Bailey Books

Dale Bailey has been publishing short fiction for quite some time. Last year saw the publication of his first novel, the greatly atmospheric and horrific Fallen. Now, Golden Gryphon Press has published Bailey's first collection, which reunites most of the work he has published in the Fiction & Science Fiction magazine.

And what a collection it is! You probably won't read a better amalgation of sci-fi/horror stories this year (or in the next couple of years for that matter). The collection opens with the title story, a very touching and imaginative tale about a boy who's dead father is resurrected into a robot-like man. I dare anyone to read this story and not feel completely emotionally torn in the end.

Death and Sufferage is another great zombie story (a theme that Bailey often touches upon) that will remain in your mind for quite some time. Touched and Quinn's Way are stories about childhood, the kind of coming-of-age tales only an expert writer is able to write. These are stories that are effective in all the right places, pushing all the right buttons. And The Census Taker is a story that feels like vintage Stephen King but that is even more emotionally gripping.

It's impossible to pick a favourite out of this collection. Bailey's writing is reminiscent of the early Ray Bradbury, only with more feeling, more nuance. Bradbury's writing could often feel cold; Bailey's is very warm, rich and demanding. The author has a way with words that is worthy of poetry. Beautiful prose graces every story, a thing that isn't easy to find in genre fiction. If there is such a thing as literary sci-fi/horror, I guess this is it!

I urge anyone who hasn't tried Dale Bailey to do so, and fast. That is one name that will, soon enough, become a major player in genre fiction. The fact that his stories are accessible to all and not just a small core audience only broadens his horizon. A major and important collection by a man who hasn't finished impressing us.

The Resurrection Man's Legacy represents Dale Bailey's first collection, though his fantasies have been published for a decade: as such, it showcases the title story, slated for development as a motion picture, and combines this growing classic with tales of grief and family ties. The tone of these short stories is historical in style: Bailey's stories provide believable near-futures, science which could be real, and a literary, poetic bent to the language which is unusual and compelling. Highly recommended.

Dale Bailey, The Resurrection Man's Legacy and Other Stories (Golden Gryphon Press, 2003)

A little over a year ago, I read and reviewed (quite favorably) Dale Bailey's novel House of Bones. (ed. note: May 10, 2004) I'd been meaning to get round to reading him again since then, but somehow a year passed before I picked up my next Bailey book: this substantial collection of short stories. I knew from reading House of Bones that I should be expecting good things, but then I read the introduction, penned by no less a personage than Barry N. Malzberg, author of more underrated science fiction classics than you can comfortably shake a small alder at (if you've not read The Sodom and Gomorroah Business, at least, shame on you). Malzberg's introduction to this book is jaw-dropping, especially for a man who, the few times he blurbs something, always seems to be damning with faint praise. Here, he is heralding a collection that, he intimates, should be canonized immediately, comparing it to the definitive collections of John Varley and Theodore Sturgeon. That, folks, is some heady stuff. Now, as I said, I knew Dale Bailey was capable of good, perhaps great, things. Malzberg's introduction had me believing I'd be placing this on the short shelf next to Piccirilli's A Choir of Ill Children as one of the finest achievements in modern dark fantasy.

The comparison turned out to be more accurate than I could have guessed. Bailey, a North Carolina boy, has assumed the mantle of southern gothic, mastered it, and bent it to his will in quite the same way Piccirilli has, and with similar results. This is not to say that The Resurrection Man's Legacy... is a collection of southern gothic tales; while a few are certainly in that vein ("The Census Taker," especially, has a distinct smell of whatever herbs were used in Carson McCullers' coffin), Bailey's palette of influences stretches a mite farther than Yoknapatawpha County. The collection's title story has its roots quite obviously in "I Sing the Body Electric," and anyone who's read that story knows what's going to happen here. (Not that this, either, was a surprise; House of Bones has its roots in more haunted house tales than one can count, from The House on Haunted Hill to Poltergeist III.) What separates Bailey from your run-of-the-mill plagiarist hack is that at no time while reading "The Resurrection Man's Legacy" will you get the impression you're actually reading "I Sing the Body Electric." Nor, for that matter, that you're reading anything other than Dale Bailey. His is a voice that is as distinct as the sound of winter wind down the face of Stone Mountain. Bailey has obviously taken into consideration the old saw that there's nothing new under the sun; here, he takes the old and makes it new again in a number of cases. Of course, there are others, where taking the old and making it new again takes on, well, a whole new set of meanings ("Death and Suffrage," for example, is a wonderful spin on the cliché that the dead have been voting in Chicago since Prohibition).

