My Author Bio - by Justice Harlow

Baeli was born to spin a yarn. The daughter of a professional musician, she arrived in Wichita and began her journey with a song in her heart and a plethora of passion erupting from her pen. This love of lyrics, prose and poetry was just the simple seed of what would grow into a wordsmith's obsession with the creation of multifarious characters and storylines that fork with dual plot lines into romance and intrigue.

Oklahoma, Arkansas and Colorado are just a few locales that surface in Baeli's novels as these places are ones she drank in from her time in University, to retreating for self exploration. Each place is rich in bucolic terrain and provided grand palettes for her mysteries and suspenseful romances. Townies and their coveted colloquialisms provided divine fodder for tales too real to be true.

There is nothing like experience to craft a character. Baeli has plenty to spare—from a stint in the military to late nights spent delivering newspapers or waiting tables. Each job was a necessity, but one that Baeli turned into a study in the human condition or sometimes inhumane conditions. Some of Baeli's fondest endeavors were fronting an all female band for seven years in Little Rock and her enjoyable time as a managing editor for a women's press.

In recent years, Baeli has pursued technology with a perverse passion. Website building, blogging and creating and maintaining online forums have shared the docket with her ever-present story crafting. Baeli has relied on her technical writing roots and expanded her repertoire, enabling her to edit for herself and other writers, both accomplished and aspiring.

With over 200 song writing credits and 15 books to her credit, Kelli Jae Baeli shows no signs of wear. She has returned to her beloved Colorado where she may be found amongst the Denverites, people-watching over coffee and conversation...awaiting the next story to inspire and entrance.
~Justice Harlow

The author can be followed on Twitter @JaeBaeli. Reader and Professional reviews, as well as Feedback, Praises, and First-Born Children, are cheerfully accepted via her website, jaebaeli.com.

My Author Bio - by Justice Harlow

BIG NEWS!!!

I was just offered a publishing contract for my novel, Plethora.

I'm excited. All that hard work paid off!

Details pending.

(I still await word from another publisher about a different book.)

BIG NEWS!!!

Google Whore

I get around.
But only on the Internet. I assure you I am pure as the driven snow...and you know how pristine snow is, after it's been driven...

Periodically i do a Google on myself to see where I'm showing up and what my placement is for my books, and blogs and my various pages on jaebaeli.com. Today, my name appeared on 2,980 pages. Encouraging.

On one site, they were giving away my articles and short pieces, and i had to contact them and tell them to stop. I generally want to get paid for reprints. Every now and then my name will end up on a site, and i have no idea why. I wasn't sure what this was about until i noticed the name. On a sports-talk site, one of my novels got mentioned...I wasn't sure why, until i realized that one of my characters shares a name with a hockey player, Dominic Fontaine.

This is one of the kickers. aIt was on some French site for a singer named Patricia Kaas. It's obviously gibberish, but i never thought of my name as GIBBERISH. Maybe someone out there can edify me about what the deal is with stuff like that.

Je te di vous | Patricia Kaas http://www. Amazing-cover-letters. Sometimes a can wait their turn Kelli Jae Baeli a variety of reasons. Story is best told Je te di vous | Patricia Kaas

This one was entertaining, but i think it was more gibberish.

Got a mention on Blogsbywomen.org:



And there's this one:

Look at that. I'm famous and i didn't even know!




And here was a pic of me i didn't even know existed--i was playing at my Guitar Bar "event" during Eureka Pride a few years ago.

Shiny.







And one of my books was on a wishlist by some chick in Trinidad.

Wonder if she's cute?

And this was on a Paramedic Insurance site. My book Achilles Forjan has two lead characters who are paramedics...

• Press Release Tips and Template - PRWeb - Auto-Owners Insurance and the Demmer Corporation first Mid-Michigan organizations accepted into Scanlon Leadership Network ... Kelli Jae Baeli Announces Release of Genre-Bending Suspense Novel, "Achilles Forjan" A troubled paramedic struggles with ...

My article "Being Fully Human" was reprinted on Selfimprovementadvice website, too. They didn't think to ask for my permission either.

Ah well, as they say, all publicity is good publicity.

Google Whore

My Birthday Legacy Rumination

Today is my birthday. I'll be 44. (yes, i will! shut up!).
 

And since today is my birthday, I thought I'd do the obligatory ruminations. Who, what, where, when, and why...and how.

WHO: My big three identity markers are, Author, Artist, Singer-Songwriter. I'm also an avid blogger, a therapeutic touchist, a webmaster, an armchair philosopher, and....I like cheese.

WHAT: Fiction and non-fiction--I have 12 books in print with about 5 more available (I hope) by the end of this year. I like to paint, and do sculpture and pottery. I record CD's of my original music in my paltry home-studio, and give them away to those who want them, and some who don't. I am in the process of migrating my previous blog here to Blogspot/Blogger, and continue to write new blogs.

