jpskewedthrone | Author Introduction: David Keck

The next installment of Author Introduction series. This time my victim is David Keck, otherwise known of in LJ land as

davidkeck. His second book has just hit the shelves from TOR Books, so I invited him over to talk about it and his first book, and to generally entertain you all. So without further ado:

"Hey folks, Dave Keck here, and I'm a writer of those medieval-style fantasies we all know and love. (Feel the fleas, live the dentistry, wade the mud, wait for the invention of the furnace!) It's knights in rusting armour.

I'm a big reader of medieval history, a love I trace to an excellent professor - a man I nearly never met. Jerry Bowler was a last minute replacement for a course called something terrible like "The history of Britain from 450-1450." It wasn't his area, exactly, but he really enjoyed telling lurid tales. There was a king stabbed to death by a spearman cleverly concealed down the privy by disgruntled mother. And poor King Edward II killed with molten lead and a bit of brass plumbing where the sun doesn't shine. (Or so they say).

He also writes books about Santa Claus, believe it or not.

Reality is a wonderful mine of the macabre and the astounding.

I'm also a big fan of creepy old stories. You know, the kind that people half-believed in, late at night, once-upon-a-time. (These are typically filed under the unpromising headings of "folktale" or "mythology" to deter the uninitiated). Over the eons, every culture seems to have conjured up great flocks of hags and giants and charms and ghosts and devils, all thick with Freudian shadows. I love to rummage through collections of such critters, scuttling away with shivers and a head full of odd little ideas.

My first book, In the Eye of Heaven [Amazon; Mysterious Galaxy], put a young man in a tough spot. Basically, it opened as a decent man slipped off the bottom rung of the feudal ladder and landed among the starving wanderers of the road on the edge of winter. Picture an almost-knight lugging his armour through bogs and forests as his horse dies from under him. The poor fellow ends up selling his sword to the wrong side of a dirty little revolt and getting himself into all manner of moral entanglements.

Oh. And he's a bit haunted by gods and things.

In any case, a reviewer or two has been very kind. (Not that authors pay attention to such things, of course).

The second book, In a Time of Treason [Amazon; Mysterious Galaxy], picks up the same story as events career out of control. War breaks out, complete with ominous crows, siege weapons, and heroic last stands. Our poor hero is betrayed and betrays. He finds forbidden love amid the fires of dying cities. Cathedrals fall, the dead walk the earth, and the aforementioned hero finds himself jammed at the centre of it all.

Picture a nightmarish hybrid of Patricia McKillip, Patrick O'Brian, and Elmore Leonard.

If you want a taste of these strange things, you might want to check out the big samples at www.keckbooks.com. (More of my own ramblings can be found at

davidkeck)."