AN INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER OF UNIQUE BOOKS

Michael Bailey 4.4 was released upon the world yesterday. Today (and most of next week), you can grab the entire Michael Bailey collection for free on Kindle.

In the near future, expect: AGATHA’S BARN (novella, in print), SEEN IN DISTANT STARS (novel), HANGTOWN (novel), SEVEN MINUTES (memoir), THE SPEED OF HEALING (collection), and MADNESS AND WRITERS: THE UNTOLD TRUTH. MAYBE? (creative documentary series).

But for now, you can download the entire Written Backwards backlog of Michael Bailey books for free:

PSYCHOTROPIC DRAGON is the third composite novel (technically a fiction collection) by Michael Bailey. Part short novel, part novella, part novelette, with a few short stories and fables in between, Psychotropic Dragon is a mind-bending composite narrative about Julie Stipes and her experience with the street drug Drakein-5. The psychotropic eye drops blur reality, sending her through a horrific journey of self-discovery and recovery. Each act in this ensemble is further brought to life with illustrations by Daniele Serra, Glenn Chadbourne, L.A. Spooner, and Ty Scheuerman.

THE IMPOSSIBLE WEIGHT OF LIFE, an autobiographical collection of speculative fiction and poetry by Michael Bailey. contains Bram Stoker Award-nominated short stories such as “I Will Be the Reflection Until the End” and “Time Is a Face on the Water,” but also never-before-published mind-benders created during his “highly-medicated” state of recovery, including a story about memory loss called “Fragments of Br_an,” (composed on a typewriter that no longer exists, now ash), “Emergence of the Colorless,” a statement about the beginning of the end of prejudice, and the far future “Oll Korrect,” in which artificial intelligence is used to explore humankind. As for poetry, there are favorites such as “Loosed Earth” and “Shades of Red,” but many new poems to help with balance, including “Hurt People Hurt People,” “Night Rainbows,” and “Paper Earth.”

OVERSIGHT, a themed collection of two novelettes and a short story by Michael Bailey. Includes “Darkroom” and “SAD Face” (novelettes), and “Fade to Black” (short story).

OUR CHILDREN, OUR TEACHERS, a standalone novelette by Michael Bailey, nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Long Fiction. Children are often our greatest teachers, but what happens if the lesson is too heavy to hold? A high school in rural Brenden, Washington is taken hostage by a gathering of unlikely students trying to teach the world a new lesson … a foreshadowing, perhaps, to darker times ahead for the American education system, if gun control is not addressed properly.

INKBLOTS AND BLOOD SPOTS, a painfully beautiful collection of short stories and poetry by Michael Bailey that reaches deep into the imagination, breaking hearts and boundaries along the way. Features an introduction by Douglas E. Winter, and illustrations and cover artwork by Daniele Serra. Stories include the Bram Stoker nominated “Fireman / Primal Tongue,” which also received an Honorable Mention for Year’s Best Horror; “Dandelion Clocks,” a haunting, melodic tribute to the tragedy of 9/11; “I Wanted Black,” where a young boy’s birthday is anything but cause to celebrate; “Mum,” a tale of two sisters unfolding like the bandages on their mother’s badly burned body.

PHOENIX ROSE, a composite novel. Michael Bailey returns to the strange town of Brenden, Washington to expand the events of Palindrome Hannah. A family is torn apart after a horse foaling goes terribly wrong; a sickly man recounts getting mauled by his neighbor’s dog; an undead priest is reborn into the world a hundred-fifty years after his untimely death; two brothers run for their lives through a dead field of wheat. Holding all of this together is a young boy named Todd, whose survival pivots on the balance of life and death, and a deranged mental patient with a burnt rose tattoo, whose reality is paradoxical. Cover artwork by Michael Ian Bateson.

SCALES AND PETALS, the debut fiction and poetry collection by Michael Bailey. Between writing the novels Palindrome Hannah and Phoenix Rose, Michael penned and published a number of these dark short fiction and poetry pieces, some of which can be found in literary magazines and anthologies around the world (Australia, Sweden, and South Africa). A few of these fallen dragon scales and flower petals are reprinted here, while others are original to the collection, hand selected and arranged by the author. Once you crack the spine, there’s no going back. Cover artwork by John Hornor Jacobs. Also includes a bonus graphic adaptation of the story “Plasty,” in collaboration with artist L.A. Spooner, as well as three previously unpublished flash fiction pieces.

PALINDROME HANNAH, a composite novel by Michael Bailey. Enter a cruel palindrome world: a symmetric place where disturbing situations displace the common; where good acts transmute to evil ones; where windows and mirrors are interchangeable. Within, characters influence each other through macabre arrangements of involuntary happenstance, and learn the inevitabilities of coincidence. A segmented story of a mother and daughter intertwines the others. This hidden sixth story, assembled from the five separate narratives, uncovers the sad life of a child who carries a palindrome name, and her struggling teenage mother. With five stories heading one direction, and Hannah traveling the opposite, the story unfolds like a palindrome. A puzzle within a puzzle.