again), plus original work in his own universes taking place in the fictional cities of Cliff's End and Super City as well as the somewhat real locales of New York City and Key West. He's also been writing about pop culture for Tor.com since 2011 and on Patreon since 2017. When he's not writing, he trains in and teaches karate (he achieved his third-degree black belt in October 2017), edits other people's work professionally (his clients are both personal and corporate), and follows his beloved New York Yankees. He has given up on such outmoded concepts as "sleep."

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