Sneak Peek of Rage's Echo

I thought I would be mean this morning and entice you all with the first chapter of my unpublished supernatural suspense novel, Rage's Echo. Why? Because it's fun!

Rage's Echo

by J. S. Bailey

Copyright 2012

A sound awakened him from a restless slumber.

He stared at the ceiling for a moment. Of course, the sound had been the figment of some fading dream. It was foolish to worry. Even if he hadn’t imagined the sound, it was probably nothing more than a vehicle driving by outside or the house settling on its foundation. Children became frightened by these things, not him. The years of lying awake at night and calling for his mother to come save him from the monsters in the dark had long since passed away.

He closed his eyes with the hopes of drifting back to that world where the troubles of the daytime melted into oblivion, but suddenly a floorboard in the room creaked underfoot.

He lifted his head and peered out into the room. At first he could see nothing, but when his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw them.

Five—no, six—silhouettes stood in a semicircle around the foot of his bed. The moonlight filtering through the drapes made them blacker than the surrounding shadows.

Before he could respond to the intrusion, he felt a sharp twinge on the upper part of his left arm. He yelped in surprise and rolled onto his side, only to see that a seventh silhouette stood inches from the edge of his bed. Two pinpricks of reflected light floated in the air. Eyes.

His pulse quickened. “What do you want from me?” he croaked, even though he already knew the answer.

It was so quiet that he swore he heard blood rushing through his veins as anxiety pushed his heart to the limit. Sweat began to run down his forehead. Why wouldn’t they just answer him? Perhaps this was some new kind of psychological warfare: standing in the dark and waiting in silence until their victim went mad. It might prove effective.

He tried to sit up and reason with them, but his body felt as though it had turned to rubber. Was he drugged?

The thing next to him jerked its head to the side. Three of the other silhouettes broke away from their group. One joined the first silhouette on the left. The remaining two came up to the right. He was surrounded. No way to escape, unless a guardian angel tucked him under its wings and carried him away to safety.

Everything was still.

But he could hear them breathing.

He didn’t dare close his eyes. God, grant me the serenity…

Four sets of arms grabbed him suddenly and flipped him over onto his stomach. His own arms were wrenched behind him and his wrists were crossed and held in place by unseen fingers. He could hear duct tape being torn off a roll. He writhed around to break free from their grasp. It was no use. His hands were bound behind him.

One of the silhouettes at the foot of the bed let out a choked sob.

Cloth was placed over his head (a sack?), and the phantoms wrapped more tape around his ankles and lifted him from the bed. He was limp as a rag doll. Whatever they had drugged him with was working quite well.

The phantoms made no effort to ease his discomfort. They jostled him around as if he were a bag of refuse they were hauling away to a bin. His head banged against the wall as they carried him down the stairs. He cried out to deaf ears.

He heard a squeak. Felt a gust of air. They were taking him outside. Now, crickets. Chirping in the yard. An engine idled close by. A car door opened and he was shoved onto a sticky leather seat. A radio was playing some Led Zeppelin song: “Dazed and Confused.” The irony.

The phantoms climbed in with him. The one on his right smelled like Old Spice.

Doors slammed closed. Seatbelts clicked. Someone killed the radio.

The car lurched as it moved away from the curb.

Tears stung his eyes. This couldn’t be happening. It had to be a dream. A nightmare. His own imagination torturing him while he slept.

But one could not imagine the terror that crippled him, or the coarse fabric that scratched against his face with each of his movements, or the throbbing in his head where he’d hit it on the wall.

He knew these feelings were real.

He also knew that he would not end this night alive.

Deep Thoughts from a Mountaintop

Last week my husband and I took a much-needed vacation and spent six days in the beautiful Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which sits partly in Tennessee and partly in North Carolina. On the day we arrived, we went to the top of the 32-story "Space Needle" in Gatlinburg to have a look around.

Here is one picture I took from the top:

The large mountain in the background is Mount LeConte. From this view, it just looks like a dull hulk of a hill, though it is over 6,500 feet tall. Nothing interesting about it, right? But the next day, the two of us went on an impromptu hike up the face of LeConte. It took us over seven hours to complete the ten-mile round-trip walk.

