Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Journey #107 - Of Metal Men and Scarlet Threads and Dancing with the Sunrise by Ken Scholes

The great city of Windwir has been destroyed; and the Androfrancine order wiped out.  The only survivor seems to be a lone mechanical man.





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Episode Art courtesy of Allen Douglas

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 and 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 CanticleAntiphon, 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.



Cast of characters:
Wilson Fowlie as Rudolfo
Rish Outfield (of the Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine) as Isaak
Big Anklevich (of the Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine) as Sethbert
Josh Roseman (not the trombonist) as Gregoric
Julie Hoverson (of 19 Nocturne Boulevard) as Lady Jin Li Tam
Nathaniel Lee (of Mirrorshards) as Chief Gypsy Scout, and the Armorer
Bryan Lincoln (of Full Cast Podcast) as the programmer
Johnny Feisty (of TV Copilot) as Sethbert's mechoservitor
Marshal Latham as Narrator

Music used in this production:
Original custom compositions of "Bawdy Androfrancine Song" and "Upbeat Number" by Juicy Melon Jim
"Temping Secrets", "Master of the Feast", and "Truth of the Legend" by Kevin MacLeod

Several sound effects were found at freesound.org.


Theme music: Liberator by Man In Space



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