ME<\/strong>: I read a little bit about your biography and I noticed that you are a native of Seneca SC. Can you tell me a little bit about what it was like growing up there?<\/strong><\/p>\n KEATON<\/strong>: It was a nice small town to grow up in. It wasn\u2019t a small town where everybody knew everybody else, but it was small enough that you knew enough people growing up, and still made connections. You\u2019d find somebody who you know, or they\u2019d say they\u2019re from Seneca, and within five minutes you can find somebody that you both know, or a church that you both attended. There\u2019s always some connection there. So I thought of it as typical small town in the South.<\/p>\n ME<\/strong>: I was raised in Pickens, so I completely understand that. So what was your family like?<\/strong><\/p>\n KEATON<\/strong>: Well, my mom is one of 13 kids. My dad is 1 of 7. I have 40 first cousins and my mom\u2019s mom\u2014Nanny, we called her\u2014lived beside us, and so family reunions while she was still alive were pretty a big thing. My other grandmother lived 20 minutes away in Keowee. Both grandfathers died before I was born, so I never knew either one of them. My mom and dad got married right out of high school and tried to have kids, was told that might be impossible and were actually planning to adopt when she got pregnant with me; they had actually helped out a family for Christmas and then found out Mom was pregnant. I was almost twelve before my only brother was born. So I was kind of an only child until age twelve, but mom and dad had basically taken a girl in who was in a bad family situation, and she was seventeen almost eighteen. So by the time her real family could have tried anything court-wise, she would have been eighteen and it would have been a moot point. So Lisa came to live with us for about 3 years until she got married, but that\u2019s when mom got pregnant with Daniel. So Mom\u2019s joke was, \u201cI\u2019m never doing anything nice for anybody ever again, I\u2019m too old to have another child.” So I grew up [with] both parents in the house. Mom and dad both worked when I was younger. When I was about five or six, mom stopped working to stay home, and then through the birth of my brother. She went back to work eventually after he was in school.<\/p>\n ME<\/strong>: Have you lived in Seneca your whole life, or have you done some traveling?<\/strong><\/p>\n KEATON<\/strong>: I\u2019ve actually lived in Central for a time, related to SWU, but after I got married I actually lived, well, technically in Seneca, and then after a couple years moved closer to downtown so I\u2019m in [the] city limits now.<\/p>\n ME<\/strong>: Have you traveled the world or has it just been small towns?<\/strong><\/p>\n KEATON<\/strong>: No, mostly small towns, but a lot of small towns from here through Pennsylvania, across Chicago, down to the Louisiana-Texas border, and then Tampa. Never been as far south as Miami. But in traveling, a lot of time I would do small towns; instead of taking interstates, I would ride backroads [and] eat [at] mom and pop diners.<\/p>\n ME<\/strong>: That is so cool. I\u2019ve actually always wanted to travel somewhere far, but not be on the interstate.<\/strong><\/p>\n KEATON<\/strong>: It\u2019s interesting because you see the similarities in towns. You have the little strip malls on the outside, you kind of have the downtown, you can tell that that gas station has been there forever privately-owned. And you get some good food! I was essentially doing Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives except I didn\u2019t have a camera crew with me. But I remember the best french fries I had ever had was in Angola, Indiana\u2014just this little hole-in-the-wall restaurant, the fries were incredible.<\/p>\n ME<\/strong>: That is so cool. I\u2019m going to take a minute to read your biography found on the SWU\u2019s Directory page: \u201cMichael has designed a Congressional election ad, lost consciousness underwater, rescued a kitten from a tree, hit a game-winning shot at the buzzer, missed a game-winning shot at the buzzer, filled a car with popcorn, been in the same room with Buzz Aldrin, attacked by a pit bull, yelled at by an Academy Award-winning actor, chased by an enraged bull, and he has 40 first cousins.\u201d That is quite an interesting biography.<\/strong><\/p>\n KEATON<\/strong>: Thank you.<\/p>\n ME<\/strong>: Very different from all the other professors! So who did you design a congressional election ad for?<\/strong><\/p>\n KEATON<\/strong>: I volunteered for Lindsey Graham, who is now senator, but in 94 he was running for House of Representatives. And he was from Seneca and so I volunteered for his campaign and the\u2014you probably don\u2019t remember it\u2014but the big thing at the time was the \u2018Contract with America\u2019 brochure. A lot of Republicans were running. Clinton had been in office for two years, and so they gave them the text of the Contract with America brochure, and I designed the little mailer that they mailed to everybody. To say, \u201cHere\u2019s what Lindsey Graham will do.\u201d<\/p>\n ME<\/strong>: You talk a lot about game-winning shots. Did you play sports at one point in your life?