About Christopher Keast

Part engineer, part musician, a focused writer. Chris spends his early waking hours writing stories that weave science and technology into satire and dystopia, promising readers a fun ride to somewhere or other. His characters struggle in scenarios where virtual reality, AI, biotechnology, and ecological strain collide with action, comedy, and romance. His guitar playing and songwriting has culminated into his latest solo mustic project called Keast. His blend of rock weaves together his broad musical tastes and features layered guitars, beats, synths, and poetic lyrics offering every listen something to enjoy.

Chris lives in Port Dover, Canada with his wife Sarah and daughter Stella. There he has the space to conjure extravagant ideas and dream up engaging characters with a family that shims open his doors of creativity while keeping him young at heart. This lover of travel, music, and philosophy would otherwise get lost in nomadism or drinking way too much coffee. Outside of writing and music, Chris is either developing renewable energy projects, doing yoga, tossing his kettlebell around, studying stoic philosophy, hiking in the woods, or trying to convince his wife and daughter to move some place exotic with him. 

The Writing

Chris writes science and speculative fiction. Stories like social media-supernatural viruses getting injected into an unassuming adolescent’s mind; cyborgs escaping their testing ground in Australia; an old man’s attempt to overcome his longtime wife’s death using her life-sized, speaking, mind-reading hologram; and, most notably, his mini-series about peoples’ selfie, social media, and picture-taking infatuations causing an AI run by a faceless corporation to go rogue and begin purging the buildings, monuments, and people from pictures uploaded to the cloud in order to balance Earth’s total carrying capacity for data storage. That last, long-winded spiel has culminated into DATAPOCALYPSE, along with its sequel, DIGEPOCH. The short and sweet synopsis: a story about love, too much data, and the end of the world. The what-ifs he wrangles with on a daily basis seem endless!

DATAPOCALYPSE was released in 2020. Two of his short stories, VIRALPOCALYPSE and SPARKS OF SELMA, can be found in published online journals. His short story, EYES OF EGO won the Norfolk Literary Prize at the Norfolk County Public Library in 2022. The manuscript for Datapocalypse’s sequel, Digepoch, is complete and is currently being queried for publishing. Advanced reader copies are available now! Contact Chris directly to obtain your ARC of Digepoch. Look out for his latest novel, Erasing Fibonacci (unrelated to Datapocalypse), also complete and being queried for publishing.

The Tunes

Chris got his first guitar around the age of 13 but didn’t take it too seriously until his 20s. Since then he’s played in several rock bands in Sudbury, Vancouver, Toronto, London (Canada), and San Diego. Since 2020, he’s focused more on recording solo music. His latest rock EP, HALF STEP SUN, is out now on all streaming platforms! Take a listen on the Spotify embed below. Past releases can be found on Soundcloud. Watch out for future collaborations and solo works.

Click the Datapocalypse logo below to subscribe to Chris’s newsletter and keep apprised of his latest works!