In addition to publishing under his real name, Perkins used several pseudonyms, with stories appearing by Randolph Hale, King Phillips, Kim Knight, Charles Dustin, and J.O.

He was the First Radio Operator and went down with his ship when the steamer, running at full speed, struck an uncharted rock in Gambier Bay, ninety miles south of Juneau, Alaska.

For his bravery and quick action, Donald C. Perkins' name is inscribed on the Wireless Operators Memorial in Battery Park, New York City.

[8][9] After graduating from Lowell High School in San Francisco in 1909, Kenneth Perkins spent some time as a steward on a Pacific steamer before entering the University of California as a member of the Class of 1914.

Howard would win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1925 and a posthumous Academy Award in 1940 for his screenplay for Gone With the Wind, and Faust would go on to have a very successful career as the iconic Western writer Max Brand.

After graduation, Perkins stayed another year at Berkeley in order to earn a Master's degree in English in December 1915, with a thesis on symbolism in the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

[10] The American entry into World War I interrupted his academic career and Perkins enlisted in the United States Army in 1917 and served as a 2nd lieutenant in the field artillery.

After the war, in summer 1919, Perkins taught a pair of courses (elementary and advanced) on the "motion picture scenario" for UC Extension in San Francisco.

[11] Kenneth Perkins moved to New York in 1919 and rekindled his friendship with his old college pal, Frederick Schiller Faust, where they spent hours together talking about plots.

His first story, "Gotham's Wife," which Faust had meticulously edited (as Perkins later recalled, "Heinie had gone over it, corrected it, twisted it, and cut out all the 'literary' touches"[12]) appeared in the July 31, 1920, issue of Argosy All-Story Weekly.

In 1923, a Tom Mix silent feature called Romance Land was adapted from Perkins' story, "The Gun-Fanner," which had appeared in four consecutive issues of Argosy All-Story Weekly in June-July 1922.

Perkins found more success, albeit much of it posthumously, in contributing stories for radio and television scripts, including episodes of The Range Rider, The Gene Autry Show, Zane Grey Theatre, Maverick, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and others.

With the exception of the Quinliven tales, the vast majority of Kenneth Perkins' short stories and scripts were published under his real name.

The hardcover novel, Bronco Men, published in 1940 as by Charles Dustin, is clearly an adaptation of a serialized story (despite the slight difference in the spelling of the title).

Both stories start with a young man named Lem Beavers (described as being 20 years old, with a face that is "raw-boned, homely, and happy") traveling with his wife in a covered wagon on the Oregon Trail.

In both tales, Beavers' wife dies in childbirth on the trail, attended to by a veterinarian and an Indian woman, leaving young Lem with a baby daughter to raise on his own.

On Christmas Day in 1919, Kenneth Perkins was married to Grace Adelaide Bemis, whom he had met when she was a student of his at Pomona College, in the French Chapel of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City.

[15] Perkins died in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 61 on June 7, 1951, after a five month stay at the Veterans Administration Hospital.