Keith Hayden is a digital novelist and founder of Hayden Academy Collective (HAC) Studios, where he blends fiction, music, and interactive media into immersive storytelling experiences.
He writes stories for critical thinkers with sprinkles of humor. His work explores the invisible influence of technology, folklore, and human connection across genres, from his self-styled military game tech genre to supernatural horror, techno-romance and beyond.
Occupations: Novelist · Musician · Voice Actor/Narrator · Podcaster · Book Publisher · Editor · Audio Engineer · Graphic Designer · Translator · Rapper · App Developer · Military Biographer · Ghostwriter · Animator
I have never belonged.
The dreaded middle-child syndrome followed me through childhood like a second shadow—never the loudest, never the neediest, always somewhere in the margins.
High school changed that.
Inside an aging portable tucked behind a wild field of weeds, our Colloquium Crew built a world of our own. A sanctuary in the South Texas heat.
We were a mismatched tribe—different races, orientations, ambitions—arranged in the back corner of the school like a secret society. Messy. Imperfect. Utopic before I even knew the word.
In that room, we belonged.
Everywhere else, we didn’t.
And I didn’t realize until years later that those afternoons would be the peak of my social life.
After graduation, belonging vanished.
The barriers rose—sometimes racial, sometimes occupational, sometimes shaped by other people’s expectations of what I should be. Sometimes shaped by my own reluctance to bend.
The military gave me structure but not home. I spent most of my career as a cop—another 50/50 job. Some people loved you. Some people hated you. Belonging was never part of the contract.
So I made a choice:
If I couldn’t find a circle, I would build one.
Teaching came next. Purpose, yes—but the same feeling lingered. Always outside the center. And being Black sharpened the edge. In publishing, it meant I was almost always an exception. And in my own community, expectations formed around what a Black writer should write.
I didn’t fit that box either.
So I made the same choice again:
If I couldn’t belong, I would build a place that did.
Starting from nothing—no network, no roadmap—I taught myself the modern creator’s toolkit.
Language learning became my first public craft.
Then writing.
Then coding, music, voice acting, audio engineering, animation, design.
Each skill was another refusal to wait for permission.
Another way of saying: Fuck it, I’ll build it myself.
It wasn’t always solitary.
I’ve traveled across communities and collaborated with ambitious creatives who speak in the dialects of tech, art, education, and entrepreneurship.
When you approach communities like foreign countries, you start to see the patterns: every circle has its rituals, its norms, its unspoken caste system.
You start to notice the temptation to conform—to play safe, to repeat what works, to bow to the algorithm.
Sameness is the enemy.
We live in an age designed to flatten us.
Algorithms curate our desires.
Trends dictate our taste.
Infinite scroll steals our will to imagine.
But on the other side is unprecedented freedom: you can learn almost anything with a phone and a stubborn streak.
You can mix disciplines—code with story, music with narrative design, art with AI—and carve a path no one built for you.
That’s what I do.
That’s why I create.
Not for art’s sake—but to wake up curiosity.
To prove that originality is still possible.
To remind you that belonging isn’t something you find—it’s something you build.
I am a digital novelist.
An outsider. A builder. A teacher. A worldmaker.
And my work is proof that you don’t have to belong to create something worth belonging to.
CONTACT
Have a question or looking to get in touch with me?
Send me an email at keith@hacstudios.org