William Bailey (1) (1961–)

I come from working class America. I was born in 1961 near the end of the baby boomers' generation in Holland, Michigan. My parents had four children with me being the youngest. My father was employed by the Chesapeake and Ohio railroad. Due to his job constantly being relocated, my family moved a few times to other hamlets in Michigan. Back then my mother worked for several chrome plating factories that supplied the automotive industry. It was a time when American automobiles were still flashy and had chrome bumpers and other brilliant trim unlike the boring cars of today. My parents were both hard working people and wonderful souls; may they rest in peace.

Moving on, I met my wife in 1980 during our senior year in high school. We graduated together and married in 1985. Like most young couples starting out we took menial jobs just trying to eke out a living. We were in the midst of a terrible recession in the early 80s, so we took whatever work we could find. My first job was actually working at a small grocery store after school during my junior year. Soon after graduating, I worked for several geophysical companies doing seismograph for the oil and gas industry. It was brutal back-breaking work. All I did for one solid year was wear a 75-pound steel backpack that consisted of a gasoline engine with a torque tube leading to handlebars with a throttle control atop a transmission holding a steel auger. I drilled thousands of five-foot-deep holes for dynamite charges. I worked drilling holes through the nastiest country you can imaging from dark to dark, no matter the weather. Gasoline was running down my back most of the time, and it burned like hell! The money was good, but the work was merciless. I quickly realized I needed to find a new occupation. Soon after, I started my career in the automotive business before diving into the real estate business in 1995. It wasn't long before my wife and I owned and operated two real estate brokerages. We ran them until selling our offices in 2006. I'm still an active real estate broker and enjoy working in the industry. It definitely beats drilling holes in the middle of a swamp during the subzero chill of a Michigan blizzard! Today, we live on our small farm (complete with chickens) in Northern Michigan, with our German shorthaired pointer, Mocha.

Over the years, I lived through good and bad economies during times of peace and war. I've experienced all the emotions anyone else has over the trials of life with love being the greatest and betrayal being the worst. I've had enemies become friends, and friends become enemies. However, I've yet to meet anyone as loyal and loving as my dogs. If only humanity would behave like our furry friends. Isn't it curious that human beings are the animals?

I find life is like a ship at sea sailing through calm waters one day only to be tossed about in a horrific storm the next. I've been around for a while so my ship is old and beat up. It has sailed through its share of terrible storms. But I've survived them all. It's these good and bad life experiences that shape the people I write about. They are believable characters that we can all relate to.

I've always been a dreamer with a vivid imagination. I'm constantly daydreaming about anything and everything. I love science fiction especially the classics such as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. I grew up watching the original Star Trek, and I'll never forget sitting in a moving theater in 1977, when I witnessed the Millennium Falcon make the jump to lightspeed. It was epic! The special effects in Star Wars were incredible and unlike anything the world had witnessed at the time.

You should know I never planned on being a writer. It's the last thing I ever thought I would do. So why did I suddenly spend years on end writing The Great Ship of Knowledge: Learning Earth's Deathly History? It was a prophetic dream I had that gave birth to the story. I'm serious. I write about the entire experience in "The Epiphany" in the preface to Learning Earth's Deathly History.
(Please find the second-edition to Learning Earth's Deathly History, published in 2021. Do not confuse it with the first-edition published in 2009. The second-edition took me 13 years to complete. It is by far my best work. The story is refined, polished, and professionally edited. There's night and day difference between the two. Over 60 reviews are currently posted on amazon to the second-edition. ISBN-13: 979-8714112522 If it doesn't have shark-shaped starships on the cover it's the wrong edition. I find it unfortunate that librarything would lump in reviews from my 2009 edition with this book. Ugh).

I hope you enjoy the story.

~William
website: www.thegreatshipofknowledge.com