Bailey, Dale 1968-

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BAILEY, Dale 1968-

PERSONAL:

Born 1968, in Princeton, WV; married Jean Singley; children: Carson. Education: Bethany College, B.A. (English), 1990; University of Tennessee, M.A. (English), 1992, Ph.D. (English), 1997.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Hickory, NC. Office—Lenoir-Rhyne College, Rhyne 122, 625 Seventh Ave. NE, Hickory, NC 28601. E-mail—bailey@lrc.edu.

CAREER:

English professor and writer. University of Tennessee, Knoxville, graduate teaching associate, 1991-97, instructor in English, 1997-2002; Pellissippi State Technical Community College, Knoxville, adjunct instructor in English, 1994-98; Lenoir-Rhyne College, Hickory, NC, assistant professor of English, 2002—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Nebula Award nomination, 1995, for "The Resurrection Man's Legacy"; International Horror Guild Award, 2003, for "Death and Suffrage"; International Horror Guild Award nomination for medium fiction, 2003, for "The Census Taker"; finalist, International Horror Guild Award and Bram Stoker Award, both for best first novel, both for The Fallen.

WRITINGS:

American Nightmares: The Haunted House Formula in American Popular Fiction (literary criticism), Bowling Green State University Popular Press (Bowling Green, OH), 1999.

The Fallen (novel), Signet (New York, NY), 2002.

The Resurrection Man's Legacy and Other Stories, Golden Gryphon Press (Urbana, IL), 2003.

House of Bones (novel), Signet (New York, NY), 2003.

Also author of numerous short stories published in magazines, including Magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy, Pulphouse, Amazing Stories, Alchemy, and SciFiction.

ADAPTATIONS:

The short story "The Resurrection Man's Legacy" was optioned for a film by Twentieth Century-Fox.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

A noir thriller, written in collaboration with Jack Slay.

SIDELIGHTS:

Dale Bailey is an English professor by day and a writer by night. On his Web site, Bailey called his writing "weird fiction." Speaking of his work, Bailey further explained that "it's not quite science fiction, it's not quite fantasy, and it's not really horror, either. The bulk of my stories partake of all three of those genres—and a little bit of something else, too." Bailey has published literary criticism, collections of short fiction, and novel-length works.

Bailey's 1999 book, American Nightmares: The Haunted House Formula in American Popular Fiction, is a critical study of the haunted house genre. The examined texts range from Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. Bruce Johnson, reviewing the work in Literature and Psychology, felt that although Bailey "contends that haunted house fiction is defined by the fact that it is different from other forms of gothic texts … he doesn't begin to analyze this phenomenon until a third of the way into the book." Despite this criticism, Johnson felt that American Nightmares is an "enjoyable and informative read."

In a Buried.com interview with Eric Hoheisel, Bailey commented that his work on American Nightmares inspired him to write a haunted house novel. The result was House of Bones, set in a housing development that is scheduled for destruction. People say that the place is haunted, and some adventurous and quirky characters decide to spend the night there and discover the truth for themselves. Don D'Ammassa, writing in Science Fiction Chronicle, found the plot "not particularly original," but applauded Bailey's "closely described characters and their intricate and fascinating interactions."

Bailey's novel The Fallen deals with a recurring nightmare that leads to the slow unraveling of a mystery. Henry Sleep, the main character, is chased in his dreams by a winged pursuer. Soon afterwards, Sleep learns that his father has committed suicide. Returning to the family home, Sleep discovers a long-buried secret. Paula Sahraoui, writing in Horror World, felt that Bailey's writing "is strangely compelling" and noted that "he quietly draws you in one step at a time to the middle of a very thought provoking story."

Bailey is also the author of numerous short stories, several of which are collected in The Resurrection Man's Legacy and Other Stories. The title story is, as Bailey told Hoheisel, "about a boy who loses his father, and comes to see a robot as kind of a substitute figure. It's about growing up and losing your parents." A critic for Publishers Weekly praised Bailey's "thoughtful, frequently elegiac prose" and noted that the author "has a knack for crisp, compelling family drama [strung] on a web of fantasy." Similarly, Frieda Murray, writing in Booklist, remarked that the stories in the collection are "quite polished, and their quality is uniformly high."

Bailey told CA: "I became interested in writing very young, inspired mostly by the pleasure I took in reading. Like many writers, I suppose, I was a lonely kid who didn't really fit in. The compensations of imagination drew me to reading, and from there it was only a short step to wanting to produce my own stories.

"I was influenced early on by my reading in the fantasy and science fiction stacks of my local library—especially by writers such as Clifford D. Simak, Ray Bradbury, and, a little later on, Stephen King. These writers spoke most eloquently to me, I think, because their work reflected my essentially rural experience growing up as a boy in West Virginia. In reading them, I saw that it was possible to use my own everyday rural experience in generating stories of the fantastic.

"I write very slowly, and I tend to revise and polish as I go. This means that by the time I reach page ten, page one has been revised ten or fifteen times. The net result of this method—if something that developed so completely by chance can be called a method—is that I tend to write slowly at the beginning of a work, when I'm still trying to find a story's voice and direction. The latter parts of a manuscript go faster because by then the story has generated its own momentum.

"My favorite book, I suppose—though this is a little like choosing between your children—would have to be The Resurrection Man's Legacy and Other Stories. I think my short stories achieve a consistent level of aesthetic success that I haven't managed to sustain in the longer form. I suspect that this may be because my writing tends to be driven by tone. A short story can be about a single life-changing moment—an epiphany. A novel has to be more story driven.

"All I ever wanted to do as a writer is repay to others some of the enormous pleasures and consolations I have taken from reading. I hope that somewhere some kid is pulling one of my books off of a shelf, cracking it open, and finding his life just a little more bearable as a result of what he reads there."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 1, 2003, Frieda Murray, review of The Resurrection Man's Legacy and Other Stories, p. 485.

Horror World, December, 2002, Paula Sahraoui, review of The Fallen.

Literature and Psychology, winter, 2000, Bruce Johnson, review of American Nightmares: The Haunted House Formula in American Popular Fiction, p. 62.

Publishers Weekly, November 3, 2003, review of The Resurrection Man's Legacy and Other Stories, p. 58.

Science Fiction Chronicle, March, 2004, Don D'Ammassa, review of House of Bones, p. 32.