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The John Bailey Saga (Book 1) Multivolume, multi-genre author, John Bailey introduces us to the first volume in the John Bailey Saga, “The Other Side of the Hayfields”: As the clouds of the civil war rise, a young man becomes entangled in a slave dispute and struggles to find the path to justice. John Bailey lives on a humble Virginia farm. He discovers the world around him with his younger brother Benjamin and his best friend Danny, who lives at the plantation across the fields. As the years roll on, Mr. Kraus tutors them at the plantation home, but as John grows older, he grapples to understand the greed and prejudice among some of the ruling class, including his best friend. Questions run deep in his heart as he sees his family farm struggle. Dismay haunts him as plantation owners use slaves to bask in their wealth. John also wrestles with a deepening attachment to Sarah, who lives on the plantation. It’s a secret friendship – she’s a slave. But how can he tell her he must leave the farm? He seeks to build his own life. Then one brutal night, just before John is to leave, he is confronted by the horrors of slavery and must make a choice: Live with the moral consequences of standing silent in a world where the lines of right and wrong are becoming increasingly blurred or choose the dangerous and deadly road to justice. Ill-prepared for the consequences, John flees with Sarah and her brother Josiah to navigate the treacherous waters of a divided society. Will the common man help them? Will John be able to uncover the mysterious underground railroad? Can he survive the wrath of slave owners and bounty hunters as he holds dear to his dreams, and those he loves? The Other Side of the Hayfields is a gripping historical novel that explores the moral dilemmas of a young man facing poverty, war, and social injustice while a nation is torn apart with the clouds of civil war rising on the horizon. This is a wonderful story, examining the immediate world of a teenage boy on the cusp of manhood in the mid-1800s and how circumstances force many changes on him and those around him. I love the story and the writing. The author varies the pace from a casual stroll to a frenetic race against time and enemies. I also love how the author weaves local and faraway historical events to move the story on its path. Very good story, I look forward to more. 4.8 stars from me. You can buy this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Other-Side-Hayfields-John-Bailey-ebook https://www.goodreads.com/-the-other-side-of-the-hayfields You can follow the author: https://www.rtdouglass.com https://www.twitter.com/rtdouglassLit https://www.facebook.com/rtdouglassAuthor https://www.instagram.com/rtdouglass.author https://www.threads.com/rtdouglass.author American historical fiction, United States, suspense, action, underground railroad, slavery, North, South, Civil War Copyright © 2024 Mark L. Schultz except for the author’s introduction
51 Comments
2/26/2024 09:37:07 am
Thanks for the wonderful review!
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Mike
2/29/2024 02:00:29 pm
What type of research did he do for this book, if any?
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2/29/2024 03:04:04 pm
Hi Mike,
Mark
2/29/2024 03:14:48 pm
That is a great question! Thanks for asking it.
Mark
2/26/2024 12:14:42 pm
You're welcome.
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2/26/2024 01:53:24 pm
I live in a small town in Ohio. Main street is lined with brick buildings and the community is surrounded by cornfields.
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Mark
2/26/2024 05:17:18 pm
Great story! I used to have a dark blue Ford Pinto many solar cycles ago. What an awesome experience!
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2/26/2024 06:47:03 pm
The covid shockwave of '20 suddenly gave me plenty of time. I started writing full time, something I had always wanted to do. I loved it.
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Mark
2/26/2024 08:38:56 pm
You are the envy of so many writers! They want to write fulltime also.
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2/27/2024 11:38:13 am
Novels are a ton of fun to read. I enjoy the many writing styles. From the Godfather to Where the Crawdads Sing, the stories are fascinating.
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Mark
2/27/2024 11:44:48 am
There are so many books to read. I remember being in the sixth grade and visiting the public library in the small town, population of 1,365, we had just moved into. I was awed by all of the books. I wanted to read them all. That dream has never been realized, of course.
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2/27/2024 01:27:43 pm
Years ago, in Arizona, my wife and I shared a house with a wonderful woman, Deanna, and her ten-year-old boy, Tyler. One day, I told Tyler a story about growing up in the north.
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Mark
2/27/2024 04:51:43 pm
What a great story!
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2/27/2024 07:35:50 pm
I've met many people at work, but most were really great people - nothing much to add to a novel! Perhaps why novels are so desired! Take me from the everyday and let me peek into an unknown world!
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Mark
2/27/2024 08:56:12 pm
Okay. Some people find lots of inspiration or people with character traits that they borrow for their novels. Others are not so lucky.