Dale Bailey is, in fact, a fantastic writer. If you haven't yet gotten to know his work, you should. The novels are likely easier to find these days, but if you get the chance, hunt this collection down. You'll be glad you made the effort.

Tom Bailey's "A Short Story Writer's Companion" is one of the most helpful writing books that I've read (the others being Bailey's own "On Writing Short Stories" and John Gardner's "The Art of Fiction" and "On Becoming a Novelist"). Bailey's book is steeped in the words of other writers but never showboats his extensive knowledge-each writer's words are cited and Bailey quickly pulls them into the points that he hammers home: whether it be drawing from a Eudora Welty quote to illustrate the many functions of setting or citing David Foster Wallace and William Gass on point of view. Reading Bailey not only informs you on how to write but about writers as well. It serves as a great launching board for these authors.

But Bailey never drowns in outside sources. His own prose is often just as well crafted as those authors he cites and to prove that he's not simply blowing smoke, Bailey includes his Pushcart-winning story "Snow Dreams." It's a dark, character-driven tragedy set in a fully realized world that make not only a gut-wrenching story but promises to be a knockout novel in 2004.

Also included are exercises for young writers to hone their craft. I found these to be very helpful in the few workshops that I've had the opportunity to lead. Ultimately, that proves the value of this book: it's useful not only students and writers but to teachers as well.

As a student of Dr. Bailey's, this book greatly helped me explore the short story genre and opened my eyes to how amazing the form can be.

Whenever asked to recommend one basic book on the craft of short-story writing, I choose Tom Bailey's A SHORT-STORY WRITER'S COMPANION and the anthology ON WRITING SHORT STORIES edited by him. Okay that makes two books; however, with the duplicate material excised, the two could easily be republished as one 350-page book.

In his brief book (184 pages), Tom Bailey helps the beginning writer learn more about the craft of short-story writing than the long-standing textbook "Writing Fiction" by Janet Burroway (434 pages) and the recent textbook "The Making of a Story" by Alice LaPlante (672 pages). Although these three craft-writers include several of the same short stories -- such as Flannery O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge," Tobias Wolff's "Bullet in the Brain," Tim O' Brien's "The Things They Carried" -- Tom Bailey comments in much greater detail on the craft elements of each story, making it an excellent self-teaching book. The quotes from the stories are so lucidly introduced that the book is easily accessible even without the anthology. Bailey accomplishes more in fewer pages by his superior teaching strategy of providing more detailed craft analysis of fewer stories.

Unlike Burroway and LaPlante, Bailey presents one of his own published stories, "Snow Dreams," to illustrate the writing, copyediting, and publishing processes. And a very well-written story it is, proving that Bailey is master of not only the craft but also the art of short-story writing.

-- C J Singh


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More details?

The anthology edited by Bailey, ON WRITING SHORT STORIES,
comprises all of the stories he analyzes in detail in his
A SHORT-STORY WRITER'S COMPANION.

Eighteen stories:
Among them are nineteenth-century classics (Maupassant's "The Strings,"
Chekov's "The Lady with the Pet Dog");
twentieth-century classics (Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants,"
Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily,"
Carver's "Cathedral");
contemporary stories (Cynthia Ozick's "The Shawl,"
John Updike's "A & P,"
Joyce Carol Oates's "Heat,"
Susan Minot's "Lust,"
Louise Erdrich's "Saint Marie").

The anthology also presents illuminating essays by:
Francine Prose, "What Makes a Short Story?";
Joyce Carol Oates, "Reading as a Writer--The Artist as Craftsman";
Andre Dubus, "The Habit of Writing";
Frank Conroy "The Writer's Workshop";
and C. Michael Curtis, "Publishers and Publishing."

