Novel & Short Story Writer
JUST START SCREAMING NOW
(a yet-to-be published novel)
A dumpster fire of disasters has driven the wealthiest ten percent of the U. S. population to quarantine themselves in high-end super-secure gated communities owned by LifeSpan, the largest healthcare company in the world. Tilda, newly married and pregnant, has just moved into such a community in the Catskills but the honeymoon is quickly over when she discovers that her father and brother are still alive in Colorado. Add to the mix an impending fetal-DNA blood test and, in what could either be a crazed, hormonally-driven moment or a shrewd life-changing ethical leap, Tilda stows away in the back of a delivery truck only to end up stranded on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere.
Soon everyone is looking for Tilda: her husband ROGER from the confines of the SafeHaven; Tilda’s brother HOLTER who hires two men to drive him cross-country in a bulletproof vehicle that looks like a giant bullet; and EVAN, Roger’s brother-in-law, who’s reneged on a promise to move his chronically-ill wife and daughter out of an overcrowded city to the "safer" suburbs, and bought a campervan instead. As a result of no one staying where they’re supposed to be, accepted realities are overturned including the fact that LifeSpan may not be the wholly benevolent force it claims to be, and the world outside its walls is studded with small thriving communities overflowing with love, grace and resilience.
Bailey is actively pursuing agent representation and publication options.
ABOUT
M. K. Bailey tried to grow up in Cleveland, Ohio but fourteen-years of rote learning and obedience training at an all girls’ school made that next to impossible. She escaped to Brown University where she received a BA in Everything.
Bailey’s initial stories were told three-dimensionally in wood but after studying writing with Carol Emshwiller at NYU, she returned to her first love, words. Bailey received her MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and her short stories have been published in Bellingham Review, Connecticut Review, Hunger Mountain, Confrontation, Gargoyle, Literal Latte, Crescent Review, New Renaissance and Small Spiral Notebook.
She won the “New Voice in Fiction Award” from The Writer’s Voice in NYC; has received grants from the New England Foundation for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission of the Arts; and won the Connecticut Film and Video Competition for her 15-minute dramatic narrative The Surgery. She also worked for a time as an Adjunct Professor of Sculpture at Fairfield University.
Bailey lives with her husband and son in an old farmhouse in Connecticut. Just Start Screaming Now is her debut novel.
Testimonials
“I found myself engaged and curious and compelled from the beginning to end. Bailey has a natural voice and a strong sense of story. The novel thrusts the reader into a new world order, but what is so intriguing and terrifying is how similar this world actually looks to our own. This is a story about survival and freedom and love. It is about rediscovering the self through escape and connection. It is about facing absolutely brutal choices and emerging with clarity and determination. Absolutely wonderful work.”
HEATHER AIMEE O’NEILL
Author of Obliterations and Memory Future