The therapeutic touching thing I don't do as often, partly because i don't have a girlfriend right now. (Any woman want me to massage warm oil all over you while you lie naked and trusting under a flannel sheet?)

And as soon as I get my kiln fixed, I'll be doing sculpture and pottery again. I've been saying that for a year. Something always gets in the way of that expense. Like...groceries, dammit.

WHERE: Everything I do, I do at home. Except Going out. That would be...um... not at home. But I spend an unhealthy amount of time by myself. Come over. We'll have some cheap blackberry merlot. And maybe if you're female and really hot, I'll therapeutically touch you.

WHEN: From the minute I wake, until my head is lolling into the keyboard, and I simply CAN'T make a higher score in that nightly damn Kyodai Mah Jongg game anymore.

WHY: why does anyone do anything? Two reasons, usually. Because they have to, or because they want to. If you're lucky (Like me) you get to do only what you want to. Although I don't want to pay bills, but I still have to. If I didn't, I wouldn't be able to do what I want to every day because it's hard to have stability when you live in your car. So while I don't WANT to do that, I HAVE to. (See? I have it rough, too). So bills. Necessary evil. Other than that, I'm pretty lucky. I get to do what I love everyday. Now if I could just figure out how to find a vampire so I can offer my one-year-older neck to her lovely fangs, and thus live forever... Christ on a cracker! I'd get SO MUCH DONE.

HOW: On a wing and a prayer (though I don't pray, unless something life-threatening is happening and I need to hedge my bets--so that's out); okay, HOW is with great determination. And skill. And amid way too many conversations with my cats.

So yes, I'm thankful that I'm here, and by extension, that I was BORN. (Though i wasn't born with extensions). Today commemorates that day. (Hazah! Hazah!). It's a time to look back on all I've accomplished, and get pissy about the things I haven't. I am often asked, with a measured degree of disdain, why I put so much of myself on the Internet. It's dangerous, they say. It's...maybe even...vain? No. Nothing so dramatic as that. My take on it is this: I must leave something behind that can be accessed by anyone who wishes to, or for anyone who is seeking some kindred, some validation, some encouragement, a pretty song, an enjoyable read, a thought-provoking or sensual piece of art, or a good laugh that sends Dr. Pepper through the nose. I put it all out there because it is my legacy.

 

The always inane and vacuous George W. Bush said, "There's no such thing as legacies. At least, there is a legacy, but I'll never see it.” He's wrong. And stupid. His legacy as the WORST PRESIDENT IN HISTORY will live on in the poverty and oppression of billions of people, (and many others in other countries)....but i don't want to talk about Dubya on my birthday. Stop ruining it, you gravy-sucking pig! (Here, hold this.) Anyway...I tried to find a more inspiring quote about a legacy, but there were few to be had. I suspect because those who might have recorded this bit of wisdom, found that they were already dead. And dead people don't jot down pithy quotations about having a legacy; even if you're one of those gifted few who "see dead people."

So i guess I'll never know what mine is, really. I just suspect it might have something to do with what I do every day. And I hope my legacy isn't posthumous. I'd like to know what it is before i croak.

My Birthday Legacy Rumination

My Friend, the Synesthete

[this article was sold recently]

My best friend is also an author, but she has unusual abilities that not only make her an anomaly among writers, but an anomaly among humans.

First, she is a synesthete. Synesthesia is an involuntary joining in which the real information of one sense is accompanied by a perception in another sense. Some synesthetes will "taste" a sound. Some can "see" a sound. Others "taste" a word, or "smell" a word. A synesthete might also see certain shapes and objects and colors whenever they hear music. Various forms of Synesthesia have been known to occur in some individuals who have had seizures.

For those Synesthetes who receive visual images from touch, could this explain psychokinetic and/or clairvoyant skills? For those who see visual representations of sounds and words, could this explain uniquely vivid artistic renderings? Was Salvador Dali a Synesthete? Vincent Van Gogh?
These questions might never be answered, because it seems common that Synesthetes remain unaware that the way they process sensory input is any different than the average person; they are only aware of this unique brain condition when they actually have a conversation wherein they compare notes with others, or when they stumble across descriptions of the condition, and recognize themselves.

Synesthesia is not new; seemingly not a product of positive ions, artificial sweeteners or a depleted ozone layer. The scientific community has been aware of it for around 300 years. After a renewed interest in the mysteries of the human brain, Synesthesia has again become a topic of interest among neurobiologists, psychologists, and the scientific community, et al.