Here are the pictures I took on LeConte:

Neat, huh?

You may be wondering what the point of all this is. Well, when we were done with the very, very strenuous hike, my mind went all philosophical on me and I started thinking about how we so often judge people from afar based on first impressions, kind of like I did with the mountain--because from a distance, it didn't look like anything was there but a bunch of trees. Only when we got up close to the mountain did I see the beauty that had previously been hidden from my sight.

So the next time you see somebody and think, "They look like ____, so they must be ____" without bothering to get to know them first, stop yourself. Do you really know what this person is like? Maybe you should find out by getting to know them better. It won't hurt to try!

Wanted: Clones. Or More Hours in the Day.

I realize I've been slacking here on Blogger, so I feel it's time to regurgitate some thoughts regarding writing and the necessary promotion thereof.

Quite some time ago I learned there are only twenty-four hours in a day. I devote nine of those precious hours to sleep (Excessive? Nah.), six to my part-time job, one driving to and from said job, and one to cooking/eating. That leaves me seven hours to spend time with loved ones, work out, write, pray, read, write some more, and market the things I have written. (I think that housework falls in there somewhere, but we'll forget that for the time being because I always do.)

Now let's look at the latter point. Marketing. Readers have to know that we authors exist or nobody will read the stories we have spent months or years laboring over. This is why I spend so much time on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Blogger: to form relationships and network with other authors, bloggers, and readers to slowly grow a devoted readership. It's hard. Especially when it cuts into the time I should be doing something else, namely writing and developing my craft. Not to mention that nasty housework I've we've conveniently forgotten about.

One solution to my lack of time would be to duplicate myself in the form of clones, who may or may not turn evil and conquer the world pretending to be me. Or I could cut back on sleep, which would probably be a bad idea because I would become VERY cranky and start acting like my theoretical evil clones.

So, authors, here is my question: How do YOU balance out God, family, work, writing, and marketing? Share your tips in a comment below!

The white armor is optional.

A Silver Lining

When I first learned that the bookstore chain Borders would be closing its doors for good, I was bereft. Gone would be the days when I would slip over to the Eastgate Borders after school and browse its many shelves for new stories to fill my head and rescue me from the monotony of everyday life. (The closest Barnes and Noble was and is too far away for me to visit with regularity.)

My husband and I made countless visits to Borders during its final weeks in order to take advantage of the massive discounts. We bought what may have amounted to dozens of books--I say "may have" because I never counted them. It was a lot. A WHOLE lot. I ran into a problem, however. I cleaned out the Dean Koontz shelf and didn't know what else to buy, so I drifted over to the Christian Fiction section to see what, if anything, they had to offer.

This was possibly one of the best decisions I've ever made.

Up to that point, I had always been hesitant to try out new authors because I was afraid I wouldn't like them. Heck, I never would have even read any Koontz if my sister-in-law hadn't bought me two of his books for my birthday one year. But since Borders had marked everything down so much, I didn't feel like I was taking much of a risk when I purchased Never Let You Go by Erin Healy and Showdown by Ted Dekker. They sounded interesting. What could it hurt?

As it turned out, it didn't hurt a thing, because I happened to discover two of my newest favorite authors. (Hi, Erin!) And, through them, I discovered many other accomplished authors of Christian fiction whose work I have come to love, namely Tosca Lee, Frank Peretti, Eric Wilson, and Robert Liparulo. I also discovered a whole community of like-minded bloggers and book reviewers who not only have informed me about other amazing stories to read, but about writing/storytelling tips and facts about the publishing industry as a whole. I have learned so much from them in the past year, and I know that through them, I will continue to learn and grow as a writer.

Sometimes I wonder: If Borders had not gone out of business, would any of this have happened? I don't know. Yeah, I'm still sad that Borders is gone and that so many people lost their jobs, but I'm very grateful that the chain's demise indirectly led me to some amazing people who have helped me out in more ways than I can count.

