My 2017 crime novel FOUND from the Missing Annabelle Series is zooming its way up the rankings on Amazon right now, and Facebook reminded me that on this day fellow Australian author Annabelle Brayley described it as ‘the most compelling book I read in 2017’ and made me feel like a rockstar!
If you have heard the phrase ‘The Back O’ Bourke’ then you’ll have a sense of the isolated places where my crime novel characters live.
My new crime novel has its heart set in Bourke and I bring you a story about a young reporter from the city who lands smack bang in a remote outback town where not much happens. Except a whole lot is happening in this rugged place with bars on its shop windows, a dodgy newspaper editor, what appears to be a corrupt police sergeant and disappearing backpackers that nobody wants to find.
I started this new crime novel back in 2022 and spent an outback road trip in early January listening to an audio version of what I’d written so far, and I LOVE it! I thought I’d share one of the early chapters with you, let me know what you think!
2005
‘We’re not going to make it.’
My eyes darted from the massive black storm cloud hovering less than a metre from the horizon in a straight line, back to Billy. No time to admire his chiselled jaw and the working man’s hands he’d wrapped around me at the Deni Ute Muster a few weeks earlier.
Here we were, driving into the wildest outback storm I’d ever experienced. Actually, the only outback storm I’d experienced. The ute muster was my first taste of the outback life I had chosen after graduating the top of my class from a journalism degree. Although I had dreams of being the next big thing in television reporting, I didn’t have the face, or the body, for it. Working in a suburban Sydney newspaper reporting on the life I’d grown up in held a lot less appeal than a wild west reporter in Bourke, a frontier town with bars on the shop windows and a crime rate assured to keep me busier than Kings Cross on my police rounds.
Billy wasn’t part of the plan but had become part of the adventure when my shitbox car broke down in Deni and was languishing at the wrecker’s who’d paid me $800 when the local mechanic established it was unfixable. Dust billowed behind us as we rattled down an isolated dirt road towards the station Billy was meant to start shearing tomorrow and had roped me in to help. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do but was up for any job they gave me. I’d never seen a real sheep in my life, or stepped foot inside a shearing shed. Sheep sales were going to be part of my new job so if I was going to talk the talk, I’d have to walk the walk.
‘We’re not going to make it,’ I repeated.
Billy ignored me, a slight twitch in his jaw the only sign he’d heard. I wondered if he was panicked too or if he wasn’t bothered by the storm we were driving into. A flash of lightning sliced a cloud ahead of us in half like a hot knife through butter before hitting the ground like an exploding bomb. I felt a twinge in my lower bladder, wondering if I was about to experience the most humiliating moment I had witnessed in primary school when cruel school boys tackled then tickled my best friend until she wet herself.
In the few weeks I’d known Billy he had been unflappable. Me, on the other hand, I was completely flappable. Bridie Brown-Leather, a hyphenated last name complements of my feminist mother who refused to give up her last name when she married my conservative banker Dad. She also thought it made her sound like she was living an exciting life, with hints of city biker vibes.
‘Look, there’s a mailbox. Why don’t we head in there?’
Billy chuckled. ‘Navigation advice from a city girl, that’s a turn-up for the books.’
As the mailbox got closer, with white knuckles Billy made a snap decision and swags, canvas bags and eskies slid suddenly from one side of the Landcruiser ute tray to the other at his sharp turn. I cringed at the thought of my expensive Nikon camera, with the three fancy lenses I’d paid for with my second and third jobs I fitted around study, getting jammed in a corner and smashed by an esky. Billy’s blue heeler cattle dog cross, who had soft floppy black ears and was sleeping at my feet, startled, filling the cab with an odour like no other.
‘Geezuz Lucy, that’s not very ladylike,’ Billy mumbled as we wound down our windows in unison. We were almost under the storm cloud and I could taste the moisture about to burst from it.
Five minutes later we caught our first glimpse of a grand homestead wrapped by a gauzed in verandah on three sides and three, make that four, chimneys protruding from its expansive tin roof space.
Giant rain drops fell like rocks onto our windscreen, leaving red streaks. Billy headed for a cluster of tin sheds of all shapes and sizes at the back of the homestead, seeking out an empty bay.
As we passed the homestead I noticed it wasn’t as grand as it had looked in the distance, and as the black cloud hovered right above and shut out the light, a shiver danced across my shoulders.