<\/strong><\/p>\n KEATON<\/strong>: I played something from an early age. I was a high school quarterback. I started quarterback for three years. I had a shot at a scholarship until I hurt my knee senior year. Played basketball, I was really a shooting guard, but I had to play point guard because we didn\u2019t really have a true point guard and I was as close as they had. That was not my skill set. I played baseball one year, I was pretty good fielder, but I couldn\u2019t hit worth anything, so I just stopped at one year. I ran some track and field. I really never played soccer because soccer just wasn\u2019t big around here at the time. There was really no place to play it at the time. I\u2019m not sure I would have been any good at it or not anyway. So that and some random martial arts here and there over the summer sometimes.<\/p>\n ME<\/strong>: Alright, where in the world did you meet Buzz Aldrin, A.K.A. the second man to walk on the moon?<\/strong><\/p>\n KEATON<\/strong>: Washington, DC. He was there promoting a book in the Air and Space Museum. I just happened to be there.<\/p>\n ME<\/strong>: I am so jealous.<\/strong><\/p>\n KEATON<\/strong>: It was kind of awesome. It was kind of unique just to stand there and point and go, \u201cThat guy right there walked on the moon. The guy just standing twenty feet away, walked on the moon.\u201d Cause it\u2019s one thing to see them on TV, but it\u2019s another [points in random direction], \u201cThat guy walked on the moon.\u201d<\/p>\n ME<\/strong>: I am so jealous. That must have been one of the highlights.<\/strong><\/p>\n KEATON<\/strong>: It was because we weren\u2019t expecting it, it was just coincidence.<\/p>\n ME<\/strong>: Are you now afraid of pit bulls since you\u2019ve been attacked?<\/strong><\/p>\n KEATON<\/strong>: No, I\u2019m a little leery of them. It was a neighbor\u2019s dog. I never knew the name, I called it \u2018mange\u2019 because it looked like it had mange, but he would come up and I\u2019d pet him and he was fine going on no problem. I went down to put a letter in the mailbox one day, and he and a couple other little dogs were behind me and kind of walking around, and he came up and I actually petted him on the way down. I got to the mailbox and had moved around, and for some reason I turned and looked and as I turned and looked he was turning his head sideways about to bite my calve muscle. So I jerked back out of the way. He started barking. All the dogs started barking and he starts coming after me. So I offered my left arm, you know how you see them do, and he would jump up and snap. When he would jump up I would pull my arm away and smack him in the side of the head. I backed up the drive way doing that, I hit him probably hit him 4 or 5 times as he was lunging and then another neighbor happened to see it and just screamed. A lady. For whatever reason the scream kind of broke the spell. He kind of turned and looked at it, and the other dogs stopped barking, and he took off and the other dogs did as well. So I always kept a knife with me after that though because again, any dog will attack you, but a pit bull has bite pressure if they get a hold of you. So every time I cut the grass I always had a combat knife with me.<\/p>\n ME<\/strong>: Which academy award winning actor yelled at you?<\/strong><\/p>\n KEATON<\/strong>: Cuba Gooding, Jr. What was the movie he won the Academy [for], with Tom Cruise? He was a sports figure, Tom Cruise was the agent. I cannot remember the name of that movie. Let\u2019s see, my wife and I were actually dating at the time so this had been like 1999 in the summer they filmed a movie called the Chill Factor<\/em> in Liberty, SC. They took a building and essentially turned it into a general store, and it\u2019s where the Mexican restaurant is now in downtown Liberty. They filmed a lot of scenes there. They took the car wash and built over it so it looked like a motel with different rooms, and we were there one evening just to watch them film something. So stuff\u2019s happening, you can\u2019t really tell, but I was talking to one of the tech guys and said, \u201cAre you filming anymore?\u201d and he said, \u201cWe’re actually filming something late night, like 3 AM, ’cause we need something.\u201d So we went back, I dropped her off at her apartment, I went back, slept three hours, set the alarm, woke up, went back and picked her up, and we got to Liberty at 3 AM and watched them film a couples scenes outside with Cuba Gooding, Jr. So after they\u2019re finished, he gets in the dark SUV and drives past, and there\u2019s about 4 or 5 other people with us just standing there watching, and he rolled the window down, leaned out, and yelled, \u201cShow me the money!\u201d at us and then was gone.<\/p>\n ME<\/strong>:\u00a0Have you always aspired to be a history teacher? If you haven\u2019t, what did inspire you?<\/strong><\/p>\n KEATON<\/strong>: No, that really wasn\u2019t what I had planned. After football fell through, I didn\u2019t know what I wanted to do. So I went to Tri-County Tech for two years to get Associate in Management degree, figuring business couldn\u2019t possibly hurt no matter what I ended up doing. I got an associate\u2019s degree, and then transferred here in the fall of 1989 and discovered the two history professors. Dr. Lou Tolls was my main advisor, his office was right across from us where Dr. Schliefer is now, and Dr. Dale Johnson. I loved history but I still didn\u2019t know I wanted to teach it. I had all those business credits that I didn\u2019t want to give up. So I ended up staying here for four years. So two years a tech, four years here. I was an undergraduate for six years, but I didn\u2019t double major\u2014I actually did two bachelor\u2019s degrees. So