Jessica Bayliss
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BREATHLESS is back (or, how I survived self-publishing)

5/15/2017

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Wow. It's been a heck of a year. I can't believe I've made it to the day when my romantic ghost story, BREATHLESS, hits the shelves again. This has been an immensely LONG process that started months ago. 

As you may know, I'm pursuing a traditional author career where my books are published by established presses (like my debut, TEN PAST CLOSING, which is tentatively scheduled for release by Sky Pony Press in the spring of 2018), but when the small press that originally put out BREATHLESS closed, I knew there was no way for it to ever be out in the world again if I didn't self-pub it. So, challenge accepted.
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For people out there who think self-publishing is easy, let me tell you: it's not. Authors don't just write something then slap it up there on Amazon. There is a lot that goes into making, not only an incredible story, but a book that done well and done right.
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Read a sneak peek of BREATHLESS below.
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How did I do it?  Juliana Haygert. I asked her EVERY QUESTION YOU COULD IMAGINE about what to do at each step. Twice. And she was immensely patient with this newbie. ​​Seriously, people, I love her. (And if you haven't done so yet, you should read her books because they're super sexy and totally fun.)
​

So, here we are, re-release day for this little story that I love. I'm so grateful that there's a way for me to bring it back to readers.

Buy your copy of (the NEW & IMPROVED) BREATHLESS right here:

Amazon (Kindle)  /  B&N (Nook)  /   iBooks (Apple)  /  Kobo

Read a sneak peek of BREATHLESS.

      I exhale and watch bubbles float off into the churning blue above me. I draw another breath, except this time, there is no air. My lungs, in all their twenty-seven years of finding no resistance to their whims, of drawing in sweet gulps, huffs, and puffs, meet a wall of stainless steel. With the next try, that wall slams into my diaphragm.
     My left hand grasps the air pressure gauge as it bobs and snakes down by my hip. The dial’s needle hovers at a thick black line highlighted in red. Zero pounds per square inch.
     I’m seventy feet below the Caribbean Sea, and I’m out of air.
     Heavy nausea grabs hold of my gut and throat. I almost spit out the regulator mouthpiece, but reason kicks in. I stop myself just in time.
     Don’t panic. Stay calm.
   But it’s so hard to follow my own instructions. The warm water cradling my body has no mercy for this tiny, helpless human, and it turns to ice around me, needling my skin with cold until I’m numb. I hold my final breath. Everything in me screams out the wrongness of this. The world on the other side of my mask fuzzes out. My mind will soon follow if I don’t do something. Now.
     Remember the training. Just find another diver.
     Thank God, one of the instructors is less than ten yards away. My finned feet power me to Dale’s side with five hard kicks. He’s tucking something into a waist bag, and when I thrust my air pressure gauge into his face, at first he jerks away from it. Then his eyes widen as realization hits.
     I expect him to immediately reach for his spare regulator, the savior of rubber and metal, my sole hope if I want any fate other than drowning. Instead, he brings his large, strong hands to my face. The honey-gold flecks within his irises glint and flash in what filmy light breaches the yards of water between the surface and my airless lungs. There’s no warmth down here, and I’m out of time.
     Dale is my only hope.
    I let him capture my face between his palms and hold me with his anchor eyes. My heart beats a fluttery, jerky rhythm, and I count--One. Two-three. Four. Five-six-seven--and wait as though I’m not moments from my death.
As though I have all the time in the world.
    But whatever he’s doing, it’s working. I’m calmer. For the first time since I found nothing behind my inhale, my heart beats steady and true. He gives me a firm nod, and I return the gesture.
   It’s then, only then, that he unhooks the spare regulator from his dive vest. His other hand comes to the mouthpiece I still clench in my teeth. He brushes his fingers against my lips as he pulls the device free, and I give it up reluctantly even though it’s totally useless. A small, salty flow of water hits my tongue, and I swallow it down—the first of what could turn out to be a whole ocean’s worth if we mess up this maneuver.
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How Christopher Pike Saved This Author from Drowning (not kidding)

4/30/2017

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Pre-order Breathless

This post is in honor of the second release of my short romantic ghost story, BREATHLESS. And yes, you read that title correctly. Christopher Pike saved me from drowning. I’m not sure if I would have died that day when I ran out of air during a scuba dive, but I suspect I there would have been medical-injury-related fallout. Probably in the form of major ear problems and a couple lungs full of water. It would not have been pretty. 
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I am not an avid scuba diver. I’ve been on two excursions for a total of four dives. Once in Florida in 2000 (I think) and THE DAY in 2013. If bets had been made on THE DAY, in light of my relative lack of experience, I’m thinking you would NOT have put your hard-earned money in the she’ll come out completely unscathed jar. But that’s what happened, and I owe it all to Christopher Pike.
Let me back up a little bit.
 