Conroy's essay demystifies the Iowa Writer's Workshop model that continues to prevail in MFA programs in Creative Writing.

Reviewed by Debra Gaynor for Reader Views (8/06)

Gary Gautier has written a superb book titled "Spaghetti and Peas." Children and adults tend to fear snakes but in this delightful tale the snakes are friends.

"Some snakes might bite in the park or the woods, but not Jane and her babies, they love us for good."

While Rachel's dad cooks spaghetti and peas, Rachel goes to the back yard for an adventure. Rachel meets a teary-eyed mother snake that is searching for her babies. Where could they be? So begins the search for the missing baby snakes. They look in the garden and yard but no babies are there. Finally they find the babies in Rachel's toy box. The babies are so happy, they wrap themselves around Rachel's fingers. Marie from next door comes for a visit. Marie, Rachel and all the snakes play together.

I've always had a great fear of snakes and usually avoid any book containing one. However, I enjoyed this book immensely. The story is told in a light-hearted, cheerful rhyme and the illustrations are bright and colorful. The snakes' come to life through the descriptive manner in which Mr. Gautier describes them. The illustration of Jane with the daisies in her mouth is endearing. This would make a great addition to any young child's library. It will be finding it's way into my granddaughter's library soon.

Wow, this is such an awesome book. The story is adorable, and the vibrant illustrations are amazing. My kids just love this book, they can't get enough of it! I've found that alot of childrens books tend to be a great story with so-so illustrations and vice-versa, while Spaghetti and Peas is all of those things and a bag of chips. Great quality.

Spaghetti And Peas is a marvelous children's picturebook a young girl who befriends a mother snake and helps her search for her snake babies. Meanwhile, the young girl's father cooks up a storm of spaghetti and peas. The charming text by Gary Gautier is written entirely in rhyme, and the vibrant, colorful, slightly cartoony artwork by Sheila Bailey brings this whimsical and cheery story to life. Spaghetti And Peas is an enjoyable, entertaining book that is excellent for reading aloud to young children.

This is a remarkable book. It is a compilation of 41 short stories, all written by women, united by the bond of mothering a "special needs" child. That is the current, politically correct, phrase to indicate a child who is somehow outside two or three standard deviations of "normal," meaning that physically, emotionally and/or mentally all is not quite right. In various stories much significance is attached to finally finding the "label" to characterize a child's behavior, be it Asperger's syndrome, ADHD, PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified), Down's Syndrome et al. The label all too often obstructs understanding of a child's true condition rather than illuminates, and the PDD-NOS one truly boggles the mind.

Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, as Tolstoy once wrote. Ms. Schusteff selected stories depict a broad spectrum of "special needs" possibilities. (I wish she had explained her selection criteria). Yet there are the common themes that are woven into many of the stories: the initial denial; the hopes for a cure; the frustrations with the medical and educational establishments; the guilt of "did I do something wrong during the pregnancy"; the fear of ridicule, and the desire to protect the child; the desire to simply flee, and never come back; the callousness of strangers, and even the clumsiness of the well-intentioned.

I looked for the weak story, and perhaps there are a couple. But the vast majority are well written, in lean, no-nonsense prose. I hesitate to select certain passages that moved me, at the exclusion of others, but still: there is Kimberley Winters' child Elena looking at the picture that was once a healthier herself, yet saying: "I'm happy now too...just like her."; there is Heide Kaminski saying: "My mom gave up on me, but I never gave up on myself. And now I can't give up on him..."; there is Caryn Sullivan's plea: "Can't someone develop a universal medical history form?" and later, illustrating that she is cut off from other women her age: "I realize, though, that when they are looking for someone to have a good laugh with, I'm not on the short list to call."; Janice Noble on the clumsiness of the well-intentioned: "I received the compliments that I grew to hate. `God knew you were special enough to give a special child to.' How I despised that one in particular."; and there is the painful description of neglect, from Marie LaConte, as she describes the Down's syndrome child she has just received from a prior marriage: "... and teeth creamy yellow, an overgrowth of plaque obliterating the boundaries between her teeth."

