My literary dad, Ken Scholes, introduced me to my wonder-agent, Jennifer Jackson. Today is the release of his debut novel, Lamentation from Tor.
Ken is one of my dearest friends and he’s also one of my favorite authors, which is a handy combination. If you’re in the Seattle area, you can head over the the U-bookstore for his signing.  But if that’s too far away and you want a sampling of Scholes, Tor.com has one of his short stories up.
A Weeping Czar Beholds the Fallen Moon by Ken Scholes.
Frederico leaned close to smell the poison on his thirteenth wife’s cold, dead lips. It tickled his nose and he resisted the strong desire to kiss her that suddenly overcame him.
That you might lose yourself from sadness by my lips, my husband and Czar, her open, glassy eyes promised him. He looked away, uncomfortable with her empty, inviting stare.
Behind him, the Minister of the Interior cleared his voice and spoke. “The cabinet feels it would be more stabilizing to consider this an assassination. Jazrel was a most popular wife.â€
As a bonus, they have an audio version available as well, read by me.
I just found your journal by googling you to check the spelling of your name – Megan from Tor.com here, and I just want to say I loved your reading of the story. (When I’m actually editing the audio for something, that’s amazing; it takes about four times as long to edit as to listen to!) I can’t wait to read Lamentation now.
Thank you so much! I’m married to an audio engineer — although he didn’t help with this one or it would have been cleaner — so I’m totally familiar with the edit to reading ration. I’m very glad you enjoyed it.
Thanks for posting this! I get 75% of my short fiction through podcasts and audio versions these days, and I didn’t realize until now that Tor was posting audio versions of their short stories. Very cool!
Usually they have the authors read their own work, which is pretty cool.
🙂 Thank you, Mary. Your voice is perfect for my story.