Rhiannon’s Last Look, getting closer!

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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.

What happens when a family member goes missing?

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When someone goes missing, your life is forever changed

I received an email the other day from a German exchange student from my old high school, Antje. She sent me photos of the fun and good times we had, aged 17 going on 18, some of which are too much 80s classic to share!!

This is a photo at Antje’s deb ball, with me on one side and my best friend in the whole world, Rellie, on the other. The camera man behind us? The crime writer in me goes straight to stalker vibes!

Keeping in mind we would only ever get one shot at the photo, nobody could ever check if our eyes were open, or if it was our best angle – in every photo I’m smiling, happy, joyous and having the time of my life.

Yet, how could I be so happy, when just a couple of years earlier my beautiful cousin Ursula had gone missing and still hadn’t come home?

I know the answer, and it’s largely through writing so extensively about missing people in my seven novels I have discovered an even deeper understanding of this.

We all face trauma in our lives, in one form or another. Sometimes our trauma is so traumatic, we wonder how we can go on. For family and friends of a missing person, the continual loop of not knowing, referred to as ‘ambiguous loss’ is one of the worst traumas imaginable.

I still remember the awful, debilitating feeling of when it dawned upon our family that Ursula was ‘missing’. I also remember the awful, heartbreaking day when Ursula’s Mum, my Aunty Cheree, arrived in hysterics to tell us she knew in her heart that Ursula was dead. This was when I was 20, and Ursula had been missing for five years.

But Aunty Cheree also set the tone for the whole family, insisting we always put our best foot forward. She had a wicked sense of humour and told side-splitting stories. I’m not even halfway as entertaining or funny as she was but she did teach me to seek laughter above sadness.

When Ursula went missing I surrounded myself with my friends and did what all teenagers do – kept incredibly busy, laughed until my belly and cheeks hurt, made new friendships like the one with Antje, and held on tight to my closest friends like Rellie.

At some point I believe we make a conscious choice not to let our trauma define us completely.

This is why, when you read one of my crime fiction novels, I won’t let you linger too long on the trauma or devastation of my characters who are affected so terribly, in many different ways, by not knowing what has happened to their missing person.

We all need put our big girl pants on, walk into the void, follow our dreams and seek out happiness wherever we can find it. Not only for ourselves, but to honour the memories of our missing loved ones and the joy they brought to our lives.

Melissa x

Starting 2023 on the theme of ‘new’

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Happy New Year to you all, and welcome to my new MP Book News subscribers. I notice some from the UK, the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia and it’s such a big deal for me to have so many people from around the world in my book circle. Thankyou!

I saw in the New Year in the Australian outback and I managed a pretty impressive sunset star for the last day of 2022. If you are a Yellowstone fan you might notice that sun stars are a prominent feature and I think my photo definitely gives Yellowstone a run for their money!
It means so much to us to be here after a forced four-month hiatus from being able to run our fence contracting business. We haven’t been able to get here until now because it has been under flood water all that time, including our living quarters. A lot of areas in NSW flooded during 2022 and there was extensive media coverage when towns were inundated. But one story that didn’t make the news was the one about the rural families who were isolated for months and months, desperately trying to save their livestock while flooded inland river systems converged and spread water onto paddocks where they’d never been flooded before. There were many rural businesses like ours whose equipment was inaccessible, and for all those months we had to sit on our hands and wait it out. It was tough.
It is the longest running flood in many people’s memories and the damage, destruction and heartache it created is beyond compare. The farmers who we rely on for the food we eat are saying they would prefer a drought to a flood. They were isolated for a start, with the only access to their properties by boat or helicopter. The number of sheep, cattle and wildlife that perished will break your heart because the water spread over such a large area and there was nowhere for them to go. Hundreds of thousands of hectares of crops* were unable to be harvested because they were under water and it will take a long time for the agricultural industry to rebuild.

But the resilience of the people who live out here is like nothing you’ve ever seen, and they are moving forward day by day and leaving it all behind. We are too. I think this is a fantastic approach for the New Year and my theme for 2023 is NEW.

New year.
New beginnings.
New starts.
New ideas.
New opportunities.
New books!

Speaking of new books, this segues into what I’m planning for today.