In at least four of the stories it is the "special needs" child that helps the parent, as illustrated in Jessica Thompson's story: "When I have practically drowned in tears as a result of my despair, my son has stroked my hair, wiped my eyes and comforted me with, `It's okay Mommy."

The cover picture to the book is haunting, capturing the anguish of a troubled little girl.

And there is: "The dog that did not bark." The other voices that need to be heard, and in some cases, merely described. All those "minor characters," the men. Some were depicted as absolutely supportive, other callous and/or indifferent and in denial, and others simply "cut-out." But what did they think? And there are the all too many cases of the "special needs" children who were abandoned by their mothers to the state, and now often roam the by-ways of America, sleeping under the overpasses, struggling with their own demons, surrounded by the indifference and hostility of those far more fortunate.

And there but for fortune go I. I am one of the lucky ones, two wonderful children who never had to ride "the short bus." So much of the "poverty of human existence" is due to the hubris and ignorance of people's behavior, from the stupidity of war, the greed of Wall Street, to the addiction to television. The pain and occasional joy involved with having a "special needs" child is different: it is the "bad cards" that fate deals, with no correlation to the merits of the receiver. This is an absolutely essential book for all professionals in "the field," be they in the medical or educational establishments, and should be required reading. For the rest of us, those that drew "better cards," the book should be mandatory also; to increase our empathy, as well as gratitude to a more favorable karma received.

Whether you have a child with special needs or know someone who does, this book will touch you. In these essays moms write about their hopes and dreams as well as frustrations and feelings of inadequacy. As a mother of an ADHD son, I know all too well the isolation and desperation that walks hand-in-hand with a diagnosis of ADHD, Autism, Bipolar Disorder or one of the many other behavioral and emotional disorders. I have often said that if my son had diabetes or cerebral palsy people would feel sympathetic and want to help. But, when my impulsive son yells or hits, no one really cares that he has ADHD. But, these moms do...they get it and it is very cathartic and validating to hear their stories.

Having no children of my own yet, much less a child with special needs, the essays in this book do a wonderful job of reaching a wide audience. The insight that these women writers provide on their everyday experiences, frustrations, and triumphs will truly win your heart while sharing devastating moments that evoke your deepest sympathies. Each writer has her own unique voice, ranging from touching philosophies on parenting to the darkest corners of a mother's mind that require an unspeakable amount of courage to write. Each essay is a short 5-15 minute read, making it an easy read while you have a few moments (I read 5 essays while getting the oil changed in my car). In short, I highly recommend this book.

This is the kind of book every teacher and family member who knows a special-need kid (and who doesn't?) should read. It is not a how-to or medical manual but rather insightful and heartfelt stories from the people who really know best what living with many challenges can be like.

At long last, a genuinely holistic discussion of the meaning of life, the universe and everything! This breathtakingly wide-ranging book takes in just about every discipline known to human thought, with a startling array of new insights that should be making scientists and philosophers around the world sit up and take notice along with the rest of us. Most importantly of all, this is not some abstract discussion - it is an urgent call to action. By turning every assumption you have ever held upside down, Paul Bailey shows how every single one of us has the power to make a real and significant difference, each moment of our lives.
If we are ever to start fixing the major problems we humans have created in our world, then this is just the kind of new way of thinking we are going to need. Anyone even remotely concerned about what the future holds for themselves and their children should read this astonishing book right now.

This book is stunning!!
A verbal chiropractic for the mind and spirit. There's a huge amount of information and insights on offer here. "Think of an Elephant" turns your head inside out and upside down, enabling YOU to turn your whole way of being around. If you want to help our species survive and start caring for all life on our beautiful planet then you MUST read it now! I'm not exaggerating. The reach of this book is extraordinary.
"When the student is ready....The teacher will appear" (ancient proverb).
Well, the teacher has appeared, and his name is Paul Bailey.

