- a teller of tales, a guy who keeps trying to make Mythic Science Fiction happen, and the most inept self-promoting author you’ll ever meet.
Readers, thanks for checking out another Author Spotlight Interview. Let’s give a good, hearty welcome to this week’s guest!
Ken Lange is a current resident of the ‘Big Easy’, along with his partner and evil yet loving cats. Any delay, typo or missed edit can and will be blamed on the latter’s interference.
He arrived at this career a little later in life and his work reflects it. Most of his characters won’t be in their twenties, and they aren’t always warm and fuzzy. He is of the opinion that middle-aged adults are woefully underrepresented in fiction and has made it his mission to plug that gap.
Translation, he’s middle-aged and crotchety.
Ken, thanks for agreeing to be here today. Most author spotlight interviews start off with the boring stuff, but I know what readers REALLY want to know.
If you could have any pet (real/fantasy/no-allergies/no worries about feeding it) what would it be?
A house cat? I mean who wouldn’t want to be a house cat? You get to nap often, fed whenever you want. Everyone thinks you’re amazing even if you’re kind of an ass. No one ever expects you to do tricks and people do whatever you want. Seriously, house cats are amazing.
I’ve definitely wished I had Catticus’s life more than once. Then again, I am apparently the most boring kitty-momma ever!
What do you write? And how did you get started?
Well, that’s a tricky question. My first big universe, the Nine Realms Saga, is all about that Mythic Science Fiction genre that doesn’t exist. This series is an apocalyptic LitRPG adventure story. It’s also something I did to entertain myself when my wife was recovering from surgery.
As for how I got started writing books…I always wrote stories even as a kid. Most of what I wrote back then is exactly the type of thing you’d think a ten-year-old with no concept of how writing works would produce, but I stuck with it.
In 2016 I published my first book, Accession of the Stone Born, after taking more than a decade to plan the thing out and it still turned out differently than I originally anticipated.
I think most writers find their stories shift and change as they write them, even most planners.
What do you like to read?
A little bit of everything? I read a lot of science fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy, LitRPG, pretty much you name it in that sort of vein and I’m there.
On the flip side, I do a lot of science, health, and tech articles to see where we are and where we’re headed. It helps with the massive amount of research I put into the books.
They say the best writer is broadly read, and you’re definitely putting in the work!
What do you drink when you write/edit?
The cool answer would be scotch…which is my drink of choice…single malt with a sherry finish…absolutely nothing that tastes like a campfire. In reality, it’s tea…a lot of tea. I’m so boring it’s not even properly sweet tea…I use truvia.
Tea is traditional! And I think scotch is more for literary fiction? I wish I was that cool, as well. I’m mostly a water drinker.
Do you snack when you write/edit? What are your favorites?
Since I write pretty much full time it’s just normal food…I stop for lunch break for the occasional snack but nothing specific. I stress eat before and right after every new book release but that can be anything since it’s just me trying to cope. This week is Sun Chips and anything I can find in the fridge including pickles. I’m weird.
Oooh, I do love Harvest Cheddar SunChips, myself.
Name one commonly accepted piece of writing advice that doesn’t work for you
Plan it all out.
Mind you I tried…I used my “planning” to avoid actually writing anything. Plus just put your story down on paper. You can always write chapters that came before or after when you’re ready…but if you never write anything you’ll never accomplish anything.
While there are planners out there that this works for, I’ve got my high-level outline that I proceed to ignore until I get stuck and that works a lot better for me.
Name one commonly accepted piece of writing advice they can pry out of your cold, dead hands
Sit down and write.
That’s what it takes to be a writer. You need to sit in your chair, hammer your fingers against the keyboard and write something even if it’s a crap day and you get a few hundred words…it’s a few hundred more than you had before. I’m a firm believer that you have to write to be a writer. There are days when I’m mentally burned out and I give myself some time to recover but that’s like a day
off it shouldn’t become a habit. Don’t wait for inspiration and just shove words onto the page you can clean it up later and make it into something amazing.
Butt-in-chair is so important. For most of us, the muse and inspiration will only get us maybe a good day, maybe a good third of the book. But, it’s the showing up and adding words even when you’re not feeling it that gets us over the finish line.
Shameless Self-Promotion time!
Book 2 of his Exiled Ascendants series just launched last month!
Exiled Ascendants (#1-2)
System Initiating… Valhalla Protocol Activated…
Welcome, —Insert Name—, you have spawned into a level 70 city—soon to be dungeon. All safe zones are transitory. Due to the city’s failing infrastructure, a permanent safe zone cannot be established at this time.
For Iain Clark and his friends, that message marked the end of the world as they knew it.
Just when his life is finally looking up, the System changes everything. Was the universe kidding right now? He didn’t even get to have his “get off my lawn” moment, and for that alone, the aliens would pay. They didn’t stop there though, his new overlords made him walk–walk!–for miles on end. Sure, at least they fixed the aches and pains, but still. This is some kind of BS.
If his wife Robin thought Iain was cranky and lacked people skills before, well she’s in for a surprise now.
Iain isn’t going down without a fight. Sure, this isn’t the retirement he had in mind. But with a new body that doesn’t scream in pain 24/7, and a bunch of alien grenades, Iain and Robin set off to find their friends and wreak havoc. Along the way, he’ll have one chance after another to make things go BOOM, because the BOOM is good. Especially when alien threats and zombies are on the receiving end.