I’ll start by asking, what’s the weather like where you are? As you would expect in the Australian outback in summer, it is HOT. Today the forecast temperature is 42 degrees Celsius and so this afternoon my plan is to sit under my air-conditioner and keep working on my new outback crime novel! My main character’s name is Bunny Brown-Leather and I’d love to know if that resonates with you at all? Naming characters is the hardest thing to do so I’m using names from my subscriber list as inspiration. Once I have a name the character starts to come to life. Bunny is a city girl, super smart, conservative upbringing and with a dream to be a reporter. She has landed her first job in Bourke which is a wild west town, and a far cry from the suburban, leafy city streets she grew up in. Bourke isn’t quite the romantic outback town with cowboys wandering the streets that she envisaged. She’s pretty sassy though, and is determined to get the latest scoop. There’s plenty of mystery and intrigue planned and a twist you won’t see coming.I’d love to get some feedback on her name though, all ideas welcome!

More free books

Amazon Kindle is offering the next two books in my Rhiannon Series for free this month. If you are still book binging for the holidays, now is a great time to download them so when you reach the cliffhanger of each one (sorry, not sorry) you can keep going!

Go to my Amazon page to keep an eye on when which book is free. When they’re not free I have them priced as low as Amazon will let me, less than a cup of takeaway coffee, so they are more accessible to more people.

If you are reading my books and love them, I would love if you could share a review. This helps my books get noticed in the biggest bookstore in the world, plus gives me a huge confidence boost and inspiration to keep writing. Have a great day wherever you are!

Melissa x

*I don’t know the exact numbers for crop losses or stock or wildlife losses of the NSW Floods, so the hectares of crop losses is an estimate only

Meet the author: Melissa Pouliot Search for Sky

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Australian crime thriller fiction writer and bestselling author Melissa Pouliot is releasing her much awaited sixth crime thriller mystery novel, Search for Sky.
To kick this book baby into the world, I am going to be lurking in my favourite bookstore in the whole world on launch day.
Please feel free to come and hang out with me in Collins Merimbula next Tuesday 22-2-22 between 10 and 12. Extra points if you bring coffee! (PS I also like cake!)
Collins Merimbula have been super fans of my work since I published Write About Me in 2013.
They have had my crime thriller fiction books on their shelves ever since, and encouraged me to keep writing, and a whole lot more. And now they’ve taken on the distribution of my print books Write About Me & Found from The Missing Series, along with Find Me, When You Find Me, You’ll Never Find Me & Search for Sky from The Rhiannon Series. This is an absolute blessing for anyone who understands how much coordination goes into mailouts!
Over the next few months I will be involved in a range of book events around Merimbula, Tathra and the Bega Valley and if you would like me to come and speak at your book club, social gathering or bookish event, please don’t be afraid to ask.
  • Did you know I have created questions and answers for Book Clubs? I absolutely love Book Clubs, as I used to have one of my own. It expanded my depth and knowledge of books so much, plus it was a whole lot of fun! And discovering new authors was such a delight! Check out my book club Q&A page, and if you have any questions to add, get in touch!

Search for Sky coming soon

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Missing people, the stark landscape of the Australian outback and the police system in the mid 90s combine for Melissa Pouliot’s next page-turning crime novel, Search for Sky. The fourth instalment in the Rhiannon Series picks up the story of detective Rhiannon McVee who has made a name for herself with her new approach to investigating missing persons cases. Her approach is simple – find them – but it’s not how the culture of the police system works. When someone starts leaving clues in the remote outback, leading Rhiannon closer and closer to a suspected serial killer, will the next body she discovers be the people she is searching for, or someone else?

Search for Sky is my much awaited sixth book after I took a break from writing when Kings Cross Detectives found my cousin Ursula in 2017 after a 30 year search.

Prior to that I released a book a year in an effort to keep public scrutiny on the disappearance of Ursula in 1987 when we were teenagers.

I’m thrilled to back into my fiction writing after taking a break. It has been a fairly intense few years for everyone that I know. For me, discovering what happened to Ursula and going through the coronial process, bushfires, COVID and moving house created the (im)perfect storm. Every time I tried to pick up this book which I started in 2017, the words wouldn’t come. It’s an age-old excuse for writers, but life definitely got in the way!

What is it about?

Hope can come from the most surprising of places.

In Australia Ayala Philips is still missing.
So is Keely Johnson.
So are thousands of others.
Their cases are getting colder and Rhiannon McVee’s hopes of solving them are fading.

When someone starts leaving clues in the remote Australian outback, leading Rhiannon closer and closer to a suspected serial killer, will the next body she discovers be Ayala, Keely or someone else?

Crime fiction inspired by real life, written by the cousin of one of Australia’s most compelling and heartbreaking missing persons cases.