My best friend's Synesthesia manifests in a way that I feel is even unusual among other Synesthetes. At least, I've never heard of any of them who experience things the way she does. When she writes a novel, she is not writing out of her imagination, per se, but literally transcribing an ongoing "film" that plays in her field of vision. This visual representation exists a short distance in front of her, and is much like those Plexiglas strategy boards common on Navy submarines. The film "plays" there, but is transparent enough, that she can see through it to the other things that might be in her environment on the other side.

When she gets an idea for a novel, it appears in full cinematic form. This film is a complete production, start to finish, and she has to find a way to transcribe what she sees and hears and smells and feels onto the page. This is not a visualization in the standard sense. This film appears involuntarily. It's as if she puts a DVD in a player, watches it, and then writes about what is happening. It makes me wonder if there are any famous and respected movie directors who might be Synesthetes, after I am floored by their ability to visualize an entire film pre-production, and manifest that film into the final form for the rest of us to enjoy.

But this ability is often frustrating to my friend on many levels. She can pause this film, rewind it, fast forward. (I don't have this ability, so when I get phone calls during a writing session, even from HER, I lose my flow). A character walks into her "movie" and she instantly knows everything about them as if she's read their bio before the movie began. I've seen her do it. She can stand there and get an idea and then describe the entire book to me, verbally. She can do that because it plays in front of her and she merely describes what's going on.

The first pitfall for her though, is it's distracting when she is "transcribing" this film. Perhaps she is describing John Doe, talking on the phone, and some other character in the room is dropping a pencil and eating cake. She then has to ask herself, "Should I put that in the text? Is that part of the story?"

Another frustration is that since her novels are already in screenplay form and she knows what is going to happen in every detail, it feels as if she's already written it, and that sucks a lot of the joy out of the writing process.

I am an organic writer-I love to be just as surprised as a reader about the story the characters begin to tell and where it all goes. . .but I'm still making it up.

My Synesthete author friend can also turn the volume down on the "film" or mentally press pause, when she has to answer her own phone. Just as if it's on TV. Sometimes she'll have a character (say, "Doreen") from another book, walk into the scene and say, "Why are you giving that to her? I wanted that." -and then she'll feel guilty that she's hurt Doreen's feelings.

Her Synesthesia also manifests during conversations with others. When she is having a debate or exchange of ideas, she sees a chess board, suspended a few feet in front of her, and as the conversation progresses, so do the men on the chessboard, according to who is saying what, and how that might translate into a chess game.

There are still other abilities that I feel are directly related to her Synesthesia. She has an almost photographic memory. She can recall conversations, verbatim; she can bring up an image of how a place looked she's seen only once, many years ago. She recalls even the smells that were in that room. She is also dyslexic, and has some pretty impressive intuitive skills that border on psychic.

Once, I played a tape recording of a live songwriter's performance I was part of. Although she had never been to that venue, nor even to the state or city in which it was located, when she heard the tape, she was able to describe the room in which it took place with frightening detail. It struck me as a gift not unlike Remote Viewing. The only error in her description was that the "floorplan" she described was inverted. What she described on the left, was on the right, and vice versa. But it was an accurate mirror image of the location. Could this have merely been her dyslexia interfering? She has joked to me before that when she is making a repeat journey somewhere and has to decide whether she is supposed to turn left or right to reach her destination again, she doubts her first instinct, because she's afraid her dyslexia is giving her the opposite information.

My friend also has lucid dreams. Lucid dreamers can "Come awake" in their dreams, and are aware that they are dreaming, while they are in the dream. But she can control her dreams. Sometimes not the outcome, but she can control the players, time of day, what she's wearing. She can pause her dream, get up and go to bathroom and then go back to it.

My only claim to fame in this arena, is that I have been the one to point out that Synesthesia existed as a unique condition in two different friends of mine. They have always been this way, and both were unaware that they were unusual in the way their senses intertwined. Through conversations with them, and through independent research, I discovered that most other Synesthetes aren't aware they are different, either, until a certain conversation arises and it becomes clear that most other people don't have these abilities.

I can't imagine having these gifts. It must be exhilarating in some ways, but my friend sees it as both blessing and curse. She struggles with the sensation that her writing is not really her own, since it is created in some mysterious place in her Synesthete brain before it actually appears. This strikes me as a potent example of the muse that artists speak of; information and creations channeled to them from some other place in the collective consciousness. What if the "muse" artists refer to is merely something that exists in each human brain, but is not always available to each of us, unless genetics or brain injury releases it?

There have, indeed, been cases of brain injury causing changes in brain functioning; sometimes even savantism; and autism are conditions that commonly cause unique abilities in those who have it, usually in the area of memory and visualization.

There is still much to be learned about how the cerebral cortex, neurons, synapses and other mechanisms really function, and the many ways in which it can perform feats of extraordinary skill. But whether blessing or curse, Synesthesia is not just an oddity, but a distinctive and fascinating peek inside the human brain.

My Friend, the Synesthete