Who is Keith Gaston and why do you write?
I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan and I’m number 8 out of 13 children. If that sounds like a lot, well let me tell you that it is. Eighty percent of my wardrobe had consisted of hand-me-downs that were either too long or too short. Growing up, my siblings had to share pretty much everything, except toothbrushes, that’s disgusting. I’ve found out in my adulthood that my mother named most of us from characters from movies and television shows. My first name is Darin and you guessed it, she used to enjoy watching “Bewitched.” My only question is whether I was named after Dick York’s or Dick Sargent’s version of the character?
2020 marked twenty years of marriage and my wife and I have been blessed with two teenagers – a boy and a girl. Over the years I’ve posted many stories on social media about raising my children… I’ll rephrase that, I’ve shared many posts about how my children helped raised me. After all, I’m just an adult-sized kid at heart. Being a parent isn’t easy, but there are more positives than negatives and I wouldn’t change a thing. Well, there was that one time my family went bowling and my son’s bowling ball stopped rolling after a couple of feet on the lane. I tried calling myself a hero and stepped out onto said lane, and well… Have you ever seen those cartoons where the guy slips and does a triple somersault in the air and lands hard on his back? That… that, I would change.
As a child growing up in a house with absolutely no privacy, I would find a corner with pencil and paper in hand and worked on creating characters and stories for my comic books. As I submerged myself into these stories, I drowned out the rest of the world and found solitude in an otherwise crowded space. So, whenever I’m asked why I write, I always tell people it’s because it pulls me out of the real world and permits me the freedom to express myself in ways I couldn’t in the real world.
Where do you live and what do you do when you’re not writing?
Currently, I live thirty minutes outside of Detroit. I work full-time in the Information Technology field. I’m perhaps one of those rare people who actually enjoys their job. Because of COVID, I’m been working remotely working from home and still somehow manage to be late for work occasionally.
When I’m not writing or working, I like to play video games. I’m into first-person shooters (FPS) — Call of Duty, Wolfenstein, Doom, and Serious Sam types of games. I’m also a big movie buff. I enjoy classic film noir detective and low budget science fiction movies. My kids used to tease me about why I still watch old movies. I would make them sit there and explain it. They don’t pick on me much about it anymore for some reason.
What keeps you motivated to write?
My motivation to write is easy, I enjoy it. I love storytelling. Also, I get to revisit some of the ideas I came up with during my comic writing days. I get a kick out of introducing heroes and villains into my novels that everyone is clueless about except for me.
How long have you been writing and what have you learned about yourself through your writing?
My writing adventure started when I was a kid. As I mentioned previously, I drew comic books from my preteen years all the way into young adulthood. While I served in the Army, I got into reading paperbacks and it sparked my interest in writing novels. But it wasn’t until after I’ve completed college that I took writing books seriously.
What I’ve learned about myself is that as much as writing takes me out of reality, it doesn’t let me forget my past. In all my books, a part of my history has been inserted into the story, it may be one of the character’s traits or it might be the setting or it may be the product of watching too much television growing up.
What audience are you trying to reach with your work? Is there an audience for Keith Gaston?
The audience that I had written for originally has changed over the years. In the beginning, I tried to be wide-ranging to pull in readers who enjoyed different genres. XIII, my first novel was a thriller with elements of horror, action, humor, and a diverse cast of characters. My next book was Lost Hours, a murder mystery featuring a private detective going through mental hardships while trying to solve a twenty-three-year-old murder case. I bounced around between genres with each book, which made it difficult for readers because they were expecting a mystery but got a supernatural thriller instead.
Later, I wrote under two pen names (Keith Gaston and D K Gaston) to try to be less confusing. It helped for a while, especially when attending book conferences. If the conference was about mysteries, I brought only my mystery novels and if the subject was speculative fiction, you guessed it, all the supernatural books came out.
Currently, I write for myself. If I write with an intended audience in mind, it takes the joy out of writing.
How would you describe your style of writing?
I write my books in a cinematic movie telling fashion with broad visual strokes, full character building, and a well-paced tempo. What I do not do, is spend too much time on certain details that you might find in other books in the same genre. By details, I mean, filler information, this being what variety of perfume a character sprayed herself with or the exact brand name clothing someone is wearing. If it’s not relevant to the story, I don’t tend to include them because I believe it slows the pacing of my stories.
A great example of my cinematic style would be in The Friday House. I tried to put the reader into every scene and have readers go through the story, discovering the conspiracies and threats as the protagonists uncovered them.
Tell us about your latest book.
Wicked & Preternatural: Awakening is about monster hunter Zoe Daniels. The setting is in Detroit. For some, monster hunting can be a lucrative lifestyle for those bold enough to battle the forces of evil, for others… not so much. She speaks with a potential client, a mysterious elderly woman named Ms. Olson about a job that other monster hunters had passed on. Down on her luck and desperate for work, Zoe accepts the work which is to find Ms. Olson’s grandson, E. Ms. Olson cautioned Zoe not too underestimate E. The child is far more than he seems, she warns. It turned out she was right. E has uncanny abilities, and its growing by the hour.
Zoe pursued an uneven trail of chaos and destruction left in the child’s wake. At first, she thought the boy aimlessly drifted the streets. But as she closes in on her target, she discovers E has a mission that he’s dead set on finishing, and he won’t let anyone stop him no matter the cost.
What are you working on now?
I’m currently working on a sequel to Wicked & Preternatural called Bitter & Demonic.
Anything else we need to know?
The audio of Wicked & Preternatural: Awakening will be coming out in September 2020, narrated by a fantastic voice actor, Kylah Williams.
Thank you for this interview, I have enjoyed it.
