Babel Clash

KATE:

Ken Scholes and I have arrived here at Babel Clash to blog your second half of September. 
Ken’s second novel, Canticle (the second of a five book cycle called The Psalms of Isaak) 
is due out in October, and my own Traitors’ Gate (the third and concluding volume of the 
Crossroads trilogy) was published in August. Both series are published by Tor Books in 
the USA.

A publisher is not the only thing Ken and I share. He lives in Oregon. I was raised in 
Oregon (although I now live in paradise, but that’s another story). He writes epic 
fantasy. I write epic fantasy. What a coincidence!

I admit, he has written and still writes a lot of short fiction, while the thought of 
writing a short story is enough to make me break out in hives. As I often say, it’s far 
easier for me to come up with an idea for a novel than one for a short story.

But there’s another thing Ken and I have in common. We are both parents of twins. 
Stranger still, we both gave birth to twins (well, all right, for the purposes of 
accuracy Ken did not physically give birth; his fabulous wife did that part) while 
finishing up the third book of a series. How bizarre is that? In my case it was the third 
and final volume of my Highroad trilogy (google it; it’s out of print but available at 
used bookstores); in his, the novel Antiphon, third in the Psalms of Isaak sequence.

The third volume of the Highroad trilogy (The Price of Ransome) was due to the publisher 
in August 1989, while the twins were due in October. As it happened, the twins arrived in 
August and I was able to finally turn in the completed first draft to the publisher in 
October. Unfortunately, it was not to be the last time I turned in a book late, but 
that’s another topic.

So let me ask Ken about his experience.

Ken, I hear you just became a parent of twins. How old are they? Did you manage to get 
the first draft of Antiphon finished before the twins were born? How did that work?

KEN:

Hi Kate. Great to be here with you and big thanks to the folks at Babel Clash for hosting 
us.

Our twins — Elizabeth and Rachel — are just seven weeks old. Antiphon was actually due 
earlier in the year but was delayed by the death of my father. It became a mad rush to 
try and wrap the book before the babies arrived. They were due on August 24 and when they 
showed up a month early, I was about 1,500 words away from finishing the first draft of 
Antiphon when they arrived. Still, it took me about two weeks to nail down those 1,500 
words. But the book went in and I am now in the revision process.

And while we’re on the topic, I have a question for you. I’m getting ready to start 
drafting Requiem, the fourth volume in the Psalms of Isaak. You were at the front end of 
your writing career when the twins showed up. You already had your daughter, Rhiannon, on 
the scene when Alexander and David arrived. What tips and tricks did you use to keep 
yourself on task? What was the workload like? Were you able to keep your productivity up? 
Did you have help?

KATE:

I barely remember those days since I was functioning in a fog of exhaustion most of the 
time. What I relied on was sheer brutal stubbornness. Before I had children, I needed an 
uninterrupted four hours minimum in a quiet room or public library in order to 
concentrate well enough to write (at that time I was writing all my first drafts in 
longhand). Because I knew I would never get that again, I had to either give up writing, or retrain myself.

I retrained myself. I learned to write at the drop of a hat, in whatever 
increments of time I had to hand. Fifteen minute nap? All good. An hour? Even better. I 
learned to set myself up so that I could start and stop wherever I was in the text, no 
messing about, no waiting for inspiration. I just pushed forward. I was absolutely 
determined to keep writing because it was my way of staying sane while immersed in 
infancy and early childhood (for five weeks I had three children under the age of 2).

I should note that in that first year of the twins my mother in law did babysit for us at 
times. I also used some of my earnings to pay for a very part time babysitter, and I was 
able to make good use of the time she was in the house. When my daughter was three, and 
when the boys turned two, they began part time preschool; that was the best!

I’ve always juggled books and babies. I sold my “first” novel (actually my fifth) when I was pregnant with my daughter, but I sold it as a synopsis so I had to write it after I made the sale.  My daughter turns 22 in a few days. Traitors’ Gate is my 19th published novel. That’s my productivity over the past two decades.

No time to rest, though, as I’m working on several new projects including another Crossroads novel.

Tomorrow:  The secret of Ken and Kate’s brain gender-wiring.

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