Kelli Jae Baeli began writing as a child, exploring poetry and journaling, and eventually moving on to short stories. After a romantic fling in the military with another female soldier, she decided to write a book based on the experience. The story that evolved took on a life of it's own, but it became her first novel, As You Were. This was followed quickly by Armchair Detective, a book she said she wrote because she couldn’t find other lesbian fiction she liked and so wanted to write something she would want to read. She's been doing that ever since.
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, to office and restaurant management, to a reporter for a local newspaper, to a technical writer for a corporate jet company. Some of Baeli's fondest endeavors were fronting an all female band for seven years and as a managing editor for a women's press. Each job was one that Baeli turned into a study in human nature.
She pursued eight years of higher education, in the curriculum for a B.A. in Professional Writing & Editing, founded Kindred Ink Writer's Initiative and Kind Red Ink Editing Services, and maintains an author site, the blog Synaptic Circus and three forums. She is an also an independent publisher, editor, webmaster, blogger, artist, and singer-songwriter, with over 200 songwriting credits. Not shackled to one genre, she has authored (at last count) 33 books both fiction and nonfiction, and numerous stories and articles. She makes her home in Southland region of New Zealand, now, with her partner, author Kate Genet, and together they founded Lesbian Literati Press.
<p>“<em>We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”(</em>Teilhard de Chardin<em>)</em></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;"><em>Involution-An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God </em> is as layered as a French cassoulet, as diverting, satisfying and as rich. Each reader will spoon this book differently. On the surface it seems to be a simple and light-hearted poetic journey through the history of Western thought, dominantly scientific, but enriched with painting and music. Beneath that surface is the sauce of a new evolutionary idea, involution; the informing of all matter by consciousness, encoded and communicating throughout the natural world. A book about the cathedral of consciousness could have used any language to paint it, but science is perhaps most in need of new vision, and its chronology is already familiar.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">The author offers a bold alternative vision of both science and creation: she suggests that science has been incrementally the recovery of memory, the memory of evolution/involution</span><em style="line-height:1.6em;">.</em></p><p>“<em> Involution proposes that humans carry within them the history of the universe, which is (re)discovered by the individual genius when the time is ripe. All is stored within our DNA and awaits revelation. Such piecemeal revelations set our finite lives in an eternal chain of co-creation and these new leaps of discovery are compared to mystical experience</em>” (From a reviewer)</p><p>Each unique contributor served the collective and universal return to holism and unity. Thus the geniuses of the scientific journey, like the spiritual visionaries alongside, have threaded the rosary of science with the beads of inspiration, and through them returned Man to his spiritual nature and origin.</p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">The separation between experience and the rational intellect of science has, by modelling memory as theory, separated its understanding from the consciousness of all, and perceives mind and matter as separate, God and Man as distinct. This work is a dance towards their re-unification: Saints and scientists break the same bread.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">All of time and all the disciplines of science are needed for the evidence. Through swift (and sometimes sparring) Cantos of dialogue between Reason and Soul, Philippa Rees takes the reader on a monumental journey through the history of everything – with the evolution of man as one side of the coin and involution the other. The poetic narrative is augmented by learned and extensive footnotes offering background knowledge which in themselves are fascinating. In effect there are two books, offering a right and left brain approach. The twin spirals of a DNA shaped book intertwine external and internal and find, between them, one journey, Man’s recovery of Himself., and (hopefully) the Creation’s recovery of a nobler Man.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">From the same review “</span><em style="line-height:1.6em;">The reader who finishes the book will not be the same as the one who began it. New ideas will expand the mind but more profoundly, the deep, moving power of the verse will affect the heart.</em></p><p><em>(Marianne Rankin: Director of Communications, Alister Hardy Trust)</em></p><p> </p>
Inspired (and perhaps chagrined ) by my dating experiences as a lesbian in the South, I decided it was time to write a book about that. I borrowed heavily both from my own life and background, and from the environment I was in at the time, a little tourist village called Eureka Springs, in the Ozarks. Most of the names were changed to protect the guilty.
<p>5.0 out of 5 stars<br /> An absolutely beautiful love story about women...,<br /> If you are a woman - lesbian, straight, or in-between - you owe it to yourself to read this beautiful love story about women. Or, even if you're man seeking to understand the nature of women, this book is a great place to start.<br /> Though the story focuses on two particular women, it also speaks to the universal nature of women to want to give and receive love, to be cherished for who we are by another human being, and to share a nurturing life-long commitment with another human being. This story is about the quest of two wonderfully resilient women to find a relationship that includes all of these things. It's just a beautifully told love story about the unique and intimate experience of being a woman. The characters reminded me of my own friends, and even of myself. The events and situations, good and bad, happy and sad, were equally indentifiable. As I read this book, I felt as if I were sitting in a cafe with a female friend having a conversation about our lives while sipping on our mocha lattes. In the end, as I closed the book, I was sad to leave this fictional world which I understood so completely and in which I was so comfortable. But more than that, I felt satisfied and proud to be the "plethora" that is Woman.<br /> ~Tanya Gotcher,<br /> Little Rock, AR<br /><br /> Kelli, you've done it again! This book is quirky, entertaining and funny, actually hilarious in parts. I found myself reading out parts to my partner. You made the characters feel like friends, I felt like I was there with them. Once again, I cant wait to read another of your novels.<br /> ~Jo Cincotta<br /> Australia</p>