‘Haunted,’ I whispered. ‘I wonder if anyone lives here.’
A deafening rumble of thunder chased down less than a second later by a crack of lightning that could power the whole of Sydney illuminated a woman on the verandah, peering out at the unexpected visitors.
The lightning raised my voice a few octaves. ‘Thank goodness for that, I hope they’re friendly. Of course they’ll be friendly, we’re in the outback. Everyone’s friendly. Apart from Bradley Murdoch that is. Then again, he was friendly. But in a serial killer kind of way.’
‘Bloody hell Bridie, you can talk.”
I snapped my mouth shut. I could talk, a lot, especially when I was in panic mode.
Just as the heavens opened and dumped its entire contents on us, Billy expertly inched his way into a narrow space between a rusted open topped tractor with a bird’s nest on its seat that looked like it hadn’t moved for half a century, and a beat up holden sunbird, faded yellow with four flat tyres.
With eyes wide, I spun around to look out the rear window to watch sheets of water wash the dust and dirt away, the homestead completely invisible except in those seconds when lightning followed the roaring thunder. The rain on the tin shed roof was deafening as Billy and I huddled in the cab, the odour of Lucy lingering even though Billy had banished her to the back soon after we arrived.
‘We made it,’ I whispered.
Just.
When I was 18 and working as a governess in the remote Australian outback I started a book of quotes that helped inspire, guide and keep my life on track. Lines from songs, paragraphs from books, poetry, things people said to me all went into this little book. Back then, in 1991, we didn’t have social media, Google or the plethora of online spaces to tell us how to live a good, happy, prosperous life.
Life’s Little Instruction Book – 477 suggestions, observations, and reminders on how to live a happy and rewarding life came into my possession during my first year of university. Using a pencil (because I could never and still can’t bring myself to write in a book with a pen!) I have underlined, added asterisks and written exclamation marks on instructions that have resonated at one time or another since then.
I get it out on January 1 every year. January is one of those months where my brain decides it’s too full for the high productivity levels of the previous year, and the days blend into each other. I live at the beach and am surrounded by people on holidays, perhaps I could pretend I’m on holidays too?
Each day I turn to Life’s Little Instruction Book – something, anything, to jolt me into action for a new year! This morning the message on the left hand page was clear. 416. Don’t procrastinate! Do what needs doing when it needs to be done. (I have underlined this and put several exclamation marks in pencil!!) But then on the facing page there’s 420. Get your priorities straight. No one ever said on his death bed, “Gee, if I’d only spent more time at the office.”
And would you look at that, it’s another perfect beach day so if you’re looking for me, I’ll be at the beach!
Melissa x
As momentum gathered behind the scenes for the real life search for Ursula, Rhiannon kept turning up in my head so I started a new crime fiction series and her character started to form.
But, and there’s always a but, Rhiannon has a doting cowboy waiting for her to return to him in the outback. He’s patient, kind, rugged, good with his hands, hard working and gives her stomach butterflies. Long before Rip entered our lives on the small screen in Yellowstone, there was Mac.
In the five books so far of my Rhiannon Series, it has been such a pleasure to get to know Rhiannon and travel through her ups and downs, good decisions and bad decisions.
In Rhiannon’s Last Look, I finally feel she is starting to really come into her own. Although she hasn’t changed at heart, when she first enters our lives in Find Me she is young, fearless, a little bit spoilt and self-absorbed. At the same time a perfectionist, dedicated, passionate, adventurous and relentless in her pursuit of the truth for her missing cases.
In Australia, on average, 150 people are reported missing every day. Of those 90% are found safe and well within a week and 3% are long-term missing people (missing for three months or more). How many people is 3%? More than 2500. Wow. That’s a lot of families who are going through ambiguous loss and wishing they could do something, anything, to bring their loved one home. For those of you living in much more highly-populated countries than Australia, these numbers are a lot higher.
I’ve learnt a lot since I published Write About Me in 2013 and it’s sequel FOUND in 2017, through Rhiannon and my own personal experience.
When someone goes missing, it’s not as simple as having someone like Detective Rhiannonn McVee in charge of the case. This is why I continue to write fiction about ‘missingness’ – it’s an escape from reality and helps me process my own grief, with the hope that it’s helping others too.
