KMWR: When we first walked up to that receptionist, I was thinking, Her glasses are on upside down. And then I was like, Oh, never mind. That's the look.

JK: That's the look!

KMWR: Can you tell me more about yourself and how you began your writing career?

JK: Well, I am a boy from Tampa, Florida, who grew up without much stimulation. I sought stimulation in the form of comic books at the neighborhood bodega. I'm talking '80s comic books, like G.I. Joe, Transformers, Spider Man, Batman, The Hulk, Iron Man, all the things that now dominate the cinema.

I graduated to the Pillbox Library down the street where I found books by Stephen King. I was just really taken by the idea that somebody had sat down and wrote, for example, a novelization of the movie, The Goonies. I was intrigued by the idea of the novel. Prose fiction. And also short stories, Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles was a big deal in the '80s when I was a kid. I loved reading that stuff.

By the time I got to high school, it allowed for more creativity. I worked on a student literary magazine in high school.

KMWR: That's cool that you had that.

JK: Yes. I went to an arts preparatory school. It was fun. I also worked on the yearbook. I performed music in the productions at my high school. Grease, Phantom of the Opera. Little Shop of Horrors. I played the dentist in my senior year. It was a big role for me. All these things were shaping me as an artist. I went to the University of Central Florida in Orlando, where I immediately went to work writing album reviews for the student campus newspaper and working for the undergraduate literary journal.

KMWR: Creating a tangible thing.

JK: Yes. It was very important. It wasn't just the writing in your mind. That's how I always looked at writing, the end product of it. It’s not just the act of sitting down and typing out or writing with the pencil or pen, writing out your dreams, your stories. I always looked at the end result. That’s what brought me to work on the literary journal in my Master’s program. It was then called Sundog and published by the English department. I found peers who were also interested in editing and producing a literary journal three times a year. I feel like I've been on deadlines since I was in middle school. And I thought deadlines were important.

KMWR: Do you feel like they're still important now?

JK: Even more important, the more that I’ve published, the more that I realized meeting a deadline is nearly everything. When I have a deadline, I'm forced to work, and I push myself beyond my comfort zone. And I realize I'm not an inspiration driven writer. I can't wait around for inspiration to strike me so that I sit down in front of the computer. I have to have a deadline to motivate me. Deadlines also found me as I worked as a journalist at the Las Vegas weekly newspaper called Las Vegas City Life. And there I wrote about everything: restaurants, bars, music, visual art. I wrote about tattoo shops, monster trucks, nearly every aspect of entertainment in Las Vegas. It's a deeply fascinating city with lots of nooks and crannies that I could explore. It wasn't like a boring ass Midwest suburban town. It was something else entirely. It was almost like a monster.

KMRW: Interesting that you say that… since you have a horror collection, Gateways to Annihilation!

JK: (laughter) Yes. And I was always drawn to the monstrous. My dissertation, for example, was a collection of poems called Monster Fashion. I have always found the grotesque aspects of entertainment and pop culture to be deeply rewarding to explore. Vegas felt like a dream, like I finally arrived to the place that I needed to be.

With all that journalistic experience, I was able to draw upon it for the next 20 years. But it's true that I did take another detour, where I became a corporate communicator for a casino company in Las Vegas on the Strip, MGM Resorts, and wrote employee newsletters for many years. That showed me yet another side of Las Vegas, that we call “back of house,” behind the scenes of every major casino on the Strip. I'm talking backstage behind Shark Reef Aquarium, or Cirque productions like the Lion King at Mandalay Bay.

KMWR: Was this an employee only sort of thing?

JK: These were newsletters that were geared toward the audience of MGM resorts, back then it was 30,000 employees.

KMWR: Was it to encourage camaraderie or…?

JK: Yeah, it was there to build morale and to spotlight and showcase the accomplishments and achievements of MGM employees. So I found that to be really rewarding because I interviewed the guy who ran the wave pool at Mandalay Bay. I met the guy who cleaned and polished the mirrors and replaced the light bulbs at the top of the Luxor pyramid where the spotlight beam shines into outer space. I met all these interesting people. Showgirls, pastry chefs…

KMWR: Did they seem like they liked their jobs?

