David Kubicek

Origins I was born and grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska, where I still live with my wife Cheryl, son Sean, two dogs, and a cat who thinks he owns the place. As a sophomore in high school I became hooked on science fiction when I discovered Ray Bradbury's The  Martian Chronicles. Writing Roots In my senior year in high school, I gaveThe New Yorker the honor of reading my first   submission - that magazine reciprocated by sending me my first rejection slip. I graduated with a B.A. in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. My undergraduate thesis,  Ray Bradbury: Space Age Visionary , is in the Special Collections section of Love Library on the UNL campus. Publication First article published in  Grit in 1977, followed by four more sales to the same periodical over the next year.  First fiction - "Clinical Evaluation," a story I'd written for a college writing workshop - published in The New Surrealists (Pig Iron Press, 1983). More Publication Throughout the 1980s I sold both fiction and non-fiction to the likes of Modern Maturity, Rural Electric Nebraskan, The Single Life, Space and Time, Writers Journal, and National Lampoon. I also did some work for Media Publishing, writing/editing two books, including A Need To Kill (1990), Mark Pettit's true crime book about convicted killer John Joubert . Kubicek & Associates In 1987 I founded Kubicek & Associates, which published five trade paperback books, including two I had edited, over the next two years.  Recognition Teaching: The Pelican in the Desert: And Other Stories of the Family Farm (K&A, 1988) used for several semesters in a UNL English class. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 1989: My own story "Ball of Fire" and Marjorie Saiser's story "Settling In," both from The Pelican in the Desert: And Other Stories of the Family Farm (K&A, 1988). Best Horror Stories of the Year: "Mr. Sandman" by Scott D. Yost, originally published in October Dreams: A Harvest of Horror (K&A, 1989), was selected for publication in Karl Edward Wagner's The Year's Best Horror Stories XVIII   (DAW Books, 1990). Screenplays In the early 1990s I wrote several screenplays, none of which were produced, although they were read by some high profile production companies like Amblyn Entertainment and the NBC story department. Two of screenplays were quarter finalists in the America's Best contest. Journalism I spent much of the 1990s and the first few years of the 2000s writing newspaper articles, including a series on the Great Flood of 1993 that ravaged parts of the Midwest. In 1994 I became a stringer for MBJ Publications in Omaha, which publishes The Midlands Business Journal, The Lincoln Business Journal, and The Central States Industrial Journal. Over the next ten years I wrote approximately 3,000,000 words for those publications. In the late 1990s I started writing a couple articles for each issue of Grassroots Nebraska, a monthly arts newspaper . In 2009 I became a Literary Scene writer for Examiner.com . Cliffs Notes During the 1990s I did lots of copy-editing for Cliffs Notes, then based in Lincoln, which led to my being asked to write a Notes on Willa Cather's My Antonia (1997). The Web Since the turn of the century I've developed and operated two Web sites, not counting this one, and have focused on writing novels. Organizations I am a member of The Academic Freedom Coalition of Nebraska (past Secretary), The American Civil Liberties Union , the Nebraska Writers Guild (past President and Treasurer), the  National Space Society , and the Planetary Society .  [Back To Top]