Keith James Hetherington has written commercial fiction in most categories, radio plays, and scripts for television. Today [2007], he writes for Black Horse Western. He started writing after a work accident: 'One day I filled my boot with boiling water. When I took off the sock, the skin came, too. I had a week off and bought a book of locally published western stories.' Keith thought, "Hell, I can write as good as that! and penned The Texan. Ten pages in an exercise book. I submitted to Jack Atkins of Cleveland Publishing Co...They eventually asked for regular contributions, one a month, then they began publishing 15,000 and later 48,000 word novelettes and I got into that. When I wanted something, like a motorbike or a trip to England, I'd write like hell and save the same way, until I had enough, then ease off. I soon realized I could make more writing at my fast rate than I could working for a boss. I took the plunge just before I got married in 1957 and began churning them out: westerns, a couple of Larry Kent crime thillers, and the Carl Dekker series, which was about a world-weary adventurer, each yarn set in a different city or country.' Markets multiplied.

Hetherington also wrote short stories that separated pin-ups in Man magazine and the digest-sized Pocket Man, and for a similar New Zealand magazine called Stag. During the 1960s a boys' adventure book, Scuba Buccaneers by James Keith, was published by Angus and Robertson in Australia, and during the 1970s, two Keith Conway thrillers were published as hardcovers by Hale in Britain: Naked Nemesis and Hammerhead Reef. 'One of the thrillers went to paperback but I didn't find out for something like 14 years when I picked up a copy at a book exchange,' Hetherington has said. 'I'd forgotten to notify Hale's of change of address so they wouldn't pay me interest on the fees due!' Earlier, Hetherington had taken a job as a journalist in the Queensland Health Department.

'This involved writing short radio plays as well as articles. I became editor, and a Yank who worked for me went to work for the television series maker Crawford Productions in Melbourne. He kept pestering me to write for TV. There was big money there at the time, so I gave it a go. When I got tired of flying back and forth between Melbourne and Brisbane at weekends for editing of scripts, I moved to Melbourne in 1971 and got to work for Crawfords full-time, though I worked as a freelance from home.'

For the rest of his biography refer to http://www.blackhorsewesterns.com/ back issues/ issue 2 September 2005.