JK: They were excited to be interviewed. It was touching and poignant because sometimes employees would say to me, “I had no idea management even knew I existed.” If you think about your average job, forget the Strip, just your average job, there are very few opportunities for people to have their lives, their professions, their careers written about and then published and distributed across multiple properties. That was a big deal. It was really a world within a world.

KMWR: Was it an email newsletter or was it printed?

JK: It was very similar to the campus student newspaper that I had been writing, and editing back at University of Central Florida in the early 90s. The campuses of MGM resorts were very similar to those student campuses that I had enjoyed and explored as a young person in the 90s.

All of that gave me fuel for writing. I wrote the Underground Guide to Las Vegas which is an alternative travel guide to Sin City. And in that book, I put it all out there, the best swingers clubs, tattoo parlors, where to find the best steakhouse off Strip versus all those expensive joints in Las Vegas proper, I was able to really dig deep into underground Las Vegas. I thought that was really fun.

But it wasn't until my experience crashing the drone convention in Mandalay Bay that I learned about another aspect of Las Vegas, which is the military industrial complex, that has a very severe, you might say, grip on the state of Nevada. I'm talking about places like Creech Air Force Base, Nellis Air Force Base, Area 51.

KMWR: Is that the Air Force Base before you drive in, from the north end?

JK: Yes.

KMWR: (grumbling) Where you have to slow down to 50 miles an hour...

JK:  Yeah, yeah. I learned about all of these places because I happened to find this drone convention at the Mandalay Bay.

KR: And you just walked in?

JK: With my employee ID they assumed I was there to clean or something! Walked right in and I found an incredibly massive intersection that involved engineering programs at universities, tech companies, Silicon Valley, and foreign governments. All of this had gathered there in the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. I'm talking a million square foot of convention space, all of it filled with drone tech. And so I started picking up and collecting the brochures. I brought back giant stacks of this material, but I also talked to people. I talked to the students, I talked to professors.

KMWR: And people love to talk.

JK: They do. They love to talk about things that—at the time—were rather frightening to me, given that it wasn't my field or industry. I learned about things like the singularity, this idea that tech bros were counting on the moment, in the near future, when we would be able to upload our consciousness into the, I don't know, the cloud or something (laughter), and merge ourselves with—

KMWR: And they were excited about it.

JK: —the higher technological power. A uni-mind, if you will. Yes, they were. The idea of immortality, of an afterlife was strong even among these atheist tech bros. It was very interesting and very scary. And the weapons! Wow. From dirigibles to submarines to drones that were meant to resemble insects and condors.

KMWR: It sounds like a sci-fi movie.

JK: Yeah, it was the late 2000s, so by the time I started writing the novel, in the mid 20-teens, I was already relying on outdated technology. I thought that gave the novel that I was working on a real kind of retro feel. I was almost writing an alternative military history. My efforts in that direction culminated in the writing of Hammer of the Dogs, which is about teenage drone assassins killing each other in post-apocalyptic Las Vegas. I wanted to rewrite Battle Royale or Hunger Games in a way that I thought would be interesting to, not just young readers, but also Gen-X or Boomers. I wanted to write a novel for everyone that had something to say about these issues that I could see on the horizon. With regard to drone tech, killing via remote control, things like that. A voice, a character, emerged from this post-apocalyptic concept, and that was Lash.

That book was a lot of fun to write, and I wrote it very quickly. I really liked what I ended up with, so I submitted it to the University of Nevada Press. By this point, I was already teaching at UNLV. That was a big breakthrough moment for me, the publication of Hammer of the Dogs, which resulted in me getting more book deals, like one deal to write a trilogy of Westerns featuring a character named Kid Crimson, who escapes the South, moves to Virginia City during the silver boom.

Eventually I found myself writing children's books, which was something I had always wanted to do. Military histories about World War II's forgotten heroes, et cetera.

KMRW: Did you have those already written, and then you were shopping them, or you were contracting?

JK: A children's book publisher reached out to me. That's the best place a writer can end up is, you know, where you don't have to pitch and query agents and publishers anymore. Instead, they email you and they say, can you do this for this amount of money? And you say—

KMWR: “Yeah, I can!”

