What are You Thankful For?

Well, it's that time of year again. Thanksgiving is just two days away, but all month long I've noticed people posting things that they are thankful for each day. It makes us stop and think. We often see terrible things on the news and it seems like there is little good left in the world. Is there anything left for which we can be thankful? Of course there is!

And so...

I am thankful for a loving and supportive family who has stayed by my side even when things have gotten rough.

I am thankful for the freedom to worship however I choose.

I am thankful that I don't have to worry about where my next meal is going to come from.

I am thankful that I have a job and a roof over my head.

I am thankful for the abilities with which I have been blessed.

I am thankful for the Terrible Times, for they taught me more than I ever learned in a classroom.

I am thankful for the opportunities that have enabled me to flourish.

I am thankful for the people who gave me those opportunities.

I am thankful for all who have helped me.

I am thankful for those who have brightened my day.

I am thankful for those who have come before me, forging a path that I can follow.

I am thankful for being alive.

I am thankful for being here.

I am thankful for burritos. (Couldn't forget those!)

I am thankful.

So now the question is, What are YOU thankful for?

What to do with Books

What to do with Books

by J. S. Bailey 

So it's your day off, and you've been sitting at the table daydreaming all morning, and before you know it, you fall asleep.

Suddenly you hear a noise like that of riffling papers. You open your eyes...

...only to see...

...a book.

Not an .epub. Not a .mobi. Not even a .pdf. A real, made-of-paper book. And you realize that it has brought its friends.

This perplexes you, because you forgot that made-of-paper books exist. You can't even remember the last time you saw one. So why did these books arrive unannounced? What do they want from you? Perhaps they were lonely and wanted some company. Which is nice, except for the fact that you have no idea what to do with them. Are they okay to eat? you wonder. No, that might give your tongue a paper cut, and that might hurt.

So you start to think. 

You look at the books again.

Yes, they are still there--not a figment of your imagination like you initially thought. You wonder if they belong in a museum, but would that put them to any good use? Probably not. So you begin to look around the house and find ways in which they might come in handy.

Wobbly chair leg? Problem solved!

They can make stylish mouse pads...

...a coaster for your favorite drink...

...a hardcore game of Domino Rally...

...a comfy ottoman for your tired feet...

...and even a scale model of Stonehenge.

But in the end, you decide that reading them is the most fun of all. Because what else are books really for?

Happy reading!

This blog skit has been brought to you by Citizens for Made-of-Paper Books.

Lament of a Writer

A thousand souls are trapped inside my head yearning to break free; to be seen and heard by those who want to read their stories. Like the woman who sits alone by the pool, reading her life away and hoping that someday things will change. And the woman who sings soulful tunes that bring tears to the audience's eyes, and she seems happy, but the moment she leaves she is overwhelmed with despair knowing that she will be returning home to an empty apartment and a cold bed.

Then there's the frightened child who endures the abuse of the Monster. Who is this monster, and what does he do to the child? What will happen to the child? How will he grow into the person he is meant to become? And the bereft young man mourning the loss of his family. He is chosen by God for a purpose, but what will he do then? And the weary traveler dying of thirst who can find no water even though it lies just out of reach. And the elderly woman who tries to flee from a ghost of the past. Their stories are fragments. Nothing more.

All of them are scratching at the inside of my skull in an attempt to escape. Even though they are there together, they exist alone. They cannot see each other because they each have their own story. But what IS their story? It is not the story of a power-hungry scientist, an archaeologist seeking answers in the soil, or a paranormal investigator trying to help a lost soul find redemption. What, then? Father, show me the stories that you wish for me to tell! Show me, so I can finally set them free!

A Moment in the Life

Monday, October 8, 4:54 pm Eastern Daylight Time. Autumn has surely arrived in the land, and I huddle on the floor of the living room with a little space heater blowing its feeble warmth into the air. A clock is ticking off to my right. Marking away the seconds like the beating of a heart. Tick...tick...tick...

I sit with my laptop perched upon my legs, thinking. What shall I do? How can I share my stories with the world? I complete my daily ritual of checking Amazon sales ranks, website page views, and Goodreads ratings. Status: unchanged. I have stories. How can I share them? The room is getting warmer, finally. The novels of the Great Ones stare down at me from their shelves. Dekker, Koontz, Dante, Bible, and too many others to count. The picture of my late uncle watches me, too. "Don't give up," he says. "I'm so proud of you and I know you can do it." He never saw my stories. They have only come to me in recent years.

A crucifix gazes down at me from beside my uncle. Christ in death, head bowed to one side as if he is only sleeping. I want to be with him. I want to follow him in every word and deed, but it is so hard, so hard. To his right is a box of beautiful cards they all sent me in the mail during the Bad Time. It is an irony, how the pain of that day could inspire me to write so beautifully. Pain is a teacher; a cruel one; yet without it we are weak. Without it we have no appreciation of happiness and joy.

I sit here, back leaning against the couch, and think about how different life would have been. I feel sad, even though years have come and gone. This day has no need for tears, though they hover furtively at the edge of my vision threatening to spill forth. I won't let them. Not today. There is too much to be thankful for; my life and health among them.

Monday, October 8, 5:11 pm Eastern Daylight Time. I think I will turn off one of the space heaters. And I will pray.

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.