Digital novelist · Technologist · Builder
One practice. Many instruments.
My job is human expression—not just writing prose. I use fiction, software, audio, teaching, and research to interpret the era I am living through.
HAC / Creative practice
Built across mediums.
The mediums change. The through-line does not: character, systems, technology, memory, and the struggle to remain human inside structures larger than ourselves.
Novels & stories
Character-driven speculative fiction about technology, relationships, military systems, and the haunted edges of history.
Enter the bookstore →Software & AI
Custom applications, narrative interfaces, language-learning systems, experiments, and tools built around real human needs.
View software work →Audio & interactive
Audiobooks, original soundtracks, podcasts, games, and new forms that let a story continue beyond the page.
Browse all mediums →Publishing & teaching
Editorial work, independent publishing, creative mentorship, and practical collaboration through HAC Studios.
Start here →Working biography
The person behind the practice.
Keith Hayden is a novelist, technologist, educator, and U.S. Air Force veteran. He founded HAC Studios as an independent creative practice for making stories—and the software, audio, research, and experiments that grow around them.
His fiction is shaped by a life that has moved through military service, classrooms, technology, and years in Okinawa. He is especially interested in intelligent machines, hidden systems, relationships under pressure, and the ways history refuses to stay buried.
Keith’s current work joins two long-running tracks: finishing Escape From Okinawa, a military science-fiction horror novel, and acquiring a deeper engineering layer through Code Platoon’s AI + Full-Stack Immersive program.
Keith Hayden is a novelist, technologist, educator, and U.S. Air Force veteran. He is the founder of HAC Studios, an independent creative practice combining fiction, software, audio, research, and interactive media.
Selected path / Not a straight line
Experience becomes material.
Military service, teaching, publishing, life abroad, and software development are not separate identities. They are different vantage points inside the same body of work.
U.S. Air Force
Eight years of military service, including investigative work and experience inside large institutional systems.
Education
Earned a secondary mathematics teaching credential and developed a practical, explanation-first approach to learning.
Independent author
Published novels, novellas, memoir, soundtracks, and experimental story forms across an expanding body of work.
Okinawa period
Lived and taught in Okinawa, where place, history, military presence, and island folklore reshaped the fiction.
HAC Studios
Founded an independent studio joining publishing, editorial work, audio production, software, and creative collaboration.
Engineering layer
Entered Code Platoon’s AI + Full-Stack Immersive program to make software a deeper part of the creative practice.
Code Platoon / Live field notes
Learning in public.
Daily observations from an experienced creator deliberately becoming a beginner again.
Count First, Render Second
Week eight, React, a Codewars problem, and the moment progress resumed after modeling the problem before producing the answer.
Pages Without Pages, Loops Without Loops
React Router’s pages without pages and Python’s loops without loops arrive as two familiar strangers.
You Can’t Just Draw the Rectangle
CSS returns at the halfway point of boot camp, with Tailwind waiting inside a blank rectangle.
A Set Can’t Remember Where It Came From
Day thirty opens like a door left ajar, and the lesson turns on the one thing a set cannot retain.
Selected record / Published work
Books and sound.
A growing archive of novels, memoir, translations, story-world expansions, and original music.
Bibliography
- Cereus & Limnic: Escape From Okinawa — Type B · Coming 2026
- Prompted Hearts & Grief Algorithm
- Gates of Okinawa
- Sync Whole: A Cereus & Limnic Novella
- Cereus & Limnic (JP) · Parts 1–2
- Hayden: Brave
- Cereus & Limnic: Second Evolution
- Shadowbanned
- Maldives Madness
- Cereus & Limnic
- Tower of Babbling
Discography
- Prompted Hearts & Grief Algorithm soundtrack
- Gates of Okinawa original novel soundtrack
- Sync Whole soundtrack
- Maldives Madness soundtrack
- Cereus & Limnic original novel soundtrack
Contact / Collaboration
Have a question or an interesting problem?
For editorial work, software projects, interviews, publishing questions, or creative collaboration, reach out directly.