THE IMPOSSIBLE WEIGHT OF LIFE

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Written Backwards presents The Impossible Weight of Life, a painfully autobiographical collection of speculative fiction and poetry by Michael Bailey, author of previous collections such as Scales and Petals, Inkblots and Blood Spots, and Oversight.

Release date: October 13th, 2020.

This time around, after an imbalanced world temporarily destroyed his vestibular system and flipped life upside-down (thanks to an extended bout of a strange condition called Bilateral Loss of Labyrinthine Function), literally burned to the ground during California wildfires, then became threatened after rising from the ashes by acts of school violence, a flood, further fire evacuations, prolonged power outages, multiple uprootings, social injustice, political unrest, and finally a global pandemic, he decided it’s time to bend the boundaries of the written word once more, in case, you know, the world rolls itself off the giant scale that balances life and death to end things once and for all.

This collection 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.”

Fiction:

Time is a Face on the Water
Speaking Cursive
Ghosts of Calistoga
Möbius
The Long White Line
Hourglass
The Other Side of Semicolons
Gave
Essential Oils
Fragments of Br_an
I Will Be the Reflection Until the End
Emergence of the Colorless
Oll Korrect

Poetry:

Loosed Earth
Hurt People Hurt People
Life (C)remains
Lest We End
Past the Past
Blink
Sands of Time
Shades of Red
Who Will Teach Them?
The Nocturnal Waking Nightmare
Night Rainbows
Cartwheels
Paper Earth

Available for pre-order soon in trade paperback and eBook …