After borrowing time from his youthful passions, such as storytelling, baseball, golf, romance, and trying to make music, to earn degrees in literature and writing from San Diego State University and the University of Iowa, Ken got serious (more or less).

Since then, his stories have appeared in Esquire and dozens of other magazines, and anthologies, been honorably mentioned in Best American Short Stories, and earned a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He has been a frequent contributor and a columnist for the San Diego Reader.

With Alan Russell, in Road Kill and No Cats, No Chocolate, he has chronicled the madness of book promotion tours.

Ken’s novels are Midheaven, chosen as finalist for the Ernest Hemingway Award for best first novel, The Loud Adios(Private Eye Writers of America/St. Martin’s Press Best First Mystery Novel, 1989), The Venus Deal and The Angel Gang, all Tom Hickey mysteries, and The Do-Re-Mi, a Tom and Clifford Hickey mystery honored as January Magazine best book of 2006 and as a finalist for the 2006 Shamus Award. The fifth Hickey family mystery, The Vagabond Virgins, appeared in February, 2008.