One of the themes of my novel The Land Beyond the Portal is that good can come out of any negative situation. It's true. Maybe you've recently lost your job. Maybe a loved one has passed away. Maybe a significant other has left you. Or maybe nothing in your life seems like it is going the right way. You may feel like your whole world is ending. But stay strong, and keep your chin up. It might be God's way of closing one door so that another one may open for you. So when you find it, step through that door. And embrace whatever you find on the other side.

Meet the Author: Michael C. Humphrey

Good afternoon, fellow lovers of the written word! Are you surviving the heat wave? No? Well come inside where it's cool and meet author Michael C. Humphrey, who I am pleased to feature here today as he talks about writing his recently released novel All Living, which marks the beginning of the Seedvision Saga--a series in which Humphrey places a speculative twist on Biblical history by telling the story of Kole, Adam and Eve's firstborn son, who is still alive. (What? you may be thinking. Who is this Kole, and why is he so old?) You'll have to read All Living to find out.

Now here's Michael, in his own words.

First of all, tell us a bit about yourself. Where are you from? When did you first start writing?

Hi J.S. My name is Michael Humphrey. I currently live in Indiana and for the most part grew up here. I have lived in several different states including California, Illinois, Oklahoma, and Texas. I was born in North Carolina and have also lived in Panama while my dad was in the Green Berets. I can’t remember when I began writing, I just always have. I do remember around 6^th grade, age 12, writing a poem for a school competition, which I won, and got to eat lunch with the Mayor. I think that event solidified for me the notion that writing was pretty cool and encouraged me to set that as an aspiration for myself. So I have been a “writer” now for over 30 years, but it’s only been the past couple of years that I can claim the title of author. Check that one off the ol’ bucket list.

Have any specific authors or books been an inspiration to you? If so, which ones?

I spent a good portion of my early reading years immersed in the fantasy genre. Tolkien (of course), Brooks, Eddings, Weis and Hickman. I then branched into sci-fi and read lots of Asimov, Anthony, Bradbury, etc., as well as more contemporary authors. Mystery, history, horror, dystopian, the classics…I enjoy them all. I try to read a book a week, at least, but with 5 kids, two jobs, and an inherent desire to “veg”…it’s tough sometimes. Some of my favorites are and have been: Sarum, The Frontiersman, Replay, Battlefield Earth, The Stand. Quite an eclectic selection.

What inspired you to write All Living?

I have a degree in Theology and the Bible is one of those books that you can continuously go back to and find things that you’ve “never seen before.” It was during a study of Genesis that an idea occurred to me that became the seed of the story. I mulled it over, let it germinate, discussed it with several other authors, and finally began to tinker with it. The scriptures provide a reader with a brief synopsis of events, a sketch, a skeleton. It is up to the individual to flesh out the details, to draw comparisons, form conclusions, and challenge opinions, by comparing scripture with scripture and other outside sources. “…Here a little, there a little…” There are so many ambiguities to be found in the biblical details if you only “surface read,” and too many Christians become dogmatic about their own speculations. I wanted to challenge that by saying, “here is a work that is CLEARLY fiction…now go prove or disprove it for yourselves. And while you’re doing that, have fun.” It’s entertainment that will hopefully lead readers to pursue an enlightened self-education process.

The ending of All Living indicates that a sequel is in the works. Can you tell us a bit about that?

I suppose it could be called a sequel, but I see it more as a continuation. My publisher gave me a word limit, 115,000 words, so as I approached that point, I had to find a way to “wrap it up.” Originally I had envisioned a trilogy, but now I sense each book as representing one day of “present” time and 1000 years of “past” time, thus the biblically significant number of seven volumes. The next book, SPARK OF LIFE, will deal primarily with the mad genius of Tubal-Cain, the love affair between Kole and Keziah, and figuring out exactly how they make it through the flood (of Noah). Kole’s family was obviously NOT ON THE ARK.

What kind of research did you conduct when writing your novel? How long did it take?

