Kayla Joan BaurKayla Joan Baur (also styled k. j. baur) is a self-published author who started her writing career at seventeen. Inspired by her love for reading and her desire to create mesmerizing worlds and characters to fall in love with, she strives to writes stories that readers of all ages can relate to by addressing often overlooked topics and themes. She enjoys challenging herself by exploring different genres and subgenres of literature. When she is not writing, she can be found reading or teaching high-school level ELA.
From 2019 to 2024, Kayla has self-published several books: three books in an urban fantasy series titled The Vigilante Trilogy: Shadow (2019), Sparrow (2020), and Echo (2020); a standalone coming-of-age novel Little Somebodies, Big Nobodies (2021), a standalone young adult novel Regarding Winona (2021), and a creative nonfiction novella Little Old Hamilton (2023). In 2024, she plans to publish The Riley Effect (2024), a sequel to Little Somebodies and the second book in a new anthology titled The Kindness Anthology. She is simultaneously working on a collective work of poetry, vignettes, and epistles (The Inexact Art of Spilled Ink) which she publishes regularly online. |
All the love in copper valley The quaint town of Copper Valley is located on the forgotten outskirts of Indiana, and like many smalls towns, it’s built upon dark secrets and lies. Most residents never usually leave — at least, not until the Macon Woods Killer arrives and commits a slew of murders that somehow tie back to the tragic, unsolved murder case of young Poppy Parslow from twenty-five years ago.
When the killer begins to target their classmates, Tuck and Rowan Foster along with their band of misfit friends resolve to expose the killer by doing what no one has in decades: find out what really happened to Poppy Parslow on the night she died. As the kids race against the clock, they uncover hideous truths about the town they call home and discover the killer isn’t the only one in town with blood on their hands. Amid the bloodshed and tragedy, the kids learn the lengths people will go to in the name of love, including those closest to them. One thing is for sure: the summer of 1982 was one that the citizens of Copper Valley would never forget. |
LIttle Old Hamilton Within this novella lies a story of my uncle, Scott Baur, whose existence within these vignettes is limited to the handful of memories I have from the eight years of my life I knew him for — only some of which I remember. He once called Hamilton Beach his home, and I’d been there many times since his passing — but then again, I hadn’t, really. It wasn’t Hamilton Beach he lived in, it was old Hamilton. I suppose I’d like to call it little old Hamilton — what it was while he lived there, when I knew it best, a place we both left behind in our own ways. Morbidly, sadly, his death acts as an imprint in time for me, the pinpoint of a change in eras. Before Uncle Scott. After Uncle Scott. Before him, I remember a childhood unmarred by grief or life changes. After him, I began a life of awareness of father figures who have come and gone, each in their own time.
In this work of autofiction, I explore the way in which certain life events stir up old memories and experiences from the distant past. Through time and death, Uncle Scott has helped guide me in many ways. This amalgamation of memories and events exists within three fictional days of the Summer of 2019, and within this story, I found cathartic acceptance of many hard truths. In the aftermath of learning these truths, or perhaps the eve of accepting them, my mind and heart took me to one place: Hamilton Beach. Between the pages of Little Old Hamilton is a story that grapples with grief, and between the lines is an epic letter of gratitude that will outlive time and memory itself. |
Regarding WinonaWinona Prescott has only ever known a life of embarking on great adventures alongside her mother, whose successful art career takes her all over the world. She knows exactly what she wants for her future -- college, then more travels to pursue her own blossoming talent for art -- and her mother is going to be by her side ready to take on the world with her. That pleasant dream of blissful certainty turns into an inescapable nightmare when her mother perishes in a car accident, throwing Winona into a world of disarray and grief that she has no idea how to handle on her own. When she is forced to live with her estranged father and a stepfamily she wants nothing to do with in the small town of Port Lowell, she finds herself trapped in a life that no longer feels like her own. Just when she thinks she can sink no lower into her grief, a mysterious girl named Julia Parker comes along and shows her how to find the light in the darkness through a series of rule-breaking adventures and fun excursions. However, Julia shows her that nothing is quite what it seems in Port Lowell. When another life-changing event strikes close to home, Winona is forced to face the haunting memory of the night of her mother's crash once and for all, and do the most difficult thing she'll ever have to do in her life: say goodbye. |
Little Somebodies, Big Nobodies
Willowdale High School is the typical breeding ground for teenage angst, ruthless bullying, and a screwed up social order that only favors the superficial and socially adept -- the big nobodies. Most students pass through the four uneventful years by keeping their heads down, while others are forced to trek through the social battlefield while trying to retain as few emotional scars as possible. For misfits like Mary, Leo, Paxton, and Rachel, braving their way through is just the way high school is for people like them -- that is, until an eccentric girl named Sloane Riley comes along and changes their lives. With a mysteriously secretive past and a rebellious demeanor that seems to always get her into trouble, Sloane manages to bring the four misfits together and shows them the value of friendship and individuality. From midnight swims and campfire gatherings to a fantastical school production and prom, their senior year becomes the best one yet as the five friends grow closer than they ever could have dreamed. However, they soon realize that no one is ever left unscathed by the harshness of society when Sloane's miserable past begins to bleed into her adventurous, carefree present. As the months pass by and Sloane struggles with personal trauma of her own, she shows her best friends the importance and the quiet, subtle beauty in being little somebodies -- in being a guiding light for those who may be drowning in the darkness of their own lives. |
The Vigilante TrilogyExperience all three books of Kayla Joan Baur's The Vigilante Trilogy in one paperback volume!
SHADOW tells the haunting story of Dakota Sterling and how she became the ruthless vigilante, Shadow, who -- along with her partner, Jasper Beauregard (Sparrow) -- protects the very city which turned her into the monster that she is. Silver City is plagued by crime and corruption, most of which is owed to the secret underground railroading faction called the Faceless League which kidnaps children and trains them to be barbarous assassins. Thirteen years ago, the Faceless League targeted three very important, wealthy children: Dakota Lovett, her younger brother, Wesley, and his best friend, Alice Fitzgerald. When young Wesley is murdered, a Dakota and Alice plotted an escape and their plan worked, but only Alice made it out. Dakota Lovett was left behind, and no one – not even Alice – ever knew what happened to her. Through analepsis, twenty-year-old Alice recounts the days of her captivity in the Faceless Institute up until her miraculous escape in order to expose the faction. To Dakota Sterling, the little girl she was before she was recruited by the Faceless League has long since been dead. To ordinary Alice Grey, the past is the key to everything - she just doesn’t know it yet. As the Shadow does what is necessary to achieve justice and protect the people, she also struggles with her epic love for the equally-haunted Jasper. When Alice Grey sets out to find the Shadow's true identity, she opens old wounds, discovers even larger conspiracies hidden beneath the streets of the city she calls home and joins a dangerous game she never meant to play. |