I have not read a more perceptive book that encompasses everything from environmental issues to the development of the self to quantam physics. Forget self help/self development, chicken soup, politically motivated social commentary. TAKE ACTION, have some balls and read Think of an Elephant. You can, and you have to, make a difference and, most importantly, you are able to, even if you don't know it yet.Paul Bailey has produced the most thought provoking, life challenging work and it needs to be read, discussed and actioned...before it is too late......tick tock....

Must read for trial lawyers.

F. Lee Bailey tells you what you need to know and what kind of qualities are essential to be a trial lawyer. It is detailed, yet efficient and written with brevity. I wish more successful trial lawyers had books out there like this!!!

A must read for every law student who is interested in trial law, or is unsure of his or her abilities to be a succesful trial lawyer. This book educates and inspires.

It's really an autobiography disguised as a novel. I have to believe is an accurate story of how these "cowboys of the sea" persue those magnificent creatures of the deep and the lifestyle they choose to live while doing it. Then there's the
wealth and power of the boat owners... If you love to fish and dream a little...you have to read this book!!

I fished with Ron Hamlin in Guatemala and let me tell you, he's the real deal!! He was kind enough to give me an autographed copy. Please make more available. I would like to buy six more copies to give to friends.

The best fishing story I've ever read. This book caught the big one! I only wish there were more like it.The competition, the commraddery, the humor made you feel like you were there.I can't believe a movie hasn't been made with this one

A lifelike version of the real thing

Guy Bailey has put together an extremely helpful resource that has a wide variety of games that are simple, yet fun. I found it to be organized and easy to understand. Most importantly, my students are having a great time participating in the games used! I highly recommend this book to anyone needing fun and creative ideas to enhance their curriculum. Its great!

This book is very organized and gives you specific times for each activity. Highly recommended!!

The Ultimate Playground & Recess Game Book completely lives up to its title and offers classroom teachers, physical education instructors, playground supervisors, youth recreational leaders, and parents more than 170 fun-packed games, sports, and activities for recess and recreational time on the school yard playground, the community park, or the family back yard. Some of these games and sports learned in a school setting or a summer recreation program can be enjoyed for a lifetime. Some of these games will help to reduce student boredom at recess and thereby eliminate a major source of playground behavioral problems. Each game is fully described in a clear, concise, "user friendly" text which is enhanced with more than 150 illustrations to help visualize game directions and setup. An exceptionally useful "Activity Finder" chart makes it simple and quick to find games to meet the needs of the adult supervisors and the children. The Ultimate Playground & Recess Game Book is an indispensable and very welcome addition to any school, summer camp, or family activities reference shelf.

as always all the bailey school kids books are good i read them all the time i can read over 5 a day i like them so much. They are short and great for little kids to practice reading with.

Bailey City is full of some pretty weird grownups.It is the perfect place for the spooky Hauntly Manor Inn.Could Kilmer's grandmother be a vampire planning to hang around?The kids think so.Check out who's visiting the Hauntly Manor Inn.

Madame Hauntly, Mrs. Jeepers mother is going to the Hauntly Manor inn. When Carrey finds out that madame hauntly is a vampire, she puts sign in the neighborhood mean signs.

The pranksers done numerous pranks, such as stealing the prime ministers underwhere. But now he or she's gone to far. They've solen the president's dog! Somehow it gets into the hands of Stevie Diamond, are vallient detective and her partner Jessie. Jessie is totaly into this 'prankster thing', but Stevie's not to sure about it. Jessie is able to pull Stevie into this crime, and they go through many adventures to get the crimal to go to out of crime.

This book you cannot put down.(I read it for 2 hours!!!!!!) This houmerous mystery is AWESOME GREAT EXCELLENT!!!!!! This book's plot will keep you going for hours! It is like you are solving your very own mystery as you read along!!!! I am still yet to read the other Stevie Diamond mysteries, but if they are like this one, I just can't wait!!!!!!!!!!!

The adventures of Stevie and her friend Jesse and the stray dog they adopt and their efforts to discover the identity of the Prankster who is terrorizing Vancouver made me laugh so hard I had to wipe the tears away. The story also kept me guessing.A great choice for kids who want a short and funny read.