Jessica Bayliss
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Happy 2018!

1/8/2018

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I've been promoted!

11/11/2017

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When author and founder of ALLEGORY Magazine, Ty Drago, invited me to be an associate editor, I never imagined how much I'd enjoy reading authors' work. The best part, though, is finding those fabulous stories and getting to share with an author that their story is being forwarded on to the next stage. It is almost as exciting typing those words to another writer as it is seeing those words written to me. And now, I've been promoted to Senior Editor. I look forward to many great issues of Allegory

So, if you've got short, speculative fiction (horror, sci-fi, fantasy) with compelling characters and strong narratives, we want them. For more information on our submission process and to read the latest issue, check us out at: http://www.allegoryezine.com/mainpage.htm.

And thanks to Ty for giving me this opportunity!
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Be a fire waiting for the wind.

6/11/2017

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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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I'm a #PitchWars Mentor!

4/3/2017

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I am thrilled to have been selected to serve as a #PitchWars mentor in the 2017 competition. For followers of my blog, you know that I was lucky to be selected as a winner of #P2P16, which was just about a year ago now. The time around that competition was one of the most AMAZING and EXCITING of my entire life. First, just following the #tenqueries on Twitter.
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Then, seeing tweets that MIGHT have been mine... Of course, we never really knew, but sometimes we could guess. Then, finding out I was getting a request for more pages. GAH! 

Now, I'm going to have the honor to give back to the writing community. After all, I signed with my incredible agent as a result of this competition. It would be the most incredible thing to have an author I mentor go on to sign with an agent and then get a book deal. 

Check back here often for updates and the schedule of event, which I'll be posting in the near future. In the meantime, you can check out more about Pitch Wars here on Brenda Drake's site.

Until then, Congratulations to all the Mentors! We're going to have a great time!
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On winning, losing, and learning.

2/11/2017

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Deal Announcement: TEN AFTER CLOSING, Sky Pony Press, 2018

1/27/2017

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I thought my dreams came true when I was accepted into Pitch2Publication in 2016 (I worked with the amazing Rebecca Faith Heyman) and signed with my rockstar agent, Dr. Uwe Stender. Now they've REALLY come true because, thanks to my agent and #TeamTriada, I just sold my debut novel, a Young Adult Thriller, to Sky Pony Press! Editor Alison Weiss has worked on some fabulous projects already (including another TriadaUS book, TIMEKEEPER by Tara Sim), and now I get to work with her on
TEN AFTER CLOSING. I am so thankful, so excited, and my mind is still a little blown. (More than a little.)

You can see this announcement in Publishers Weekly right here.

Look here for more news as we approach publication in Spring 2018! (It's going to be here before we know it!)
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Happy New Year! 2017 is here!

1/2/2017

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Random Thought

10/24/2016

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Karma, because we love books.

8/29/2016

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