There are several sections of the book that I had no idea how to write. I knew what I wanted to say, but had no idea how to approach the subjects plausibly. Things like historical anachronisms, genealogies and timelines simply required study to establish proper frameworks. “Fringe” concepts such as alternative energies, music therapy, auras, harmonic frequencies and vibrations, etc. were fun to research but definitely demanded more time to carefully position with the narrative. Then there was the technology that I knew needed to be incorporated into the distant past. One of the most enjoyable was the scenes about flight. I joined a website, hanggliding.org, and began posting questions in the forum. Things like, “If you lived in the distant past, prehistoric or antediluvian, what materials would you use to build your own hang glider?” The responses were overwhelming and awesome. I got so many good ideas from those folks and can’t thank them enough.  

Describe a typical day spent writing. Do you have any unusual writing habits?

When I write, I write at night. My best times to write are between midnight and 3am. However, it makes it tough to get up in the morning and make it to work when I stay up that late. I function pretty well on 4 hours of sleep, but it’s still hard to “give a rip” that the alarm is going off. I have never had the luxury of an entire “typical day spent writing.” I’m mostly a dabbler, tinkerer. I go over and over each paragraph, tweaking it and re-tweaking it. For me, it’s not just about conveying a message, but doing so in a way that is beautiful and poetic. I am as concerned about meter and flow as I am about context and content. I rarely ever want to use the same word twice on one page. It happens, but I’m seldom happy about it. =)

What do you do when you aren't writing?

Between working a job at Purdue University, operating a window washing business, serving on the local library Board of Trustees and projects around the house that I can barely keep up with…I try to visit family, play with the kids, date my wife, and serve God. (not necessarily in that order)

What are three things that your readers would be surprised to know about you?

I published a book but didn’t get rich from it. (I know…surprises me too.)

I never liked avocado growing up…but now I love it!

I’d rather be stuffed up than have a runny nose.

If you were stranded on a desert island, what three items would you hope to have with you?

Well, a genie lamp would be my first choice but probably not what you meant…

Obviously food and water, but I hope that’s a given. I’d love to have my wife with me too…I mean, it’s a desert island after all. ;)

How about a knife, a lighter, and a SAT phone.

What are you reading right now? 

I always seem to have several books in the queue. Last night, I finished NUMBERS by Rachel Ward. Today I’m starting STARTERS by Lissa Price. I do love YA dystopian!

And last of all, where can readers find you and your novel on the Web?

Hopefully the first place they will go is my website http://michaelhumphrey.tateauthor.com.

Lots of good stuff posted on Facebook, including book signings and speaking engagements, at http://www.facebook.com/novelmethod

Twitter is @novelmethod

Links to Tate Publishing, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble on my website.

The first born son of Adam and Eve...is still alive.

He has one week to reveal his secrets to his best friend, Lester, before he moves to the Middle East for one final divine task. But with a ruthless secret society of shadowy evil, known as the Lightmen, closing in, time is in desperately short supply.

In order to survive he is going to need Lester's help. But first, Lester needs a history lesson. With God's permission, Al finally tells his life as it is and once was.

As Al recounts his story to his only confidant, Lester not only learns the secrets of his mysterious best friend, but the story behind the world's beginning—and in the process, he may even find faith for himself.

"Conception Came Out"--The Story of Me, The Story of Many

My husband and I had been married only a month when I took the pregnancy test. I can still remember my heart pounding with anticipation as I waited for the second pink line to appear in the little window on the test strip. Various thoughts went through my head. No, no, I can’t be pregnant, I don’t feel pregnant, how could I really be pregnant? Nah, I’m probably not pregnant. Just a fluke in my menstrual cycle; that’s all this is.

A feeling of awe came over me when the second pink line materialized next to the first. I think my eyes probably bulged out of my head in astonishment. Somewhere inside of me a tiny being was growing—someone who was part Mommy, part Daddy, but 100% unique.

It is an intriguing feeling when one is both overjoyed and flat-out terrified. I couldn’t wait to meet this new member of the family, but at the same time anxiety surged through my veins. How would we be able to afford this newcomer? How could we pay for a babysitter while we both were working? How? How? How?

Fortunately, my husband and I have both been blessed with supportive families. During the next month or so, they acquired for us a plethora of baby gear at various yard sales; and my in-laws even gave us my husband’s old crib. One of my cousins bought me a week-by-week pregnancy book. I enjoyed following our baby’s progress. Look, this week our baby is the size of a kidney bean. Ooh, arms and legs are forming! Aw, now Baby’s the size of a plum!

