Upon a Waking Dream: A Preview!

In case you haven't heard, I'm Kickstarting a new short story collection soon! How do you like the cover?

Upon a Waking Dream is a collection of 12 science fiction and fantasy stories...and you can read one of them right here. Keep scrolling!

Day 1

Greetings, daily log! Wow, it’s fun talking into this thing—I don’t even have to type! Good thing, because I’m all butterfingers on a keyboard. Right, right…okay. My name is Kwame Pattison, not that I’m important. Porter and I arrived at Outpost #602 on Kuiper Belt Object Perez 9276b this morning at 0800 hours Eastern Daylight Time. Morris and Jeong were so glad we came to replace them, they burst into actual tears. It’s a funny thing to watch in ultra-low gravity. They said they’d nearly died of boredom out here. I’m smart; I brought some old shows with me, a stack of books, and a few two-player games. Porter brought knitting needles and a basket of yarn. Some people are just full of surprises.

Day 2

This place is the shape of a potato, and isn’t much bigger than one. While Porter stayed inside the compound, I suited up and went for a walk around the surface of Perez 9276b. There’s no air, of course, and the ground is the color of old concrete. Before he and Morris left, Jeong warned me not to attempt running outside; the gravity is so low I could send myself into orbit if I go too fast.

I’m tempted to try, but I’m not entirely stupid. I won’t die in space.

Day 3

When I was assigned this job, I was told that Outpost #602 had been listening for signals from interstellar space for nine and a half years. Nobody’s ever heard an abnormal peep out of the scanners in that entire length of time, but it’s still a good-paying gig. By the time they send me back to Earth in four months, I’ll have enough money to put a down payment on a house. Kimmy and I were thinking of looking at places near Denver. I can practically smell the mountain air!

Day 4

I guess I should be talking more about actual work in this log. Well, guess what: I haven’t heard anything, and I have a fairly decent ear for anomalies. My elbow hurts from leaning on it half the day while I listen to the equipment. Once I thought I heard an eerie warbling coming through, but it was just Porter singing in the shower.

Day 5

It’s getting a little dreary out here. The sun is so far away, it’s just a bright dot a little bigger than the other stars. This rock’s orbit isn’t much farther out than the orbit of Neptune, but Neptune is way around the other side of the sun right now, so we can’t even look at that.

I wish there were sunshine, or weather, or something. Even a little earthquake would be nice for some excitement, but you can’t have an earthquake if you’re not on Earth.

Day 6

Still no alien signals. I started watching reruns of I Love Lucy. Porter tried to make some cakes in the kitchen but made a sloppy mess everywhere that I had to help clean up. Spilling flour in ultra-low gravity should be a punishable offense.

I’ve sent Kimmy a few messages letting her know I’m safe. I hope my messages don’t interfere with anything the aliens might be sending us. If there even are aliens. It’s not like anyone’s actually heard one, or seen one. I’m starting to think they’re as real as Bigfoot.

Day 7

Porter and I have been discussing what the aliens might look like, if we ever do meet them. We agree they would probably be humanoid, with opposable thumbs that would help them build their spaceships. But what color would they be? Would they have hair and wear clothes, like us?

Yes, Porter, I’m talking to myself. Where have you been the past week when I record the day’s thoughts? And you say you have a degree in physics. I guess nobody can major in The Obvious.

Day 8

Porter is pouting now. I didn’t mean to hurt his feelings, but come on.

Yes, Porter, I’m talking about you again. It’s called “venting.” Who the hell else am I going to talk to out here? The ghost of Neil Armstrong?

Sorry, getting back on track now. I spent part of the day suited up outside, getting my exercise in. It only takes an hour and a half to completely circumnavigate this rock. Magellan would be green with envy! Did I mention how glorious the stars all look out here, with no atmospheric haze to dim them? It’s a backyard astronomer’s wet dream.

But still no alien signals.

Day 9

Today was boring. Porter still isn’t talking to me. I might hold a séance later to conjure up old Neil. I bet he didn’t have to deal with this crap on the moon.

Day 10, Part 1

Nothing new to report. I—

What the hell was that? Porter, get in here!

Day 10, Part 2

Something’s shown up in our sector, heading straight toward us from the direction of interstellar space. It’s like it just materialized there, but now it’s moving fast. Our scanners can’t identify it as any previously-known object in this region. We’ve already alerted the other Kuiper Belt bases, as well as the ones on Titan and Ceres, even though they’re farther in. It’ll take a little longer for the alert to reach Earth.

This thing isn’t moving like an ordinary space rock. What if it hits us? There shouldn’t have been anything like this out here at all, dammit!