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2/28/2024 09:03:26 am
Halloween parties in the big barn. Haunted corn maze. Hordes of kids traveling through town carrying on the trick or treat tradition. I'm afraid to say that's the only scary, supernatural experience.
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Mark
2/28/2024 11:25:26 am
Very good. Scary and a good time. The best kind.
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2/28/2024 01:07:13 pm
I really don't have a specific person who inspired me to write. I've always spent a lot of time reading, and since I can remember, I've always wanted to write.
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Mark
2/28/2024 03:33:20 pm
I never thought about how new technology was so influential in that time. I recall studying Morse code as a boy scout and learning to key short messages.
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2/28/2024 05:35:48 pm
I definitely chose the genre. I like history, the research, and dropping a story in a time period.
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Mark
2/28/2024 07:10:35 pm
That certainly makes sense. Hist-fic is my third favorite genre for reading. Right behind Science fiction and fantasy.
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2/28/2024 09:36:00 pm
A long time ago, early 60s, before pilots had the technology on board to measure wind sheer, my family took a flight from NYC to Florida. I was the youngest of the boys, 4 or 5 years old.
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Mark
2/29/2024 09:30:28 am
That is a dramatic experience! Wind shear is scary and has caused more than one airplane to crash. I have never experienced that aerial anomaly either.
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2/29/2024 12:23:35 pm
Sandra Haven Herner edited the first novel I wrote, The Little Town of Summerville: A Dog Named Chubby. It was a story of innocence, a story of life. Very hard to write but I welcomed the challenge. It had many glaring errors. I worked her notes, bought many books on writing and made changes, re-writing and adding sections. It’s published on Amazon.
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Mark
2/29/2024 12:28:26 pm
A book with an entertaining and easy-to-read story is the result of a lot of hard writing. Something you know well know now.
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2/29/2024 01:17:13 pm
gooddesign at 99designs.com made the cover. They’re fantastic. For those who have read the novel, they’ll notice that’s a scene in the story. Gooddesign made a draft of the scene and then let me ask for adjustments and changes until I let them know they had captured it! Great people, highly recommended!
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Mark
2/29/2024 03:31:31 pm
I do like the cover and recall the tension-fraught scene quite well. I pondered the cover as to why the slaves were brought aboard the ship in a crate. I think it prevented them from jumping off the gangplank to escape in the river. My best guess.
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2/29/2024 09:23:04 pm
I had a few titles in mind and most of them were short and catchy. As the story developed further, I realized the titles revealed too much and would take away from the suspense of the novel. I sent them all to the electronic trash bin.
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Mark
3/1/2024 09:25:49 am
I think you really nailed John's heart-felt desire with that title! He wanted to go out into the world and make his way.
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3/1/2024 10:22:29 am
There’s a funny story in that question. I cleaned and polished the manuscript in my best effort to self-edit and sent it to Sandra, the editor. Sandra has been an editor her whole life, is well-versed in the many aspects, kind and soft-spoken. One of her comments was something like: dude? You’ve got to be kidding! Almost everyone’s name in this story starts with a “J.”
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Mark
3/1/2024 12:08:18 pm
Great story! I love it. You certainly have a favorite letter.
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3/1/2024 03:05:49 pm
Yikes! I spend my days hiding behind a book or the screen of the computer. I don’t watch much TV, sometimes a little bit of sports. I’m trying to think of the different reality shows. My mom told me once when I was a kid, I wanted to be on the Bozo the Clown show. Does that work? Probably not, so maybe I’d choose American Pickers. At least then I could find out if they really find all that stuff, or if it’s all staged. And who knows, maybe I’d find something cool for the old workshop out back!
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Mark
3/1/2024 05:09:46 pm
I think every child wanted to be on his show, I know I did.
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3/2/2024 10:19:53 am
I wrote a short story back in ’21. It was a heartwarming tale. The Old Barn. A couple of kids out adventuring in the neighborhood meet a lonely, elderly man. It’s just under five thousand words so I could place it in a Writers Digest contest.
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Mark
3/2/2024 02:22:58 pm
It sounds like a good story and it will be better after the rewrite.
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3/2/2024 06:00:38 pm
There’s a lot of room for this series. In the second novel (that I’m currently writing), the American Civil War begins. Maybe two to four novels just to cover the war. After that, if the series becomes popular, I can have John become a lawman. Plenty of room there for stories as well. So, hopefully I can bring it up to a series of five, but if the demand was there, more would be fun!