JK: Hopefully, yes! The Choose Your Own Adventure novels are essentially history books. I found that that was more lucrative in the sense that they sold more copies because parents want to buy educational books for their kids. Those were a blast to write, and I would have done them for free. There was no need to pay me, I would happily write them all over again and more.

Gateways to Annihilation is what I happened to be writing in between these projects. I see that collection as a kind of anthology series. Each story would be transporting the reader to a different time, a different setting, a different set of characters. I really strove to make sure that each story was remarkably different than the proceeding one. I think I succeeded. I think every story in Gateways to Annihilation is unique and wildly different from everything else in the book.

KMWR: What are you annihilating?

JK: Well, it’s like entropy… it sounds like when things fall apart that’s a bad thing. But sometimes when things crumble and collapse it can be fun. It’s an opportunity to resurrect yourself, to reinvent yourself. I feel that in many ways I had to annihilate my old self, my old Florida man, in order to become something else and something new in Las Vegas. I don't think I would have been the same writer or even a writer, if I had stayed in Florida. I think Nevada and Las Vegas forced me to change, to adapt, not just to everyday life—because let's face it, it's brutally hot, much of the year in Las Vegas. It changed my perspective on many things. I used to dismiss Las Vegas. I thought it was shallow, superficial. And it is, but it's also got layers and layers of artifice that can be hypnotic, entrancing, and annihilating. While Gateways to Annihilation is not a Las Vegas or Nevada exclusive book, I feel like much of its content reflects my experience on Las Vegas.

So the “gateway to annihilation” has a double meaning. It's a road to damnation. Deconstruction. But it can also be a path to redefinition, and that's what's why I love that title so much and that's what I think links the stories together. Each character chooses that path to destroy themselves or to redefine themselves. More often than not, they redefine themselves, and I think that's exciting to watch a character undergo that transformation in a story like “Giant Cats of the Pharaoh” where the character resents his job. He doesn't really believe in what he's doing, then finds himself involved in circumstances that require his direct involvement, an intervention, in a way that makes him the unlikeliest of heroes. And I really do like that. “Comic Book Hell” features a character named Bentley Flood, who seeks out and cherishes obscure comic books, and it leads him to getting close to securing a copy of a very rare satanic comic book that he'd heard rumors about. He finds it at a comic book convention and has to have it. And he enlists the help of a woman involved in the oldest profession on Earth. She joins him in this effort successfully but it puts him at odds with an organization that also seeks that same comic book. They want to use it as a pillar of their new church. A church of wretched things, and so he's involved in a kind of cat and mouse game that becomes a very, I think, intense and fun—

KMWR: And funny. Very funny.

JK: Yeah. I mean the idea of comic book collecting is just so ridiculous, if you really break it down, and I wanted to present it in a way that hadn't been done before. I've never read or seen a movie quite like what Bentley Flood experiences in the “Comic Book Hell.”

KMWR: You were so influenced by movies—did you ever want to get into screenwriting or directing?

JK: Um, no, it's too collaborative.

KMWR: But you were very collaborative on journalism and journals.

JK: I tend to be more of a curator. I like to reach out to people and invite them to contribute.

KMRW: Is that your role with Las Vegas Writes?

JK: Yes. I never do a call for essays or fiction and poems. I always invite people to contribute, ask them to meet whatever mild rubric or criteria I have set up for the theme of that year. Each year, it's a different theme.

KMWR: Recently, it was “Monsoon.”

JK: I really enjoy reaching out to writers, checking up on them on their progress, and saying, "Hey, do you have time to contribute a piece to this next book?”

KMWR: Oh, so you like setting deadlines also… For them!

JK: Generous deadlines. I'm probably easier on other writers than myself, as far as deadlines go. But I try to work with them and give them lots of time and support. And I think that is rewarding because I get to see writers develop and see their careers blossom after their initial publication. Not everyone that I invite to Las Vegas Writes is a first-time contributor or writer. I'm not always breaking them into print, but I am trying to give them a springboard into something bigger and better. Many of the writers that I’ve invited into the Las Vegas Writes have gone on to get agents, book contracts, jobs at magazines, and that, to me, it is the most rewarding thing. Not even so much the book, which is wonderful by the way, and a delight, and everyone should go out and buy Monsoon Season and the latest volume, which you can get at Writer’s Block bookstore in downtown Las Vegas. But to watch the writers, less than a year later, secure an agent and sell a book to a New York publisher? That to me, is absolutely incredible. I've seen it happen.