Day 11

The object moved sharply off course early this morning, saving us from certain disaster.

We can’t just shrug it off, though. Four more objects like it popped up out of nowhere on the scanners today. My teeth won’t stop chattering. Porter’s used the lavatory about seventeen times. We received the confirmation that Earth and all outlying bases have been placed on Red Alert. The first object is already closing in on Jupiter’s orbit. Scanning probes near the Jupiter system indicate the object is metal. I’d bet my salary all the new ones are, too.

Oh, God. One of the new objects is coming right toward us.

Day 12, Part 1

We’ve requested evacuation. It sounds nice, but it won’t be fast enough. This thing will be here in three hours if it doesn’t change course. A ship from the Titan base will be here next week. If there is a next week for us. We don’t have any weapons.

Day 12, Part 2

I can see the damned thing. The object is a bright light moving toward us. This is utter insanity. Can I please wake up now? They must have picked up our signals and homed in on us. Porter picked up a frequency coming from the object and dialed the volume all the way up. It sounded like a pure cacophony that had to be biological in origin. We think it was the aliens talking to some of their other ships. No humanoids would make sounds like that.

I don’t think I want to know what the aliens look like. God, get me off this rock!

Day 12, Part 3

The object has just landed on Kuiper Belt Object Perez 9276b, about one kilometer from the compound. We can see it through the viewports—it’s shaped kind of like a big, metal chicken egg with some running lights around it. I keep praying these people are friendly. I can’t stop shaking. We’re about to make history here…

Shit, figures just started emerging from the object. Three—no, four, of them. They’re suited up, so they clearly need air like us. But what kind of air? Oxygen? Methane? Oh, who the hell cares! They’re moving right toward the airlock!

I can see them better now. They’re tall, at least two meters, with round, plump bodies. And they’re walking on two slender legs.

Porter just vomited on the floor—of course I’m telling that to the machine; I just saw it happen! Don’t worry about cleaning it up. Maybe they won’t mind the mess? Oh, boy. They’re at the airlock now. I’m going to go arm myself…there’s a knife in the kitchen…okay. I’ve got the knife now.

Use your knitting needles, Porter! Stab only if provoked!

They’re inside the airlock. The knob is turning…

They’re stepping into the room. Oh, Jesus…okay. Their suits are blue, and their helmets have tinted face plates. Their necks are a meter long—about half the height of their entire bodies. Their legs are so skinny, it just reminds me of something…

One seems to be scanning the air in here with an alien piece of equipment…it just said something in its own language. Now they’re taking off their helmets!

Jesus Christ, they look exactly like…

Porter, watch out! They’re firing at us! They’re—

Day 12, Part 4

Quack. Quack. Quack-quack quack. Quack quack? Quack.

What a crazy year and a half it's been...

What a crazy year and a half it's been.

I used to throw everything I had in me into my writing career. I churned out 1,000 words a day, did book signings every weekend, and trekked to far-off lands with magical names like "Minnesota" to  peddle my books at comic cons.

At the beginning of 2021, I ran my first-ever Kickstarter campaign and was happily plunging into the first draft of Dalton Kane Book 2 when my mental health took a complete nosedive. I felt like I was losing my mind and didn't know why, which was an incredibly scary thing. I started taking sleeping pills and anxiety medication in the hope I would start feeling normal again.

About a month after I started losing my mind, I found out I was 7 weeks pregnant, which meant that my abrupt shift in mental health was due to pregnancy hormones. Yay science!

Mr. Bailey and I had been trying to have a child for 10 years with no success. I was thrilled to be pregnant but also terrified--my first pregnancy in 2010 ended in a missed miscarriage so in my mind, pregnancy was associated with nothing but disaster. I had a lot of emotional baggage to sort out last year.

Summer of 2021 was me getting used to the fact that I would soon be a mom. The pregnancy had no complications but I felt miserable, and anything to do with my writing career went out the window. I only wrote a handful of chapters in all of 2021.

And then my sweet Baby Bee arrived! And she's been growing and growing, and now that she's half a year old, I've been trying to slip back into my author role again when I get the moments to do so. I still haven't started working on Dalton Kane Book 2 again, but I'll get there someday.

Dalton Kane and the Greens: A Preview

Hey there, folks! It's been a long time since I've posted anything here!

In case you've missed the news, my next novel, Dalton Kane and the Greens, is due to be out this August! It's a big departure from my previous work, and I had a lot of fun writing it, so I hope you all have a lot of fun reading it.

Here's a quick blurb:

When humankind first settled Molorthia Six a hundred years ago, they thought it was uninhabited. It turns out that the treelike Greens were just holding very still--and that they have teeth.

