R. L. Bales is an indie author, digital artist, and founder of Lost Earth Press. She writes quiet, atmospheric fiction rooted in mood, observation, and psychological tension.
Her work is drawn to dystopian and speculative settings where control operates subtly and awareness arrives slowly, often long before any visible collapse occurs.
Rather than spectacle or shock, Bales favors restraint. Her stories unfold through environment, internal pressure, and the unspoken dynamics between people and systems.
She is particularly interested in controlled spaces, enclosed communities, and institutional structures that appear stable on the surface while quietly shaping behavior beneath it.
Power in her work is rarely loud. It exists in routine, expectation, loyalty, and fear, revealing itself only when characters begin to notice the rules they have been living under.
Bales is an LGBTQ+ author who centers LGBTQ+ characters at the core of her narratives.
Identity in her fiction is not treated as a theme to be explained or highlighted for effect, but as lived reality that informs intimacy, relationships, and interior life.
Her characters move through their worlds carrying full emotional and psychological weight, shaped by who they are rather than reduced to symbols of representation.
Her novels, including The Reaper Program and The Garden, reflect her fascination with dystopian systems, surveillance, containment, and the psychology of compliance.
These stories are character driven and emotionally grounded, exploring how people adapt, rationalize, resist, or fracture under long term pressure.
Bales writes dystopian fiction that prioritizes emotional truth over action and lingering unease over tidy resolution. Her work is often described as slow burn, introspective, and unsettling in a quiet, deliberate way.
In addition to writing, Bales is a visual artist with a deep love of design and craft. Art is not separate from her writing practice, but central to it.
She creates her own book covers and visual branding, approaching fiction with an artist’s eye for tone, composition, and negative space.
For Bales, writing and art are parallel acts of observation and construction, each informing the other. Both are ways of exploring control, fracture, beauty, and survival.
She lives in Northern California, where the landscape strongly influences the tone of her work.
Forests, mountains, fog, and open space often shape the emotional atmosphere of her stories, offering contrast to the enclosed and controlled environments she frequently explores on the page.
Place matters deeply in her fiction, not as backdrop, but as a psychological force.
At her core, R. L. Bales is an indie author committed to autonomy, intention, and meaningful work.
She writes dystopian and speculative fiction for readers who value subtlety, emotional depth, and stories that linger.
Her work invites readers to sit with what is seen, what is sensed, and what remains unsaid, long after the final page.
“I rocked him back and forth as my mind went blank. I couldn’t move; I couldn’t leave my only friend. The person who had saved me from myself and from the cruelest winter I had ever known. This was my fault; he didn’t want to leave the cabin; he didn’t want to come here. He knew something bad was going to happen. I refused to listen. This was on me.“
What The Night Kept: Chapter One
“I ran out of gas,” I said. “I don’t need much. Just a phone. Or gas. Or directions that don’t end in me getting murdered.” I laughed awkwardly, trying to break the tension.
The REPR: Chapter Seven
“They say a Reaper doesn’t arrive,” he continued. “Reality just… corrects around them. Noise drops. Patterns shift. If you’re meant to die, you don’t even know they were there.” “And if you’re not?” I asked. He exhaled slowly. “Then you get reassigned.”
The REPR: Chapter Six
The Shadow smirked devilishly as a woman with long black hair emerged from behind a large rusted pillar and began approaching us, “Because this one is the original.”
Lost Earth Press 