Former Syracusan Jessie Bee Writes Book

by Krista Norton | December 24, 2025

The Prophecy of Three; The Melanthia Chronicles, a story about a 17-year-old teenage heroine, named Summer, written by Jessie Bee. 

What makes this book unique is that Jessie Bee has strong ties to Syracuse. Jessica (Nielsen) Blais wrote her book under a pen name, wanting her personal and professional business life to be separate, not wanting those two worlds to collide.

Her parents are Doug Nielsen and Tish Shade, grandparents were Mary (Tootie) and Wayne Nielsen and Charles (Chuck) Ray McManess and Karen Dean (Lewis) Hayzlett. Blais lived most of her formative years in Syracuse from elementary school and spent many vacations and summers here, staying with her cousin Audra (Schmidt) LeTurgez.

“My parents met here, both graduated here, and dad still lives here,” said Blais. 
She loved growing up in Syracuse, “Some of the people I love and still talk to, two of which were in my wedding, were from friendships that I made in Syracuse.”

She remembers going to the pool every day, to the bowling alley, “And nothing better than waiting to see what the next movie was going to be where Audra and I would get a pickle!”

“Some of the most amazing things about growing up in Syracuse was I got to be a kid,” said Blais, “I have three teenage daughters and in a small town, you can let your kids be kids.”

“The amazing connections you make in a small town are not like the connections you make in larger cities,” she added. 

While many people have hopes or dreams of becoming an author, in 2010, as a stay-at-home mother of three, Blais enjoyed reading, something she feels came from her grandmother Tootie. 

“When you’re stay at home mom, your interaction with adults is limited. For me, it was nice to escape reality for a couple hours, going into this fantasy dream world the books were providing for me,” she said. 

Her husband Tim told her since she read all the time, she should consider writing. “It’s my me time!” she said, “And it became a five-hundred page book.”

She admits she wrote with zero interest in publishing it, she simply enjoyed doing something productive, worrying it might be a huge flop, or no one would like it. But as fate would have it, last December she went to see a speaker who talked about the risks we take in life, the regrets we leave behind when we don’t do certain things.

“My friends, that were colleagues, in my professional life, were there also and told me if that did not make you want to publish your book, nothing is going to make you!” said Blais, “My husband Tim agreed with them.”  

She set a goal to sell one copy! “I went through Amazon as a self-publisher, I did the editing,” she explained, “The marketing was on me.” 

Time passed and in May, her husband Tim, 45, lost his three-year battle with end stage liver disease, “Sadly he did not see the finished project.”  

August came, and the first copies were available, “My mom and sister read it and told me they found a couple mistakes, but I thought every book has mistakes!” 

She read a review from a stranger who gave her four stars and suggested the book could use an edit. “So, I thought, this is three people now. I started rereading it. 

In the first one hundred pages I probably found two hundred mistakes. My heart sank,” she said sadly. 
Unfortunately, they published the wrong version, so it had to be pulled, “It was the January version and there were several hundred edits until the release in August.”

Forty people had purchased it, and she had to put it out there if they bought it, please stop, and a new copy would replace it. 

“The novel was written fifteen years ago.  It’s a story about a seventeen-year-old girl, things seventeen-year-olds did fifteen years ago don’t make sense in today’s seventeen-year-olds’ minds,” she explained.
Three months later it was republished. “The team messed up, and to make amends, they gave me a billboard in Times Square, which I got to go see.” 

There were some great things to come from that and many lessons learned. She admits it was one hundred percent her fault, “They sent me the final book, and I should have read it, at that point I had read it five hundred times, and I did not want to read it one more time!” 

The Prophecy of Three; The Melanthia Chronicles, Blais feels would appeal to mostly women, but people of all ages someone who enjoyed the Twilight series or the Hunger Games. 

“Summer is a lot!” explains Blais, “But I think it gives girls hope that if you surround yourself with the right people, they will build you up and they do not care that you are unhinged at times.”  

Blais said the night before Summer’s senior year, she starts to have weird vivid dreams, she knows she’s dreaming, she’s not quite herself in the dreams but similar. 

Somebody is calling her by a different name, Tiona, who ends up being her great, to nine generations, grandmother. 

She’s trying to find out why she’s having these weird dreams and still trying to live out her senior year, dealing with friends, boy troubles, and worrying about getting into college. 
Five to six chapters in, she learns her entire family, her friend group, has been keeping a mythological lineage hidden from her.

“There are some adult themes so parents may want to read it first before letting thirteen-to fourteen-year-olds read it,” she suggested.   

There is also a character in the book named after her grandmother, Tootie, “My parents were amazing, but she was the best. She understood me more than anyone else, she and I had a lot in common.”  
She admits it was hard when Tootie passed but she recalls one day her grandmother telling her she was being selfish to want her to stay, she was tired and her husband had been gone a long time. 

“Her wisdom always brought me peace and I’m hopeful her character in the book brings that same kind of steadiness, she was an incredible woman who in my opinion was so before her times,” said Blais. 
“Life is hard. My hope is to provide this alternate realm, that someone can dive into for a couple hours and get some relief from their day to day.” 

 “I’m at a much different point in my life, the girls are living their own life,” she said, “The girls don’t have to worry about me, writing is an outlet for me.” 

“I believe Tim’s in a better place, he’s not hurting anymore, it’s incredibly sad, but the amount of struggles he went through the last three years, was awful,” she added. 

She is writing her next book on her own timeline. She believes she is a better writer today. 
If you are interested in reading The Prophecy of Three: The Melanthia Chronicles, it can be purchased or downloaded on Amazon.