I have a B.S. in business administration and a B.A. in History. Even then, I still wasn\u2019t sure, I was thinking of something more research-oriented. I didn\u2019t want to be a librarian. But I actually applied after college to several government agencies, but my main one was the C.I.A. I applied to the CIA, FBI, the NSA, the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), basically to be a researcher: I wasn\u2019t planning to be James Bond, it was a researcher position. Part of that was I had almost joined the army right after high school. I actually went in took a pulmonary test. My dad had served and it was just one of those things, but in 1987 I was thinking, \u201cEh, nothing\u2019s going to be happening,\u201d so I didn\u2019t. I kind of regretted not serving my country, so that was part of it. You know, I could just work for the C.I.A. and do my part. Of all those agencies, the C.I.A. seemed the most interested. They called me out of the Atlanta field office, and then they called me and did a phone interview from Langley. It was still a long way from anything, they would have to go do the whole vetting process, but I graduated in 1993 from here. Bill Clinton became president in 1992, and he had cut a lot of the intelligence budgets, and people debate over that, but I can tell you from first-hand experience because I essentially got the same letter from all those agencies saying, \u201cWe\u2019re sorry, but due to budget restraints we are no longer hiring, but please keep us in mind in the future.\u201d So that\u2019s where the C.I.A. kind of fell through. So I went out into the world. I worked for a security company for two and a half years. It ended up I had four locations and 17 employees under me, that I was reasonable for the physical securities of those locations. After that, I came back and worked in admissions for SWU for a couple years, and the teaching thing really came from a family friend who was a school principal, and I would see her once a year. She would ask, \u201cAre you teaching yet?\u201d I\u2019d go, \u201cNo ma\u2019am, I\u2019m not teaching\u201d and she\u2019d say, \u201cLet me know when you decide to\u201d, and I would go \u201cOkay.\u201d I didn\u2019t really think about it. And finally I think she knew something I didn\u2019t. God may have told her first. I kind of felt called to do that. I called her to talk about it, and I ended up teaching for her the first year of my teaching. Then I went back to grad school in history. By that point I knew I wanted to teach history. Even though I taught more in middle and high school in the coming years, I\u2019m not a huge fan of paperwork, and there\u2019s a lot of paper work, far more paper work than there should be in the whole system. There\u2019s still paper work in college but not as much. So that\u2019s where I decided to go.<\/p>\n ME<\/strong>: So what is your favorite time in history to study?<\/strong><\/p>\n KEATON<\/strong>: Technically, my specialty is 20th<\/sup> century US military, World Wars, and Cold Wars. Actually I think I like the World War II era more than anything else.<\/p>\n ME<\/strong>: Other than working in Clemson University\u2019s History department for a brief two years, have [you] only ever worked at Christian schools? Is there a reasoning for that?<\/strong><\/p>\n KEATON<\/strong>: I think it\u2019s the freedom to be able to go into Christianity because at public universities you are forbidden to do that. For a lot of history that takes away some of what happens. I mean, you can talk about the Pilgrims and the Puritans, but if you\u2019re talking about an underlying truth, it\u2019s harder to get there without some nature of the divine and of course, as a Christian, I believe it\u2019s the Christianity version of the divine. I just think it allows more freedom overall. I wouldn\u2019t be opposed to working at a public university again, but I think it would be limiting in that respect. I have no plans to go anywhere from here.<\/p>\n ME<\/strong>: If you could be or do anything in the world, and money or education wasn\u2019t a factor, what would you do?<\/strong><\/p>\n KEATON<\/strong>: That\u2019s an interesting question. I would like to take a world tour, like over the course of a year and visit Rome, various parts of Greece, Constantinople, Turkey, and Russia. Basically kind of The Amazing Race but not as fast. I would like to see the world and take my time doing it rather than like the touristy things, you know, stay in Britain for a month and just kind of visit the big sites but then the little stuff too.<\/p>\n ME<\/strong>: Do you have a mantra?<\/strong><\/p>\n KEATON<\/strong>: Not really. No. It\u2019s just I think partially playing sports, the competitive aspect of my personality kind of transfers into academics in that anything less than an \u2018A\u2019 felt like losing. And I don\u2019t like to lose. So that\u2019s maybe one of my things: \u201cI don\u2019t like to lose.\u201d I do tell my girls all the time when I\u2019ll do something, or know something, or even some little bit of magic that fools them, they\u2019ll ask, \u201cHow did you do that?\u201d My answer’s always, \u201cSometimes if the wind is just right, Daddy is almost magic.\u201d That may be the closest thing.<\/p>\n ME<\/strong>: Moving onto your book. With all of your interest in history, I\u2019m a bit surprised that you decided to write a science fiction novel <\/a>instead of, say, a historical fiction novel?<\/strong><\/p>\n