As the weeks progressed, we selected possible names for Baby—Katerina if it was a girl, and Ambrose if it was a boy. The due date was March 24, 2011; four days before my twenty-second birthday. I’d joke around, saying that I hoped Baby wouldn’t decide to be late and end up sharing a birthday with me.

It didn’t.

At the end of my first trimester, I began spotting. I called my doctor in a panic, and he said that I was probably going to miscarry. I prayed so much that the spotting meant something else, that Baby would be okay. I went to the doctor’s office with my mother the next day and my doctor listened for the heartbeat but could hear nothing. They sent me over to the hospital for an ultrasound. My husband met us there. The three of us went into the ultrasound room together; grim as we awaited the inevitable news.

The ultrasound technician put some goo on my stomach and ran the probe over it again and again to pinpoint the baby’s location. My heart began to sink as I watched the screen. There was no baby! Then the technician switched tactics and used a vaginal probe on me. That’s when my heart plummeted.

I knew our baby was dead as soon as I saw it on the screen. As I said before, I had been following Baby’s progress in the book my cousin gave me, and at 13 weeks it should have had arms and legs and resembled a human being in some way or another. The motionless child on the screen looked like a curled-up shrimp with a human head. In other words, Katerina/Ambrose had died five weeks before at only eight weeks gestation.

It all felt like a sick joke as I recalled the past month of choosing names and filling the baby’s room with all the paraphernalia befitting an infant. My body was a traitor, having lied to me about the well-being of our child for so long. Why did it wait that long to let me know our baby was gone? I don’t know, and never will.

It took me five more days to miscarry. I awoke on the morning of September 25, 2010 in severe pain and spent the next five hours sitting on the toilet as blood and tissue came out of me in agonizing contractions. I thought I was going to die, I was bleeding so much. And there seemed to be no end in sight.

I finally caved and decided to go to the hospital. We got to the emergency room at around noon. As it turned out, the reason that the contractions weren’t ceasing was because the baby and amniotic sac were both fully intact and lodged in my cervix. The ER doctor assigned to me had to puncture the sac to get it all out.

“The conception came out,” he announced when he had finished.

Not “baby.” Not “embryo.” Not even “product of conception.” What was I saying about a sick joke?

It was all I could do not to kick him in the face. And oh, how I wanted to hurt him! He had just reduced our only child to utter worthlessness, which to him, it probably was. This was all in a day’s work for him, I suppose. For me, it was the soul-crushing end of my dreams.

“You can at least call it what it is,” I snapped back. (I was not feeling very Christian that day.)

“But that’s what we call it,” said the nurse assisting him.

They had stuck our baby in a tiny jar. “I want to see it,” I said.

The nurse plucked the jar off the counter and held it in front of my face for about two seconds. I couldn’t even see inside of it because there was a label stuck to the side, and I never was able to develop X-ray vision, to my chagrin.

We were told that they would take the remains to a part of the hospital called “Pathology” for examination. The word conjures thoughts of infectious disease and quarantines. They never did tell us why our baby was sent there, or what the results of their examination revealed. We asked that the remains be returned to us for burial and a death certificate issued. We had already received permission to bury our child above my grandfather’s grave, and we assumed that the hospital would grant our wishes, especially since it was a religious institution.

Little did I know that the sick joke would continue full-force. After twelve days of waiting for “Pathology” to call me and tell me to come get our baby, I called the hospital to see what was going on. The woman I was eventually connected with informed me that the hospital does not permit parents to have their child’s remains returned to them if the child was under a certain number of weeks gestation. Yes, you read that correctly. DOES NOT PERMIT. Instead, the remains are sent to a funeral home (one that I had never heard of), cremated, and sprinkled Lord-knows-where.

Needless to say, we never got a death certificate, either. The woman told me that we would receive an invitation to a memorial service for all the miscarried babies. Other bereft parents would be there, too. But we never got an invitation. So much for that.

