Grant Bayliss: From the Global War on Terror to the Global Story Economy

Grant Bayliss joins us for Episode 18 of Unedited. Grant was an elite military operator in the global war on terror, with fourteen years across four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and subsequent private protection for British diplomatic personnel. He is also the author of the forthcoming story and screenplay The Old Believer, which follows a group of disavowed British special forces operatives on a mysterious mission deep into the hinterlands of Siberia. On this episode, we discuss Grant's entering of the British military at fifteen and the fall of the Twin Towers two weeks later, including how that event drastically changed his future in the armed forces.

 We also discuss how Cormac McCarthy kept him company on one of the longest desert marches since World War Two’s Africa campaign. We learn how the diplomatic library in Iraq introduced him to the literature of the world. More than anything, we discuss what the mindset of an elite military operator can contribute to writers trying to break into a too-often hostile global story economy. Note: this episode was recorded at the end of a long London Book Fair in a too-quick thirty minutes. We will return with Grant for a longer episode later this year.

Grant Bayliss served eleven years in the British Army, completing two tours of Afghanistan and two tours of Iraq with the elite 4/74 Special OP Battery. Throughout his career, he has read non-fiction, philosophy, geopolitics and literary fiction, but he tried his hand at writing his first novel while stranded in the British Embassy in Baghdad in 2014. Grant later became a finalist in the 2018 Inkshares’ Horror/Mystery competition with his third work, The Old Believer, which is also in development for film.