Melissa x
When I was 18, fresh out of high school and with a pocket full of dreams, I boarded a tiny yellow plane at Quirindi airport, waved my family goodbye, and disappeared into the vast open place known as the Australian outback.
I grew up in rural Australia but there’s a big difference between the rolling, green hills of the Great Dividing Range and the open skies, flat clay pans and never-ending red dirt roads.
I spent a year in this magical place, but as my life grabbed me and ran me through the years and away from the outback, something kept drawing me back.
In the past decade I’ve spent a big part of my time travelling through the outback, and it’s provided me with the ideal backdrop for mystery, people going missing and the frustrating search to find them.
Abandoned homesteads, falling down shearing sheds, far-flung paddocks so far from anywhere you could disappear and never be found.
Not to mention morning light, afternoon light, blazing sunsets that paint the sky orange, red, gold, pink and purple, lightning cracks followed by booming thunder and drenching rain, full moons in a starry sky, the endless chitter chatter of outback birds, paddocks moving in the shimmering haze as hundreds of kangaroos cross from one side to the other and sleek and deadly brown snakes that stop your heart from beating when they appear from nowhere. Also cowboys, don’t forget cowboys!
I love them all but I think the Rhiannon’s Last Look cover is my favourite.
When I came across this building and saw the chair facing out the door, it filled me with a sense of yearning and loss and how it feels when someone goes missing and doesn’t come home.
However, if they are fortunate enough to have a Detective Rhiannon McVee in their lives, hope that they will be found is never far away.
November has been a whirlwind and in amongst that whirlwind Rhiannon’s Last Look is out in the wild! It’s so exciting to read reviews, wrap signed books and see photos of my book baby in hairdressing salons and on planes. One reader gave me a blow by blow update as she arranged her busy life as a farmer’s wife during harvest around reading it. This is why I write!
Last weekend I got a very special order for signed copies of all my books from a Dad for his daughter. It is such a Dad thing to do, not just buy one book for their daughter, but buy all the books (all seven of them, Write About Me, Found, Find Me, When You Find Me, You’ll Never Find Me and Search for Sky, Rhiannon’s Last Look!).
Apologies in advance for a book spoiler alert, but when I wrote Find Me in 2014, there was a devastating and heartbreaking ending for Rhiannon when she lost her Dad. The scene wasn’t plotted out or planned, it was just one of those chapters which came to me when I sat down to write.
I sobbed my heart out because at the time I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose my Dad suddenly and with no warning. My Dad, John Waters Hosking, was my biggest fan, always reading my books in one sitting in his special chair by the fire. He carried many boxes of books to events and was there every step as the way as I travelled a crazy road of writing a book a year while desperately pursuing the truth about my cousin and his niece Ursula who went missing aged 17 in 1987.
As a crime writer, there is no shortage of devastation and heartbreak for my characters, but Rhiannon losing her Dad Bill resonated strongly with a large number of my readers and I still get messages today from daughters who have lost their Dads.
Fast forward to 2024 and I lost Dad in the most shocking of circumstances. He was two minutes from home, driving across the railway crossing he crossed every day multiple times, and was hit by a passenger train. I can’t tell you how difficult it has been to pick myself up and move forward and I didn’t think I’d ever be able to finish Rhiannon’s Last Look.
For six whole months I didn’t write a word, and I wondered if I’d ever write another book. I kept trying to tell myself Dad would want me to keep doing what I loved – also that I needed to treasure every moment and not waste a minute of my life. But I just couldn’t lift myself out of the sludge.
The fog lifted gradually, one sentence at a time, then one chapter at a time and ta-da!! I made a book!
A big thank you to everyone who has purchased a copy of Rhiannon’s Last Look – and an extra special shoutout to all the dads and daughters.
In 2012 I wrote a book and sent it to a literary agent with an expectation she would absolutely love it and send it to a big publisher and give me my big break and set me on my path to being a bestselling author. Instead she posted it back to me with a note “this is not strong enough for the current literary market”.
For those who know me, I don’t like to admit defeat, so I found a way and published it myself the following year. What happened next was a big life lesson, one we all learnt as young children reading the book The Little Red Hen.
The Little Red Hen is an American fable first collected by Mary Mapes Dodge in St. Nicholas Magazine in 1874. The story is meant to teach children the importance of hard work and personal initiative.
In other words, work hard, take the initiative and don’t wait for other people to make your dreams come true!