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Mark
3/2/2024 07:07:16 pm
How wonderful to have so much to look forward to. That is a lot of writing.
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3/2/2024 08:13:11 pm
I should probably be writing about the future instead of writing historical fiction. A lot of things are about to change. AI has just started, and it’s already very powerful. It can and will be used for great good but, if you’ve been tracking it, those coding at google have already proven how immensely corrupt it can become.
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Mark
3/3/2024 07:55:39 am
Artificial intelligence is still a misnomer in my mind. The computer is still only a computer, it can consume and sort through larger amounts of data, but it isn't thinking like a human does. There are many serious issues with the programming as reflected in the output. Human bias is impossible to remove.
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3/3/2024 12:59:07 pm
I’ve never had a troll out to demolish my work, but I had a very negative review of my first novel. I had teamed up with NetGalley for ARC readers and reviews. Of course, it was the first review I had received, and they gave me a one star. I was disappointed. I read the review over and over. The person was concerned about the dog. She didn’t like how I handled things, but she also gave away the entire story. A spoiler. NetGalley removed the review as spoilers are not allowed, among other things. Everyone else gave positive reviews!
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Mark
3/3/2024 02:45:41 pm
You are lucky. More than one author has raised the ire of a troll or the troll had a vendetta against that author. It can turn into an ugly situation for the author. The best advice is to ignore the troll. Don't ever respond to troll's review regardless of the review. Sometimes the troll doesn't even bother to read the book and they tend to expose their ignorance in the review. Most people who read reviews recognize what is going on.
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3/3/2024 04:48:39 pm
My first paying gig was working in a greenhouse. It grew carnations for the flower shops. I would snap off the sprouts and suckers, so each stem had only one flower. The work was monotonous, to say the least, but the atmosphere was supercharged from all the extra oxygen from the plants. I did it during Junior High and always felt good after working a couple of hours after school.
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Mark
3/3/2024 06:00:47 pm
That is an interesting job. I never thought about the oxygen effect of working in the greenhouse.
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3/3/2024 07:20:01 pm
I’ve done many teachings over the years in a church setting, if that qualifies as public speaking. From short twenty-minute teachings to seminars that cover a broad topic, like a review of the Old Testament. It’s an easy crowd. They arrived to hear about the topic, so proper preparation from the teacher and everything runs smooth. I suppose I’ll get asked to present again, so more speaking in the future.
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Mark
3/3/2024 08:28:54 pm
Very nice. I have done a little speaking in churches also, but not recently. My last speaking engagement was at a small writer's conference here in Florida. I talked about homophones and proofreading. When I know what I am speaking about the experience is rewarding.
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3/3/2024 09:17:49 pm
I placed a short story in the Writer’s Digest contest in the summer of ’21. The Old Barn. A couple of kids out adventuring in the neighborhood meet a lonely, elderly man. I enjoyed writing it. I will re-write the story and enter the contest again.
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Mark
3/4/2024 06:51:56 am
Short story contests are a good way to exercise your writing muscles. I have recommended to writers that short story writing contests, especially those that provide feedback from the judges, can help a writer improve their writing skills. I do have a warning, there are a lot of shady contests out there. Some want to extract as much as they can from your wallet, others want to steal your intellectual property. Here is a copy-and-paste link about those things: Beware Bogus Writing Contests! Look for These 8 Red Flags. https://annerallen.com/2019/05/beware-bogus-writing-contests. You can also use the search box below to find the link. There are other blogs I have links for on my Highly Regarded Blogs page.
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3/4/2024 01:05:49 pm
That's good information about writing short stories. About writing, I'm the only author in the family. However, mom loved to read.
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Mark
3/4/2024 02:18:14 pm
My mother loved to read also; I think that's where I got my love of reading.
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3/4/2024 04:24:07 pm
When I published the book on Amazon, I wanted to get reviews, so I choose to add it to Kindle Unlimited. That was my hope. Big audience, no additional expense, lots of reviews. Up to this point, KU has been my least read. Paperback and Kindle reader have been the most popular. I can go to a wide format, but not now. My primary concern is getting a few novels in the series completed. After all, there’s a civil war about to happen.
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Mark
3/4/2024 06:16:39 pm
Some authors do well on KU, having a series seems to make a difference. I have talked with a few authors who write a trilogy all at the same time and release each volume a few weeks apart. It sure makes foreshadowing easier.
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Who am I?An avid reader, typobuster, and the Hyper-Speller. I am a husband, father, and grandfather. Archives
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