Ken Scholes

Ken Scholes grew up in a trailer outside a smallish logging town not far from the base of Mount Rainier in the Pacific Northwest. Baptized into Story at a young age, he fed himself on Speed Racer, Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants and Marine Boy sprinkled with a generous dose of dinosaur picture books. One day, his parents brought home two science fiction books -- Trapped in Space by Jack Williamson and Runaway Robot by Lester Del Rey. He read them perched in a tree and found a New Kind of Story. It set him on a reading path that eventually swept across genres -- mysteries, westerns, science fiction, fantasy, sword and sorcery, thrillers, horror. Still, speculative fiction remained home base for Ken; he cites Bradbury and Burroughs, Howard, Moorcock and King as strong influences. Now on a steady diet of books (and comic books), he still snacked on television programs like UFO, Star Trek, Star Blazers and Twilight Zone and a string of movies that culminated in the advent of Star Wars. Not long after, he discovered yet another venue for Story -- the role playing game Dungeons and Dragons. Only there, he was an active participant in the adventures he and his friends spun. When he was thirteen, he read Bradbury's essay "How to Keep and Feed a Muse" and knew he had to be a writer. When he was fourteen, he started writing stories of his own and by fifteen, he had started his own Rejection Slip Collection. His English teacher took notice of his writing and helped Ken get into young author's conferences and workshops along with making sure he was exposed to writers like Kurt Vonnegut and Maya Angelou when they passed through the area.After a long break away from writing, Ken returned to it after logging time as a sailor, soldier, preacher, musician, label gun repairman, retail manager and nonprofit director. He sold his first story to Talebones Magazine in 2000 and won the Writers of the Future contest in 2004. His quirky, offbeat fiction continues to show up in various magazines and anthologies like Polyphony 6, Weird Tales and Clarkesworld Magazine.In 2006, his short story "Of Metal Men and Scarlet Thread and Dancing with the Sunrise" appeared in the August issue of Realms of Fantasy. Later that year, inspired by Allen Douglas's uncanny painting of Isaak and taunted by his friends and family to finally write a novel, Ken extended that story and Lamentation was born. Lamentation is the first in a five book series from Tor Books called The Psalms of Isaak. Ken lives near Portland, Oregon, with his amazing wonder-wife Jen West Scholes and invites readers to contact him through the website or through his blog. When he's not writing, Ken loses himself in Story elsewhere or sings Paul Simon songs to his immoveable cats.Contrary to popular belief, he no longer lives in a trailer.In July 2009, Ken and Jen welcomed their twin daughters: Elizabeth Kathleen and Rachel Ann Scholes.