Journey #61 - The Boy Who Could Bend and Fall by Ken Scholes

Focus Jones, a.k.a Slinky Boy, has an interesting way of escaping his reality.

To download, right-click here and then click Save

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.  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. 

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 and taunted by his friends and family to finally write a novel, Ken extended that story aand Lamentation was born. Lamentation is the first in a five book series from Tor Books called The Psalms of Isaak.  He has since also written Canticle, Antiphon, and Requiem in that series.

Ken lives near Portland, Oregon, with his amazing wonder-wife Jen West Scholes and their twin daughters: Elizabeth and Rachel.  If you'd like to know more about Ken, you can  contact him through his website or through his blog. 

Special Thanks to Christopher Munroe for producing this story.

Christopher Munroe is a author/actor/comedian from Calgary, Alberta whose fiction has appeared in the Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine, the Way of the Buffalo and Journey Into… podcasts, and numerous other places around the web, and whose debut novel, Broken Escalator, is available now in eBook and as a podcast at Podiobooks. He likes words and ideas, and occasionally has trouble seeing the difference between horror and comedy, which has led to unexpectedly amusing stories and absolutely terrifying standup sets…

Cast of characters:

Christopher Munroe as the Narrator, and Focus Jones
Brad Duffy as Someone
Alex McDonald as Another
Cliff Lowe as Ninja Bob
Kat Fullerton as Angela and/or Focus' wife
Laurence Simon as Uncle Joe
Michelle Ristuccia as Aunt Margaret
Alex Mackie as the Guidance Counselor
Becky Shrimpton as the Real Counselor

Realated Links:

"Edward Bear and the Very Long Walk" by Ken Scholes on Escape Pod
Salvdore Dali

Spellbound (1945)
2001: A Space Odyssey
Solaris (2002)
Sphere
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll


Music used in this production:
"Trippy" by Voice


Several sound effects were found at freesound.org.


Theme music: Liberator by Man In Space

To comment on this story, journey on over to the Forums