These days, humans live in the Molorthian desert, far from the bloodthirsty forests. Life seems to be going rather miserably for widowed Sheriff Dalton Kane, so it's no real surprise when unexplained forest fires send refugee Greens fleeing toward town.

When a violent Green attack leaves several citizens dead, Dalton and his new deputy, an ex-conman named Chumley Fanshaw, make the treacherous journey north to see what they can do to stop the fires that keep sending the Greens in their direction. They soon find themselves fighting not only for their lives, but for the lives of every human on Molorthia Six.

Intrigued? Keep scrolling for a preview of Chapter 1!

Chapter 1

Dalton Kane hated meetings.

He suspected that whoever invented them had done it to see if anyone would notice a punchline. But, as sheriff, he was required to participate in said meetings as requested, and he wasn’t in a position to argue about it no matter how much they made him want to stab his eyes out with a paperclip.

Luckily for him, today’s meeting was with Carolyn Kaur, Richport’s mayor, and she promised it would be brief.

So.

He looked at his reflection in the small hand mirror he kept in his desk drawer, decided he looked as much of a bastard as ever, and dragged a greasy comb through his sunbleached hair to make it look like he’d at least tried. Then he stood, squared his shoulders, and strode out of his office with a swagger of forced masculinity to greet his superior.

He didn’t spot Carolyn at first. His gaze roved briefly over the desks and filing cabinets that sat in neat rows in the main part of the police station. Cadu Mão de Ferro, the emergency operator, sat at his desk swirling a pen around on a piece of paper waiting for calls to come in, and Debbie Harper…

Dalton’s eyes went wide.

Debbie Harper had brought a salad.

Again.

He ground to a halt as the reason for Carolyn’s visit fled his mind. Time itself slowed to a near-standstill, and his vision darkened around the edges until Debbie and her lunch were all he could see. 

The mousy-haired office assistant sat hunched over her desk, forking a glob of dressing-soaked plant matter into her mouth. Dalton could hear the languid crunch as she bit into it, watched as she stabbed into her bowl and brought another forkful of the substance toward her mouth.

His heart fluttered in his chest like a moth caught in a window screen, not that they had any moths here on Molorthia Six.

Spots danced mockingly through the air before him as his consciousness started to go.

Debbie took another bite.

A faint ringing began to sound in Dalton’s ears, and he thought, Sonofabitch.

###

Dalton came to feeling something cold and damp pressing against the side of his head.

His eyes snapped open. Everything towered over him as if he’d shrunk, and it took him a few seconds to realize this was because he lay sprawled across the wooden plank floor like a drunk in the gutter. The battered gray filing cabinet to his left had toppled over, belching papers across the planks, and Dalton’s head and shoulder smarted in time with his heartbeat.

Ah, he thought.

“Dalton, are you okay?” Carolyn Kaur asked in a low tone. The brown-skinned woman held a self-activating icepack in one hand, and a first-aid kit lay open on the floor next to her. Her dusty, black business suit had a smudge of fresh blood on one sleeve.

He squinted past her and saw Debbie standing by her desk with her arms crossed in defiance while Cadu Mão de Ferro gave her a scolding.

The salad was nowhere in sight.

“But I have to start eating better!” Debbie whined to Cadu. “My doctor said!”

“You know you can’t bring that kind of stuff in here,” Cadu said, perhaps too gently. “Not after what happened to the sheriff’s family.”

“I taste blood,” Dalton said, looking back to Carolyn, who’d pressed the icepack against his head again.

“You bit your lip when you fell. I saw the whole thing happen. Your legs turned into jelly, and bam.”

Dalton narrowed his eyes again. The door to the lobby had been propped open, and an industrial-sized fan parked a meter or so away from the doorway riffled papers on the scattered desks.

Vaguely, he remembered that Carolyn had come here to talk to him about something. But then there had been the salad.

He pulled himself to his feet, his face setting itself into a scowl so deep, it might become permanent. He stormed from the office area and out through the lobby without even going back for his Stetson.

Outside in the dusty street where the only colors were brown, tan, gray, and a little bit of red on some shop signs, Dalton began to feel more like himself again, whatever that meant. The gleaming sun beat down upon him so heavily that he could already feel his ears thinking about blistering. His brown leather trench coat would keep the sun off most of the rest of him, at least.

He couldn’t bring himself to go get his hat. Not after what everyone had seen him do.

“Dalton, wait.”

He turned his head enough to see Carolyn hurrying out the entrance to the police station in her high heels.

His expression felt like stone. “What do you want, Carolyn?”

She frowned at him, her eyes dark wells of concern. “A few people have come to me worried about the smoke on the horizon. I thought you should send someone to check it out.”