The sick joke lives on to this day. My menstrual cycle has become so irregular that I have thought I was pregnant again on other occasions, only to go through another round of soul-crushing depression when my period returns. We have tried and tried to conceive again, to no avail. “But you’re still young,” people have said to me. “You have plenty of years ahead of you to have another baby.” Yes, I may be young now, but I will not be young forever, and neither will my husband.

I’m not sure why I’ve written this. Maybe it’s to get the closure I never received, or to fix the brokenness that never healed. Or maybe it’s just to share my story, which is not just mine, but the story of many. I know God has a plan in all of this. I just haven’t figured out what it is yet. I can only pray that my heart will mend and I can find forgiveness for those who robbed us of our baby. I can only pray that someday there will be a little one who looks like us running around calling us Mommy and Daddy. I can only pray.

Night of the Living Adverb

The night has fallen swiftly over the land, and thunder rumbles menacingly in the distance, rattling the windows in their panes. You curl up languidly on the sofa in front of the hearth with a book, where the fire crackles merrily as it slowly warms the room. A new bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon sits silently on the small table beside you, waiting to be poured seductively into a glass by your hunky manservant Tank, who mysteriously has not yet returned from taking out the trash. 


Suddenly a noise--a scream!--outside makes you sit up startledly. The voice belongs to Tank! Your heart pounds racingly in your chest as you rise from the sofa and creep carefully to the window. You peer warily through the rain-streaked panes, when you see them.


Rising eerily from the ground for as far as you can see are adverbs. Moaning creepily and clumsily shaking the dirt from their decaying corpses, they slowly make their way toward the house.


You are rooted to the spot. Tank would save you, but tragically other adverbs have already nabbed him. You can see some of them dining ravenously on his flailing body. His torn, white muscle shirt hangs loosely from his torso. You shut your eyes, not being able to bring yourself to look at the brutally awful treatment the adverbs are inflicting on him. You weep bitterly.


Suddenly another noise meets your ears. This time it is a soft scratching sound, directly behind you. You whirl around hurriedly in fright and nearly faint when you see that even more terribly evil adverbs have somehow made it inside the house and into the very room where you now cower in frighteningly petrifying terror.


The adverbs close in around you. Not an ounce of heavenly mercy shines in their dead eyes.


You realize there is no escape.


Or is there?


Stephen King once said that the road to hell is paved with adverbs. Over time, I have come to agree with him. Adverbs, while not bad in themselves, tend to clutter up sentences that would fare much better without them.

My early writing, just like everyone else's, was loaded with adverbs. It still is to some extent. I've been working to overcome that along with many other flaws in my prose.

I was having a conversation about adverb elimination with a friend the other day. I was talking about how the sentence itself should convey its intended meaning without having to tack on unnecessary adverbs. Here are some examples of how those nasty adverbs can be annihilated.

"We need to talk," she said coldly.

versus

She folded her arms and gave me a hard stare. "We need to talk."

In other words, if you show how a character is acting, you do not need to say what her voice sounded like. Her mood should be made clear by her stance.

Bob crept quietly up the stairs.

versus

Bob crept up the stairs.

It isn't necessary to say that Bob was being quiet, because creeping is quiet in itself. I have never heard anyone creeping loudly, and besides, in that case, they wouldn't be creeping anymore, would they?

And to take an example from the opening vignette:

The night has fallen swiftly over the land, and thunder rumbles menacingly in the distance, rattling the windows in their panes.

versus

Night has fallen over the land. A menacing roll of thunder sounds in the distance, rattling the windows in their panes.


And one final example, which I have stolen from Seize the Night by Dean Koontz, which I am currently reading. The character Chris Snow says,

I was breathing shallowly through my mouth, not solely because this method was comparatively quiet.

Now I love Dean and his books and all, but if I were to rewrite this sentence, this is what I would say:

I took shallow breaths through my mouth, not just because this method was quiet in comparison.

The second sentence looks much better, don't you think? ;)

In conclusion, I hope that these few examples have given you some idea as to how you can save yourself from those vicious, undead adverbs that have invaded your living room and/or prose.

If not, here's a dude with a flamethrower. I've heard they work great in situations like these.

Bailey out.