JULIA BAYLY

From breaking national and international news to light-hearted features about some of the more unique – dare I say ‘quirky’ - people, places and situations I’ve had the amazing fortune to come across. It’s been a lifetime of weaving together stories from around the globe. 

 

It began in a small newsroom of a weekly newspaper on the Maine-Canadian border. So I guess you could say I’ve been an international journalist from the start. At least, I like to say that. It fit well with my academic background that includes a heavy concentration in cultural anthropology. I find people endlessly fascinating. I love to hear their stories – even as a child my curiosity of the world around me stoked my enthusiasm to approach perfect strangers to ask what they were up to and they listened to their answers – their stories.

 

Over the years I’ve been a community journalist, a weekly newspaper editor, freelance reporter, photojournalist, travel writer/photographer, public relations liaison and novelist. Frankly, I am still very much all of those things because they have all contributed to the writer and photographer I am today. There is not a story I refuse to tackle or a topic unworthy of consideration. As for travel and adventure? I’m a solid ‘Level 2’ when it comes to fun – those activities that seem like a good idea at the time, have you questioning your decisions when actually engaged in them, but in retrospect were the best times ever. It’s why I spent 20 years running sled dogs, or bicycling across several states and Canadian provinces. It explains my climbing in the Andes, ziplining anytime someone shows me a cable between two fixed objects or jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. I also found the time and inspiration to write and publish two Harlequin Romance  novels – entirely G rated!  I can never be north enough and the fact that the Arctic is my happy place. The farther above the Arctic Circle I am, the better. 

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Imagine my delight when I learned you can actually earn money and develop a career out of  combining all this!

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Toss in to all that  my life on a non-working farm in northern Maine with a flock of chickens, kennel of sled dogs and apiaries of bees and becoming a widow at a relatively early age.

 

I don’t think I will ever run out of stories to tell.

I can say with complete confidence that  everyone, every place and everything has a story to tell. Myself included. Sure, sometimes it’s not always obvious or easy to tease out and you have to dig or put in the miles, but trust me – they are there. And I should know because as a writer, photographer and adventure traveler, I’ve logged thousands of miles searching out and telling those stories.