Vigiles Urbani Chronicles (#1-5)
Death doesn’t always ride a pale horse.
Gavin Randall hasn’t been home in nearly thirty years. Upon his return, he steps into a world he never knew existed and awakens dormant powers to discover that he’s one of the rarest beings in the supernatural community—a Stone Born. Now his very existence is a threat to the established order. A mysterious death pulls him in further, forcing him to face off against family and foe alike.
Gavin must reconcile the past he knew with a strange world of magic, along the way encountering new creatures and dangers he’s never experienced. Will Gavin discover the truth? Or will this new world swallow him whole before he uncovers who he really is and who wants his uncle dead?
Plague Bearer (#1-2)
It’s a story as old as time: Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve.
A family. A murder. A reckoning.
Good and evil personified.
You may think you know the story, but you’d be wrong.
After thousands of years, Cain awakens to find that the world has gone on without him. In his slumber humans and people of power have stopped being afraid of—well anything. Beyond that, they’ve become cruel for cruelty’s sake, fascinated with their ability to spread death through famine, war, and even plagues. In their minds, they have no equal. They’re wrong.
Thanks to the Norns, his brother’s treachery, his sadistic stepmother, and his abusive father, Cain has been out of the loop for far too long. But that’s about to change. Now he must reconcile his past with his present and complete a near-impossible task to find the peace he’s sought for so long. Before that can be a reality, he’ll need to walk the fine line between monster and man; too much of one and not the other will release a plague upon the world. And there will be blood. Lots of it.
Can he fight his baser nature long enough to do what needs to be done, or will fate get the better of him in the end?
WRITING TIPS & WRITERLY MUSINGS 
Ken Lange wants us to believe in a romantic concept of an author. I was a professional author for more than 40 years (books & film scripts) and I know quite some professional authors. They all agree that the actual writing time is 30% or less. Most time is spend with planning texts together with your editor and agent, discussions with the distribution department of your publisher and planning PR campaigns, TV appearance, interviews and book signings.
You have to be at leat 51% a capable businessperson to be 49% a good author. As a professional author you will be the boss of a little company. Editors, agents in foreign countries, researchers, PR people will work for you and you need a legal department. It goes without saying that you can write and enjoy writing.
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As he said, he’s bad at marketing. I’m not sure about his current publisher, but fewer and fewer are handling the PR campaigns. Few authors these days have TV appearances, but he was here for a book interview.
Perhaps I should start asking more questions about the marketing side of the author life, but those weren’t on this list.
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Just writing is writing as a hobby. As I wrote it has nothing to do with professional writing. Most of the want-to-be-authors fail because they don’t care about marketing.
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Everything with writing has boils down to persistence, skill, and luck. Whether it’s marketing, publishing, or writing. Some writers just want to write, while others put in the effort to get their writing out there.
The industry is in a huge upheaval right now, trad published books often netting the same pay they would have gotten 20+ years ago, with significantly less editing and marketing. Small press is on the rise, as is indie publishing.
While lack of gatekeeping is giving us a much wider array of books, the quality of books varies wildly. And the huge number of books coming out annually, in every genre, makes it harder and harder to stand out in a very full market. Worse, what worked last year for marketing, might be obsolete this year.
It’s a fickle market. And the anti-trust case last year proved that trad publishing’s odds of having a successful book were just as fickle (if not more) as anyone else’s.
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That is only partly my experience. I am author, editor and owned several high street bookshops. I deal in foreign right with 25 countries. European publishers as the German Random House/Bertelsmann provided me always with a perfect editing service f.e. I was quite often in talk shows (horrible) and other TV formats. Nowadays I am writing and designing multimedia projects as many professional authors do. I advised my agents not to sell any of my copyrights to the US (like a lot of European authors do as well) as you get deals you can forget about it and your sales are not as high as f.e. in European countries like in German speaking countries, Italy and especially Spain.
I see a tendency that most authors as me have a university degree in languages, linguistics or similar subjects.
An author has much more possibilities nowadays as 20 years ago f.e. You can sell your copy right several times, for print, ebook, digital and multimedia and it’s easier to sell foreign rights as markets are much more open and international tax agreements make it easier.
I don’t see that small publishers are on the rise. But that’s maybe different in different countries.
Thanks for the interesting discussion
Klausbernd :-)
The Fab Four of Cley
:-) :-) :-) :-)
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There are a lot more small press, and they’re mostly labors of love. So while they may be an overall larger share of the market, most of them individually do not have a market large share.
Or at least, that’s been my impression.
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Surveying my other readers (and supporters who aren’t always readers), it sounds like there’s a big audience for the marketing questions! I’ll be sorting out how to add them into the interviews and add them for authors who aren’t already in the queue.
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It’s much easier to publish a book nowadays.
I don’t know the percentage of small publishers in the worldwide book markets.
In which country you are living?
Wishing you all the best
The Fab Four of Cley
:-) :-) :-) :-)
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I’m in the US, just south of DC
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Well, the US is not a market one goes for as a writer nowadays, at least not as a European author. I earned most of the royalties for my last books in China and in the Spanish language.
All the best
Klausbernd :-)
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So true! Every market is so different, and things are changing so rapidly right now.
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