KMWR: I feel like the literary scene in Las Vegas has grown tremendously. Having lived there since 2002, what notable changes have you observed?

JK: Well, obviously, Las Vegas has grown in its population. That's part of it, but another part of it is the support network, the community, you might say. I hesitate to use the word “community” because it's overused, but just the raw positive energy of Las Vegas writers is so different than other places that I've only explored briefly or know about secondhand. There’s just not a lot of drama in the Las Vegas writing scene.

KMWR: That's refreshing to hear.

JK: Everyone's very interested in helping each other. And I'm talking about the community that includes Desert Companion, Devoid Magazine, Witness, Black Mountain Institute, the Las Vegas Book Festival, the Clark County Library and its ongoing efforts to produce the Vegas Valley Comic Book Festival. Cirque de Soleil is still supporting literary and artistic entities in Las Vegas.

KMWR: This is very much a side note, but I saw a show recently in Vegas, Awakening. That was amazing. The writing and the production, just stellar.

JK: Vegas is an unpretentious and yet very fiercely creative and imaginative town, and you can't get that just anywhere. No offense but Portland is not that way. Seattle is not that way. Austin is not that way. New York is definitely not that way. This is. And a lot of it has to do with living in the West.

KMWR: Well, like you said earlier, Las Vegas is a kind of monster.

JK: It is. But joyfully. Yeah. It's a joyful creature.

KMWR: And we've always been wrestling with the monster in literature.

JK: Yes. And Vegas has a lot of monsters, if you think about it. The desert itself. The test site. The mob, the little sprawling suburbs. The casinos themselves harbor strange entertainments. If you think about neighboring Pahrump, that kind of sexual monstrosity, it's just incredible.

KMWR: It almost can't be contained, and so the writers here are trying to…they're trying to almost mythologize it, would you say?

JK: Well, they have to choose whether they're going to suppress or deconstruct the myth or if they're going to lean into it. You can't avoid it. That's for sure. But I don't know why one would, because there's so much to choose from. And to jump back to the drone conference, that’s become another aspect of the creature, the Air Force base. Vegas being the nerve center for launching drone strikes tens of thousands of miles away in other countries is just… it's almost too much to bear.

KMWR: What are your thoughts about the Sphere? That’s another creature entirely.

JK: Oh, I love it. It's like a technological Hoover Dam.

KMWR: It feels like a living creature.

JK: It's bubbling and crackling. It's like a mood sphere. It almost reflects the attitude of the people on the Strip or maybe even citizens of Las Vegas. It fits perfectly in the landscape of Las Vegas, because Vegas is inherently weird.

KMWR: What about F1?

JK: Very strange. Why is this happening? The way that it enriches the town and also frustrates the town. It's just so Vegas... I can't get mad at Vegas. And I don't know why. I want to be mad, but I can't, because it's always evolving, changing, adapting, transforming. It's not like other cities. Other cities know who they are and what they are. Vegas knows that it's nothing and everything.

KMWR: What was it like during the COVID pandemic?

JK: My family and I peddled our bikes from our house near Fremont all the way south to the end of the Strip. There was not a car in sight, not a taxi, not anything. It was dead, there were no pedestrians. It was killed—no, but you know what? I would never have thought it would come back to what it is now. That’s not to say it’s not struggling at the moment. But that it came back at all… It is a testament to the “unkillability” of this the scene. Just when you think it's dead, it surprises you, it marches back to life. I admire that. I think Vegas has proven itself over and over again. It's not going to die. It's not going to go away easy, not without a fight. But that gave me a glimpse of what I needed in order to finish Hammer of the Dogs. About a frozen and dead Las Vegas Strip. The pandemic era really was fraught and anxious and full of dread. I tapped into a lot of that to put the finishing touches on Hammer of the Dogs.

KMWR: A little peek into the end of the world.

JK: Yeah, but like I said, it can be fun. Hammer of the Dogs is not a downer book. It's an adventure novel. The landscape is wretched, but to me, that's what 80s cinema was all about. Or even the late 70s, you know. Luke Skywalker charging into the Death Star. It was terrifying, but it was also thrilling. That's what I'm trying to do with these stories that I write, these books that I create.