She hadn’t been kidding when she’d said the meeting would be brief. “Smoke?” Dalton craned his neck, unable to see anything but buildings and sand. “In which direction?”

“To the north.” She paused. “And the northeast. Mostly the north, though. I figured you’d noticed it already.”

He gave her a dull glare. He may have spotted some smoke that morning on his way in, but hadn’t thought much of it—sometimes things just burned. “Maybe the folks up in Paris are celebrating Bonfire Night already.”

Carolyn opened her mouth as if to say more but then shook her head. “Clearly, this isn’t the right time to be talking to you. Is this about that damned salad?”

A tendril of dread scuttled down Dalton’s spine the moment she spoke that word. Instead of answering, he set his jaw and turned on his heel, then stomped away from her.

Maybe she’d understand a little better if she’d been there. They all might understand a little better. But only Dalton had been there, and Summer Kane, too, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to go talking to Summer about it. He’d rather lay down naked in a bed of fire ants in the noonday Molorthian sun. Not that they had any fire ants.

As Dalton’s boots sent up puffs of dust with every angry footfall, he patted the loaded water pistol in its holster on his hip and felt one microscopic shred of relief.

Thanks and Rest

2019 has been one heck of a year. It's certainly been my busiest year, and for these past few weeks, I've been taking a much-needed rest by hardly writing, painting the walls at the bookstore where I work, hardly writing, washing out paint rollers, hardly writing, wishing the paint specks washed off of my hands easier, and hardly writing.

But don't worry! I may not be writing much at the moment, and my event schedule has been a bit empty, but for everything there is a season. I'll be writing more again someday soon, but I'm a firm believer that self-care is an important thing, and I'll get back into the swing of things soon enough.

I do want to thank each and every one of you for your support this year! I met many of you at comic cons and book signings, and your kind words have been so encouraging. May we meet again soon!

Some people have asked how they can support my writing without attending one of my events. For those who live in the Cincinnati area, my books are available at The Book Rack, and for those who live in the Columbus, Ohio area, my books are available at The Book Loft of German Village. It's important to support local indie bookstores, which are centers of literacy and culture in our communities.

Of course, my books are also available from Barnes and Noble and Amazon, as well as at BHC Press, my publisher.

Speaking of which...

My publisher is currently running a holiday sale on all print titles, exclusively in their online store! Click here to take advantage of these deals through December 31.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy Reading!

--J. S. Bailey

Preorder Solemnity Today!

You may have noticed it has been a long time since I've released a novel.

Being an author involves an extraordinary amount of patience. We wait weeks to see what our editors say. We wait months--or longer!--for our publishers to package up our books in nice little bows and send them out into the world to be enjoyed. (Okay, maybe there aren't any bows involved. I *am* an author; and we tend to make things up by our very natures.)

Luckily, fans of The Chronicles of Servitude will only have to wait a bit longer for Solemnity, the fourth (and penultimate!) volume of socially-awkward psychic Bobby Roland's adventures. It is available to preorder in ebook, softcover, and hardcover formats, from the following booksellers:

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Kobo

Apple Books

Waterstones

Bobby Roland has stumbled onto a new crisis.

Violent criminals are rising from the dead throughout Oregon—not just in Portland, but in Bobby’s adopted hometown of Autumn Ridge. He teams up with Joanna Halsey, an old acquaintance who knows a few things about the occult, to get to the bottom of the mystery. Together they surmise that these criminals have been brought back to life to complete some terrible task.

Their search for answers takes them to an occultist’s doorstep, where Bobby learns that raising the dead is no difficult feat for those devoted to black magic.

But who would resort to necromancy, and why? Bobby and Joanna must stop them before the dead kill again.

Harry Potter, Good Omens, and The Power of Allegory

I was ten years old when I first heard of Harry Potter.

Prisoner of Azkaban had just come out, and there was an article about the books' success in our Weekly Reader at school. It seemed like their popularity exploded outward from that moment, and soon it seemed that nearly everyone at my private Catholic school was reading them.

I received all three novels for Christmas that year and quickly gobbled them up. Soon after, I began to hear some concerns from parents about the "witchcraft" involved in them. My mother read the books after I did and decided they were safe enough for me, and the school library kept them in stock, and all was well.

Looking back, the Catholic community in which I was raised was somewhat laid-back. We loved God and Jesus and were still able to enjoy popular culture without fear of the devil flying out at us at every turn. To us, stories were just stories, and it didn't matter if there were witches and wizards and house elves in them. (I can't speak for all Catholics; this is just what I saw from the ones I was acquainted with.)

