Interviewed by David Mathison about the evolution of books and the way they are published. The segment begins at 67:35 into the program.

The title of Kemble Scott’s The Sower is from the parable in the Book of Mark in the New Testament. If you got kicked out of Sunday School classes as often as I did (I swear the teachers started it) you might not be up on your gospels. Basically, things thrive in a hospitable environment. Or if you spill your seed in enough places, with luck something good will come of it.

Last year, I reviewed Scott’s book SoMa (recommended), so I was already familiar with the character Mark Hazodo. Is he a villain? I guess you could make the case if you have an extreme black and white view of the world. By the end of SoMa, I decided he was the kind of guy who got away with things most of us wouldn’t dare try, and a self-centered ass with no concern for anyone, which made him enviable and vile, but not evil. Now I think he may be Loki, or Brother Coyote. He’s not a main character in SoMa or The Sower, but he’s always an important protagonist.

As The Sower begins, Mark has a bareback (no condoms) orgy planned. Everyone coming knows that there will be one HIV+ man there. Despicable? They’re going into this with full knowledge of the risks. But put that aside for a moment. The HIV+ participant is Bill Soileau, a petroleum engineer. (Soileau is pronounced Swallow, but I’m sure the Soil part of his name was chosen with great care. This is, after all, a parable.)

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A new literary series might not be news to some … aha! I started with an inside joke. It’s rare that humor enters this column; maybe I should change that. (Then again, that wasn’t very funny …)

Click here to read the full article – contains video clips too

Sausalito, January 14, 2010

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He’s blown up the blogosphere and riled various segments of the community with his columns that have captured some controversial quotes, most notably from Vallejo Mayor Osby Davis, a devout follower of Assemblies of God. In his Nov. 20 column about the influence of evangelical churches in local politics, James quotes Osby talking about homosexuals: “They are committing sin and that sin will keep them out of heaven. But you don’t hate the person you hate the sin that they commit.”

What Scott James readers might not know is that he is also the bawdy fiction writer, Kemble Scott, who has allured readers with his descriptive passages of bareback sex scenes and S&M in his two novels, SoMa and The Sower.

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By Scott Duke Harris
sdharris@mercurynews.com
Updated: 10/09/2009 08:51:31 AM PDT

The Scribd Store, the San Francisco startup’s new e-book marketplace, was jump-started this spring by “The Sower,” a satirical biotech thriller by Kemble Scott about a man who has curative powers that can be delivered only through sexual contact.

Scott, who had a regional bestseller with his 2007 debut novel “SoMa,” turned to Scribd after a major publishing house — he declined to say which — offered him a contract for “The Sower” that was, he said, “absolutely criminal.”

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A couple of weeks ago, we told you how San Francisco author Kemble Scott’s e-book was debuting at number five on the San Francisco Chronicle bestseller list. Now the book has made it into print.

Scott tells All Things D’s Kara Swisher that, following the news about The Sower’s success, he was contacted by three different publishers.

His main concern? The story is relevant now. He didn’t want to wait the usual 18 months to see it on store shelves.

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by Kara Swisher
Posted on September 29, 2009 at 2:34 PM PT

Earlier today, BoomTown posted a video interview with Scribd CEO Trip Adler about the online publishing start-up.

Now, here is a video of a chat I had with Kemble Scott, an author who has made use of the service in an innovative backwards effort at traditional publishing.

While the San Francisco writer published his last novel via a traditional publisher, he did not want to wait as long for his next, titled “The Sower.”

So, he published it on Scribd for a few dollars a piece and it was a modest success, even more so since he also garnered a lot of fans via sampling the book.

But it was enough to attract Numina Press, which then rushed the book into print. Now, it is doing well both online and offline.

Here is my talk with Scott about the experience, one sure to be replicated more and more in the future:

See the interview

The Sower, by Kemble Scott. Numina Press, 224 pages, $23.95 hardcover.

In this smart and slyly provocative inversion of the horror of AIDS, Kemble posits a wildly subversive world in which a single man can cure anyone of any disease – but only by passing on his seminal fluids. The plot conceit is deliciously outlandish: Bill Soileau, a San Francisco sexual hedonist of the first order, is infected while abroad with a manmade super virus that is said to miraculously heal all infections. Talk about being an object of attraction. Kemble is too nimble (and political) a storyteller to make sex the focus of his story, however. What gives this imaginative tale its heft is how the author surveys the world’s reaction to the shocking appearance of a world savior, with all of the religious and cultural implications of such an almost God-like power. Fundamentalist arguments against sexual behavior are shattered – sex with everyone is suddenly something that could be fundamentally good. This page-turner is part potboiler (Vatican henchmen, an American president suddenly eager for “gay” sex), part parable (with its Biblical antecedents) and pure entertainment.