KMWR: Gateways to Annihilation is a horror collection, but I also found it to be pretty funny. Why do you think it's important to still have a laugh?

JK: An author can't take themselves too seriously, but they shouldn't take their characters or their stories too seriously either. My tongue was always in my cheek because everything I saw on TV had its tongue and its cheek. From Star Trek to Batman. Even the Twilight Zone has flashes of dark humor.

KMWR: I think humor's the hardest thing to write.

JK: It is hard, but it also, if you pull it off, can recalibrate the story. Humor lets the reader know anything is possible. It's fun to take a character, put them into a really outlandish, maybe even, dangerous situation, but then you have a moment of levity and that somehow makes it more human.

But again you're talking to somebody who grew up watching a show as outrageous as Hogan's Heroes, which is like some kind of comedy that takes place in a concentration camp. Yeah, that would never fly today. It's not something I would seek to emulate, but it’s an example of remembering that writing can be fun, challenging, dark, but also thrilling and joyful. And to me, humor is part of joy.

KMWR: Do you chase your characters, or do they chase you?

JK: I used to chase them when I didn't know what I was doing, but now they tell me where to go, or where they're going, and I follow. And if you had told me this was going to be how it was 20 years ago, I would have left. I thought I was the author and I was in control. But now I realize I'm not in control. If I had figured this out sooner, I would have had more success. But I'm glad I figured it out, eventually. I let them do the talking, the walking.

KMWR: The stabbing...

JK: The slashing, the running! The laughing, the crying. If I'm dragging this character from scene to scene, then it doesn't work. I was working on a story recently, where I was dragging the character around and I was frustrated that the character wasn't doing what I wanted him to do. I had to stop and put it down. And because I was doing it the wrong way, I was doing it the old way. And I do think with every story, you're learning how to write that story. I've heard that said before. I think every story you sit down to write is its own puzzle. And you have to solve that puzzle. The best way to solve the puzzle of a story is to let the characters live and breathe and not leash them and pretend that you're going to tell them how it's all going to unfold. Each one of the stories in Gateways came easy because I stopped pretending I was in control.

KMWR: How did you sequence the stories in your book?

JK: I used musical analogies. I tried to think of the book as a rock album.

KMWR: And the title is also a music reference, right?

JK: It's a Morbid Angel album title, a Tampa death metal band. I wanted to create a kind of aggressive musical sequence. I had a list of titles of the stories, and I know what elements, characters, plots are in each of the stories. I try to think of them as songs. We want a fast, hard, catchy opener. We want the second one to be a little more exploratory. I wanted to offer modulation, so not: loud, quiet, loud, but more mysterious, progressive. Because each story is different.

KMWR: What about placing “Isaac” in the middle?

JK: Yeah, that is the dark, beating heart of the collection. “Isaac” is one of the earliest, probably the second earliest story that I wrote. But I put it dead center.

KMWR: Did you revise that story a lot?

JK: No.

KMWR: Interesting.

JK: But that's because I think the bones of the plot are there, they're already in the Bible. I mean, it's the story of Isaac. I just cranked up and amplified the miserable and perverse aspects of it to explain why the story might have played out the way it did. I'm telling the same story but I'm trying to fill in the blanks of a tale that has puzzled me since I was a child. Why did they do that? Why would this be?

KMWR: Do you feel like you understand the story better now that you've added to it as a writer?

JK: Yeah, I think I understand the story. Or I understand the characters more. What is in the Bible, of course, is still open to interpretation. But I think I've settled my interpretation of this story. If someone else has a different interpretation I'm open to reading it. Mine involves a lot of unsavory things that you already find in the Bible. Blood libel, alien interdimensional demon-angels and things. Things that you might find in like a—what do you call those things? An ancient aliens conference or something like that.

KMWR: Which you also broke into, right? With your employee ID card?

JK: I did go to a few of those, yeah. Those conferences are very fun, and those conventions and gatherings in Vegas are really interesting.