Of course, I still heard stories of parents refusing to allow their children to read Harry Potter because of its "Satanic" nature. Even as a child, I knew that those parents hadn't read a page of Harry Potter themselves, because there was absolutely nothing Satanic whatsoever in them. After all, Voldemort was a bad guy everyone wanted to defeat! Those parents had simply heard rumors of the devil and panicked without taking a look at the truth for themselves.

Now let's fast forward twenty years.

It's 2019. A month ago, the screen adaptation of Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett was released upon the world. For those not in the know, Good Omens is the comedic tale of an angel, Aziraphale, and a demon, Crowley, who team up to stop the Apocalypse because they both happen to really love the Earth and don't want it to be destroyed.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, some religious groups took offense.

"Good Omens misrepresents God!" I saw one person worry online. This person had neither read the book nor watched the show, but was referencing the fact that God, the narrator, is portrayed by actress Frances McDormand.

"An angel and a demon could never be friends," another person complained. And, "A demon could never be a good guy. Demons are evil."

Since this is a free country, people of course have the right to object to whatever they want to. However, I prefer taking a more nuanced approach to analyzing fiction. 

Having a woman narrating God's voice doesn't bother me because God is a celestial being, and celestial beings have no gender. I don't mind the fact that an angel and a demon are friends, because Good Omens is a work of fiction. Not once does it ever proclaim itself to be Truth. It's simply a laugh-out-loud story with enough tender moments that made me wish it was much longer than six episodes.

The thing about good stories is that they go so much deeper than surface level. I consider both Harry Potter and Good Omens to be allegories, which Dictionary.com defines as "a representation of an abstract or spiritual meaning through concrete or material forms; figurative treatment of one subject under the guise of another."

Harry Potter isn't about witches and wizards; it's about courage and bravery and self-sacrifice. It is a hero's tale that shows us that evil, no matter how powerful, can be defeated.

Good Omens isn't about angels, demons, and the end of the world. It's the story of people who love and care about each other despite their differences. It's the perfect example of unconditional love, and it makes me yearn for a world where people sitting on opposite sides of the fence can unite under a common cause, whether they're a witch and a witchfinder, a prostitute and a witchfinder, or a demon and an angel.

Some of Jesus's most effective teachings came in the form of allegories, like the story of the prodigal son, or the story of the good Samaritan, both of which demonstrated spiritual truths without ever coming across as instructional or preachy. And if it worked for Jesus, why can't it work for the rest of us?

On Social Awkwardness

Some years ago, I was in the presence of a group of small children, all of whom looked at me suddenly and chorused, "Awkward!!!"

I was a grown adult at this point in time. I was amazed at their perceptiveness, and unsure of exactly what I'd done that warranted their comment. They were right, though.

I am socially awkward.

And I always have been.

(Yours Truly, circa 2003. My posture is making my eyes twitch.)

Different people probably have differing definitions of what it means to be socially awkward. In my case, I define it as failing to understand certain social cues, not knowing the proper responses to make in certain situations, and doing generally embarrassing things in public and feeling helpless while committing them.

My social awkwardness used to cause me some anxiety because I feared the ridicule of others. I tend to flub my speech when I get nervous--what if they thought I was stupid for bungling up everything I said? What if they tease me for not understanding something was supposed to be a joke? What if they talk behind my back about what a silly, foolish person I am?

What if nobody takes me seriously ever again?


via GIPHY

Does this sound familiar to any of you? Maybe you struggle with social awkwardness, too, and the anxiety that comes with it. Maybe you fear talking on the telephone because you can never figure out the "right" way to interact with people you can't see. Maybe you fear speaking with people face to face because you struggle with body language and misinterpret what people mean.

I understand. I've been there.

And you know what?

Things can get better.

At some point, I decided to own my awkwardness. I engage with dozens of people at my in-person events, and once I admitted to others that I am a Socially Awkward Person, things didn't start to seem so bad. I make lighthearted jokes about it: "Bobby Roland is shy and socially awkward, just like his author!" I'll say, which always generates a few chuckles.


via GIPHY

Being socially awkward is just going to be a part of who I am. I don't have much anxiety anymore. If someone has an issue with my lack of savvy social skills, who cares? That's their problem, and I really am trying my best, just like everyone else.

If you are socially awkward too, fear not. I personally believe that any socially awkward person can be Awesomely Awkward. Wear your awkwardness like a crown and make it yours! Plus, the more you get to practice social interaction, the more the wrinkles in your social skills will get ironed out. We may never be perfect--who isn't?--but we can sure as heck do the best with what we've got.

Do you have tips about dealing with social awkwardness? Share them in the comments!