KaZ Akers.
A storyteller’s life.

An original first-person draft for KaZ’s review

I have been
a few things.

A biography is supposed to make a life sound inevitable. Mine has been less cooperative. Depending on where we met, you may know me as a performer, a writer, a meditation teacher, or someone who becomes considerably more attentive when an animal enters the room. All accurate. None the whole story.

I was first published at fourteen, when a poem found its way from my diary into a teen magazine. Writing stayed with me as my working life moved through television, theatre, music, and the numerous other places where people gather to make something happen.

Before the stories,
there were stages.

I have worked as a singer, dancer, actor, choreographer, stunt performer, voice-over artist, and producer. There was circus work, professional water skiing, and a backwards fall of three stories while doubling for Susan Lucci on All My Children. In heels. Some career paths are easier to explain on a form than others.

My work also took me behind the scenes as a director, voice-over director, and stunt coach. I wrote for television and the stage, had songs published and produced, and wrote for magazines, anthologies, and online publications. I owned theatre companies and a cinema, and co-owned businesses that included a television production company and restaurants. A quiet working life was evidently not the original arrangement.

The uncanny
was already there.

My mother and I watched Dark Shadows and the old monster films. Our relationship was complicated; that shared fascination was part of it. The Haunted Mansion became a ride I wanted to take again and again. The attraction was not confined to the audience.

I played the Bride of Frankenstein in Universal Studios’ Beetlejuice show, joined the opening environmental-theatre cast of Jekyll & Hyde in New York, and appeared in the southern Gothic series Morgus the Magnificent. Looking back, the ghosts had been appearing in my work for quite some time. They were not waiting for a formal invitation.

Stillness.
And other living things.

For many years, I also taught meditation and Qigong. That work belongs in this story alongside the performing, the writing, and the years of learning to pay attention.

Animals belong here, too. I worked as a veterinary technician, cared for animals, and became an advocate for wildlife and conservation. My experience has included tiger cubs, a coati, a fennec fox, and marine wildlife. The living world is not a decorative interest in my life. It remains a source of attention, responsibility, and wonder.

My books explore poetry, nature, meditation, and the experience of being human. They share a writer’s interest in what we notice, what we overlook, and what it means to be alive. They also remain themselves. A book about meditation does not need to acquire a haunted cover to be allowed into this house.

And now,
quiet horror.

Today, I write atmospheric, supernatural, and psychological fiction. Some of it draws on real events. Animals sometimes become pivotal characters. The work is interested in the moment something familiar begins to feel less certain, and in the people who must carry on living with it.

You can read my writing on Substack, find recordings and conversations on YouTube, and explore the books that belong to the wider story. A new chapter does not require an empty past. Mine has come along. It has rather a lot to say.