Keith L Hood is a former farm hand and oil field worker who graduated from Western Kentucky University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1978. After a tour of duty as an Army officer, during which he was introduced to electronic systems, he retrained in electronics and graduated with honors from Hallmark Institute of Technology with an Associate of Applied Science degree in 1988 (4.0 GPA).

He has worked as a technical instructor, teaching system administration on UNIX servers. And he has been technical writer since 1990, creating software user documentation, hardware maintenance manuals, and training course materials. He has extensive experience with word-processing software applications, both those that include conditional text capabilities and those that do not, such as Adobe FrameMaker, Flare, Robohelp, Word, Wordperfect, and xmetal.