KMWR: It is fun to be in Vegas when the conventions are going on and just being stuck in an elevator with some of those people. And they're kind of like looking at you like, are you not here for the convention? And you're like, who are you? I’m here on vacation!

JK: I mean, one of the earliest conventions I snuck into was Bondage Con, which was an S&M convention.

KMWR: Bondage Con, very creative name.

JK: That was eye-opening. But it's not just that. There was a sumo wrestling tournament in Vegas many years ago. That was incredible.

KMWR: These ones you’re talking about are all very exciting. One that I remember was for batteries. Like, you guys are here for batteries?

JK: But, it's all kinds of batteries, right? And that makes it intriguing. When you think about how batteries are produced or made or mined, you could lose your mind. It's like an HP Lovecraft story, the way they're tunneling into the earth and sand. Leeching it out. Putting people down into the earth to dig all that stuff up is frightening. It’s just funny how these industries come to Vegas to have their meetings and cut loose. It was always a real opportunity for me to get a crash course on a niche subject.

KMWR: A weekend seminar, almost.

JK: Yeah, I mean, like, sumo wrestlers? I had no idea they were that big or that fascinating to look at. I mean, they're beautiful in their own way. But again, Vegas has that ability to draw in everything and everybody.

KMWR: Would you say Gateways is more about misunderstood superpowers or about misunderstood monsters?

JK: I wanted it to explore that line between the monstrous and the divine, or the monstrous and the superpowered. The characters in this book are very gifted, very talented in strange ways, and some of them are monsters and some of them are up against monstrous forces. There are forces that are more monstrous in there. Which is the case in the opening story, “Conjure Me.” Which is set during the yellow fever epidemic in New Orleans as the city is being ravaged by this unseen plague. For me the gateway is a tricky path, and one that can lead you into one or both directions. The monstrous divine… To be the creature or the super-powered character.

KMWR: What most intrigues you of those two?

JK: I love superheroes. I read comic books my whole life growing up, still do. But the monster always has the best lines and the most pain. The deepest agonies. If I had to choose I'd prefer to write about a monster. But again, that's what made the Marvel superhero so interesting when they first appeared, they were very monstrous. The Hulk. The X Men, also, were very strange or monstrous. Peter Parker himself was kind of a weird creature, crawling up walls, shooting webs and acting strangely. The Fantastic Four, quite eerie. So, I don't know, I think they can often be one and the same, but the monster always has the most fascinating wounds.

KMWR: Your breadth of work tells me that you're deeply impassioned by storytelling. Do you feel that the love of story has diminished in recent years as technologies rise? I was trying to smush a lot of things into this question. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on artificial intelligence but also kind of what we were talking about earlier with teaching in an MFA, because you're a teacher for an MFA program at UNLV. How have you seen “the story” change over your writing career? Does that make sense?

JK: Yeah, I think storytelling is more important than ever, not because of technology, but I think storytelling has proven itself to be a weapon in our modern, whatever you want to call it, digital age. But storytelling was always a weapon. And I'm starting to believe more and more than it's either program or be programmed. And I think for me, telling stories is a way of fighting back against a lot of the programming.

I really love the workshop format because it's an opportunity for every person in that room to step forward and be a storyteller. Even if they're not good or they don't know what they're doing or they botch it, they fumble the draft, whatever… You get to watch them step on that high wire and try to pull off a feat, an acrobatic triumph. And I think there's a lot of value in that. There's a lot of humanity in that.

The people who have presented this new tool of AI want to give it immediately to Hollywood and have these multimedia conglomerates recycle things that already exist. And I think to be a storyteller, you have to recycle from within. And that's what I've been trying to do is with Gateways to Annihilation, I'm taking old ideas and making them new again. But I'm not taking old ideas from like a computer, I'm taking them from my comic book stack, my VHS movie pile, my Atari 2600 box of cartridges. Stories my grandfather told me, stories my parents told me. Old books that I barely remember reading. I'm using my own AI. Stories can program a different existence or a different possibility. I don't want to rely on an algorithm’s vision of the world. It's recycled hallucinatory garbage.

KMWR: Have you encountered any students…?

JK: Yes.

KMWR: They want to use it?

