Ken Scholes

Ken Scholes's short fiction has been appearing in various magazines and anthologies for about a decade, including Realms of Fantasy, Polyphony 6 and Weird Tales. He is a winner of the Writers of the Future contest.

Lamentation is his first novel in the Psalms of Isaak series.

From his Q & A at Risingshadow.net:

You've written several short stories before you began to write Lamentation. Was it difficult to write a longer story?

Yes. I was quite daunted by the idea of writing a novel, which is why it took me so long to try. I still prefer the quick "in and out" of a short story. But I'm learning to love writing novels. It gives you a lot more room to tell your story.

The Psalms of Isaak is based on the short story "Of Metal Men and Scarlet Thread and Dancing with the Sunrise." What inspired you to write this series?

The story itself was intended for the mechanical oddities issue of a magazine but they closed to submissions before I finished. I wrote in my work notes that I hoped to tell more stories with those characters but I really had no sense at the time that I would. The story was accepted at Realms of Fantasy and when it came out, the art they'd commissioned for it (linked at my website) hit me like a brick. Douglas Allen's painting of Isaak weeping in the impact crater was very powerful and I realized when I saw it that there was more to Isaak's story than I had thought. So I set out to write more short stories and eventually, on a dare from my wife and Jay Lake and at the encouragement of many other friends, I sat down to write LAMENTATION.

How did you come up with the idea of combining fantasy and science fiction elements? Were you trying to tell a good story in a new way?

Well, I was just trying...[read on]

Read an excerpt from Lamentation, listen to an audio excerpt, and watch a video interview with Ken Scholes.

Learn more about the author and his work at Ken Scholes's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Lamentation.

--Marshal Zeringue