This is a short memoir piece, but written in short story form. (click cover for pdf) Becoming a Statistic Alone on a dark road, I learned something about myself I didn’t really want to know. By the time I realized the danger, it was too late. I was the proverbial sitting duck. It must have seemed the perfect crime to them; A deserted road, a stranded young woman, and the cover of darkness to top it all off.
Relationships, family estrangement, killing fire alarms with a hammer, dubious spirituality, rebuttals to critics–Baeli again tackles the human condition, using her own experiences as fodder. Anecdotal, sometimes; honest and thought provoking, always. Social psychology from the trenches. “Though at times incendiary, Baeli’s straightforward, no-holds-barred style is rather like a political debate should be: fair but firm; and always backed up by facts. When she tackles more personal fare, there’s an overt sense of profound sensitivity, not often found in one with so strong a voice.” ~KIWI Club Reviews CONTENTS Ship That Passed Too Swiftly Surviving Family Member Two Alarm …Continue reading →
With her usual flair for passion and wit, Baeli shines as she examines reading habits–her own, and that of others–in this 3rd volume of the Reading, Writing & No Arithmetic series. On display are also more of her thoughts about her writing process and the sometimes difficult obstacles that go along with being an Indie author and publisher. With essay titles like Thoughts from a Literary Contrarian, Alien Methodology, Scribe’s Melancholia, Literary Mind-Expansion & 50 Shades of Grape, Careless Editors & Languishing in Romantical Writer Myths, Holding Saddlehorn, Fiction Writes Me, Good Writers Aren’t Good Accidentally, and Writer as Reader, …Continue reading →
Kelli Jae Baeli, Indie Publisher with Indie Literati Press and Lesbian Literati Press, and author of over 45 books, numerous articles, stories and essays, shares some thoughts about the writing craft and the writer’s life, which necessarily also includes lots of reading, followed by thoughtful examinations, splenetic ruminations and often humorous outbursts of weirdness. From Stranger Fiction, Reviews & Truthiness “First, an opinion isn’t always a fact. Second, you can’t please everyone. And third, and most importantly, (and with the most paradoxical irony), this concept: I may have failed to do the best job on a book, if I didn’t …Continue reading →
“The competition to be a published writer is fierce. The dream of getting published has been overly-romanticized in the media so that many beginning writers think not only that writing is easy, but that they have a good chance of getting a contract from a major house. The odds are, realistically, one in a million-maybe worse than that. We hear about the success stories, not the ones who spend their lives toiling for that dream, to the exclusion of everything else, only to wind up poor, alone, lacking in social skills, and profoundly jaded that life has passed them by.There …Continue reading →
Complete 6 Volume Edition FROM THE FRONT MATTER “As I reexamined the Scriptures, after having moved decidedly away from them over the last 17 years, I found that I had good reason to move away from Scriptures, and indeed, the Christian faith in particular. What I had done subconsciously was perhaps based on a real reaction to living my life in the context of having a belief in a higher power—an invisible entity who was somehow at the helm, but who failed miserably to show me any authentic evidence of his presence. I will never allow someone else, much less …Continue reading →
In Wear a Helmet, Baeli again displays her ability to swing from unapologetic humor to revealing even the most painful fragments of her psyche. From Early Voting for Idiots & The Insane, wherein she laments the often confusing and convoluted items found on a ballot, to the ignorant among us in Them Thangs that Hold up Books, and on to a painful journey through her own healing in Herniated Disco: Lies & The Lying Doctors who Tell Them, and an examination of hoarders in I Don’t Keep Hoardly Anything, Baeli marches fearlessly toward the politically incorrect, waving her …Continue reading →
Another collection of essays from a fresh new voice in nonfiction, Baeli is nothing if not honest. From admitting profound insecurity as an over-forty single lesbian in the dating pool (Id, Ego, Super-Ego & the Social Security Number), to a revealing trip journal during a recent relocation, wherein she falls prey to a panic attack (Going to Denver Because You’re Dead), and the pensive examination of the self in Things I Don’t Need, Too Much World, and Held by Jell-O, the author of Immortality or Something Like It strides unabashed through the battlefield of life familiar to us all, sometimes …Continue reading →
In the newest collection of essays by voluminous author, Kelli Jae Baeli, we find the candid confessions her readers have come to expect. In this volume, she explores the more colloquial experiences of popular television programs and books (The Year of Good Shows, The X-Factor: Not Just Another Idol, The X-Factor: Try to Rap Your Head Around This, Book Review: Valencia) but then goes deeper into such subjects as the precarious nature of living (Deerly Beloved, Birthday Bash, Inhospitable Chair) abandonment, unrequited love and loyalty, (Letter to a Battered Heart, FWB, Happy Effing Anniversary, Extended Stress Hotel, 8 Things I …Continue reading →
A discerning lesbian shares her dating, relationship and sexual experiences. from Love on the Racks …Fun with Metaphors Dating and relationships can be compared to buying clothes… You go to a place where all the clothes are, and grab a shirt off the rack, hold it up and say, “This is the perfect shirt for me.” You pay for it, (sometimes too high a price), take it home, and then when you actually try it on, you realize it doesn’t fit at all, binds you in all the wrong places, is the wrong color, or makes you look ridiculous. Then …Continue reading →