JK: Yes. Yes. And I discourage it, but... You know, if they want to use it to tighten up their own grammar and syntax, or if they want to use it to get a more historically accurate picture of a time or setting. Sure, in theory… but it shouldn't do the lifting for you. You should step up and be active in your own imagination, rather than outsourcing your imagination. That sounds ridiculous. And I don't think it's good. And I think it destroys your spirit.

The workshop is a chance to negotiate and discuss in these days, in a way that's nonconfrontational and helpful. Rather than like a screed or op-ed in USA Today or a Chronicle of Higher Ed, you know. “Here's why AI is bad.” Nobody wants to hear that. It's another tool and it's probably not going away, at least for now. You're going to have to like grapple with it. And I think we're up for the task. I'm up for the task, and I think my students are too.

KMWR: Well, I think your work shows that, too, especially doing your genre writing versus literary writing.

JK: Yes. It's fun to mess with and deconstruct and play with. I don't want my students writing anti Westerns because they hate Westerns or something like that. I want them to reinvent the Western or reimagine the Western, in a way that draws in more readers and satisfies them as authors. I don't want to break all the toys. I just want to make the toys more fun. Genre writing was banned, really, in my workshops as a grad student. The professor said they didn't want to read any vampire stories. And I know what they meant. But it was kind of blanket statement. It kind of made you afraid to write about a vampire, even if you had a cool idea. But taking something and putting it up to the light, in a different way so you saw its flaws, features. That's what has to be done in order to make anything good. You have to reshape it, reimagine it, rethink it. That needs to be done with any kind of writing, not just genre writing, but also literary.

KMWR: You've done novels, short stories, children's books, poems, Western, horror. Dystopian sci-fi…where’s the romance? (laughter) When are you going to do romantasy? That's the question.

JK: I do. I wanted to set out to write a romantasy series, but I don't know. I don't think I'm mature enough. I might need to do a few other things and then come back to romantasy, because I haven't quite landed on the characters or the erotic yearnings that I really need to incorporate. But I don't want to chase trends at the same time. For me to write a romantasy book at this moment feels a little desperate. I’m not quite that desperate. But I have mad respect for anyone who has had success writing that stuff because writing is hard. It can be very joyful and pleasurable, but more often than not, especially if you're not inspired, it can be a chore. And I don't ever want it to be that. I want it to be fun. That's what everyone is after. I encourage my students to write it, just be careful when we bring it in class. One person's romantasy is another person's horror. We have not workshopped any romantasy yet but it's not off the table. There's nothing on the syllabus that says no romantasy. But I think it's also kind of embarrassing! Like people don't want to bring in their attempts to rewrite Fourth Wing. Romantasy is as much as a valid genre as anything else. One day I'll write one. Just today’s not the day. Not this year. Not this year.

KMWR: Okay, very, very, very, very last question. Speaking of this year, what does it mean to you that you are the recent 2025 inductee for the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame?

JK: Well, as someone who moved to Las Vegas 25 years ago, it means everything because Las Vegas and the state of Nevada immediately embraced me at a time when I needed to be embraced. Nevada has given me nothing but opportunity. What this honor means is that people in Las Vegas, people in Nevada, believe that I am a great literary representative. And that's the best feeling in the world, to be accepted after so long. After so many years in the wilderness!

KMWR: Just a boy from the swamps.

JK: Yeah! Why would they have given me a shot to begin with? I don't know, but they did. And I'm grateful for it. And I never imagined that I would be honored in this way, but I'm so thrilled. It's given me more of a sense of responsibility that I have to do better work and be an even better literary representative of the state of Nevada. I feel a real sense of responsibility and duty now that I'm being inducted. I want to make them really proud. I think I've made them proud already, as their adopted son. But now I want to make them even prouder and do more good work.

♤♡
♧♢

Jarret Keene is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he teaches the history of the graphic novel. He serves as the series editor for Las Vegas Writes, a project sponsored by Nevada Humanities and published by Huntington Press. Keene is the author of the dystopian adventure novel Hammer of the Dogs (University of Nevada Press, 2023), as well as the Kid Crimson trilogy of Western novels (Wolfpack Publishing, 2024). His most recent work is the short story collection Gateways to Annihilation (Dark Wolf, 2025). Keene was recently inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. He is currently writing a series of dark superhero novels.

Read “The Mound” here.