I was a huge reader of Pike’s work as a young adult. His, R.L. Stine’s, Richie Tankersley Cusick’s. Anythingscary or thrilly that had romance in it. One of my favorites was Pike’s BURY ME DEEP. I must have read that book 
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half a dozen times. In it, the main character goes to Hawaii with her friends and they take a standard scuba course. The course that he wrote about was nearly identical to the one I would eventually take in 2000. Because I read the book so many times, and because (like a nerd) I totally memorized the entire class, when I did my first PADI course, I knew all the skills. The instructor was very impressed. 

Now let’s fast-forward to 2013 THE DAY of my second dive. That scuba company did NOT go through the entire Padi course, but I still recalled all the skills. So, when I happened to take a nice old breath and there was nothing there—literally nothing, just resistance, like trying to shove a marble pillar with my lungs—I was pulled back into Christopher Pike’s world. The one where Mandy had a problem with her gear and stood up in the pool. Her dive master told her the very words that echoed in my brain when I was under all those feet of water with my last breath quickly dissolving into my blood and no more where that came from: You need to handle emergencies in place, under the water. The solution can’t be to bolt to the surface.

AND, most importantly, I recalled the words, You always have air.

Okay, that was a totally botched quote (my copy of the book is somewhere in my house, but the idea of trying to dig it out sounds as daunting as the idea of pushing a marble pillar with my lungs), but the gist is absolutely accurate.

AND IT SAVED ME. Literally. 
Add BREATHLESS to your Goodreads List
I recalled the book and knew I merely needed to find another diver, and luckily they were all around me. Just like Leah in BREATHLESS, I swam to my dive master who was about four kicks away, and showed him my gauge with the needle in the deep red. And just like in BREATHLESS, his response wasn’t to immediately hand me his spare regulator, he first took my face in his hands and peered into my eyes. At the time I was like, Uh, now’s about the time I could use a little spare O2, but later—once I actually had a chance to think about it (and let me tell you, when it hit me what happened, there was a whole lot of holy BLEEP! going on)—I realized, he did that to make sure I wasn’t panicking. To make sure when he handed me that savior of rubber and metal, that I wouldn’t screw the maneuver up and end up breathing in a mouthful of salt water.
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This is the edition I have hidden away somewhere in my house.
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​This was taken during the dive BEFORE I used up all the air.
And once he was satisfied, he passed me his spare, and all was well. I recalled how to purge my regulator. No problem. That’s just the push of a button. We surfaced, pausing to let our bodies adjust to the pressure change, and I climbed back onto the boat totally and completely fine. 

​​When I think back to that day, fear isn’t the strongest of the two sense memories I have. The first is that feeling of something pushing back when I tried to take a breath. And the second was the way the dive master looked into my eyes. Never have I been more vulnerable, and never again will a stare feel that intense (at least I seriously and truly hope it won’t). The experience has haunted me ever since THE DAY.

​What’s a writer to do?
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Write a story about it, of course. And the concept for BREATHLESS was born. 

So, I dedicated this updated edition of BREATHLESS to two people: my incredible husband, Eric, and Christopher Pike, because without his book, that story, and all the ones I’ve written since, could very well have died along with me in the blue waters of the Caribbean.
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Cover Love: BREATHLESS gets a new look!

4/17/2017

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"...a great story, exploring the human soul's emotional needs with insight and an exciting touch
​of mystery and the paranormal."  -- 
Hilary Hawks for Readers' Favorite
People who are following my author journey will remember my romantic ghost short, BREATHLESS, which was released originally by Three Worlds Press in May of 2015. TWP closed it's doors in February, 2016, and ever since, this story has been on my mind. I was so sad it was gone from the world, so I decided to undertake the (even-more-challenging-than-I thought) task of self-publishing BREATHLESS.

Thank you SO much to my dear friend and wonderful author, Juliana Haygert, for all your help. I seriously couldn't have done it without you.
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Add Breathless to your Goodreads Shelf
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In honor of my cover reveal, I'm giving away (3) Amazon Gift cards. You can enter by clicking on the link to the left.
Add BREATHLESS to your Goodreads Shelf
Add BREATHLESS to your Goodreads Shelf

Look for BREATHLESS on May 15th, 2017

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