On the eve of me releasing my 7th novel to the world, I find my own variation of the words of The Little Red Hen ringing in my ears:
Who will help me?
Not I.
Not I.
Not I.
Then I will do it, all by myself!
Actually, that’s not quite true. I have had a lot of help from my family, friends, beta readers and the supremely talented creative people who made my words into a book – Jason from Polgarus Studio and my beautiful cover designer, Lara, from Indie Lime.
Rhiannon’s Last Look will go live on Amazon Kindle tomorrow, 2-11-24. If you have pre-ordered, you will open your Kindle and ta-da – it will be there!
You can order signed print books via my online bookstore.
How many times a day does the thought ‘if only’ run through our minds?
Detective Rhiannon McVee is buried in ‘if onlys’ as she sacrifices her relationship with her cowboy Mac to make it her life’s work to solve Australia’s growing number of missing cold cases. When her young prodigy, Constable Zoe Chesney, disappears in the remote outback, Rhiannon is faced with the biggest ‘if only’ of her career.
If only she could untangle the web of lies, deceit and murder her missing people have weaved before it’s too late.
If only. If only.
I have just been on another trip into the Australian outback, and this time I took a trip down ‘that red dirt road’ which Rhiannon drives on as she heads to work at the Back O’ Bourke. I haven’t spent a lot of time in this part of the world, and it’s a coincidence that after writing my 7th book, life seems to be landing me right in the middle of the places I have been writing about!
I’ve never been down this particular road, but the Brooks and Dunn song lyrics played out in my head:
We’d turn out the headlightsAnd drive by the moonlightTalk about what the future might holdDown that red dirt road
It’s where I drank my first beerIt’s where I found JesusWhere I wrecked my first carI tore it all to pieces
This is when we came across a roadside memorial. When you are on an isolated road and see large buckets of bright flowers and a rock with a plaque, you have to stop.
My writer’s mind went to so many different places. The real story is always worse than any fictional story I could create. I can’t even imagine the ripple effect of this accident on this red dirt road.
Road trauma is something I have experience with. The shock, followed by the long, tangled journey towards acceptance can be debilitating.
1979 seems like a lifetime ago. I was seven years old. I wondered, in such an isolated, lonely place, how would they have called for help? We drove for 100km and did not pass one single vehicle. There are farm properties out here, but they are few and far between. How long before someone discovered what happened? And what about the survivors, and the emergency services? How have they coped? What have their lives been like? Are they okay?
After some Googling, I discovered an Australian Story episode ‘Out of the Dust’, which I was unable to watch but could read the transcript. This gives an incredible insight into how road trauma changes the lives of those left behind forever – it doesn’t just affect families and friends, but whole communities.
In my last Book News, I wrote “At some point I believe we make a conscious choice not to let our trauma define us completely.” And as this Australian Story episode reveals, the sister of one of the young boys who died, Dani Haski, made a very brave and conscious choice to face her trauma. Twenty-five years on, she returned to the accident site and brought together many people who were there on that day, and the families they left behind, to create this memorial which I stood beside.
The way people, in the wake of such tragedy, can walk into the void and change the narrative they’ve lived with for so long is nothing short of miraculous.
We do this not only for ourselves, but to honour the memories of those we have lost and the joy they brought to our lives.
Melissa x
I’ll keep you updated via my Facebook and Instagram accounts and when those precious boxes of books arrive they will be coming straight to you!
The Kindle version will be going live on Amazon worldwide as planned on the official release date of November 2, 2024. The pre-order is still running so if you want to make sure you get it when it’s hot off the press, hit pre-order today.
Happy days!
I don’t have much more to tell you regarding the progress of Rhiannon’s Last Look but it will be ready on 2 November as promised! You can pre-order the Kindle version now, and I am hoping the print pre-orders will be available in the next couple of weeks.
This is Book 5 in the Rhiannon Series is described as ‘a real page turner up until the last page’.
‘It is great, really loved it.’
‘I can’t wait to get it off a shelf somewhere and say, I know this author!’
How many times a day does the thought ‘if only’ run through our minds?
When Detective Rhiannon McVee’s young prodigy Constable Zoe Chesney disappears in the remote Australian outback, she is faced with the biggest ‘if only’ of her career.
If only she could untangle the web of murder, lies and deceit her missing people have weaved before it’s too late.
If only. If only.