Find Me #author Holly Craig

From the bestselling author of The Shallows and The Rip comes a terrifying survivalist thriller as two sisters navigate the eerie Tasmanian wilderness, perfect for fans of Jane Harper and Yellowjackets.

THREE YEARS MISSING.
TWO SISTERS SEARCHING.
A TRUTH THEY MAY NOT SURVIVE.

When Pete vanished into the rugged wilderness of Tasmania’s Abel mountains, it only took a few weeks for the official search to be called off. He’d been warned, they said. Mount Mercy takes people.

Brought together by their mother’s dying wish to find their brother once and for all, estranged sisters Hallie and Gertie head back to Mount Mercy. Their first step: to find the Peakers, an isolated and mysterious commune, who were the last people to see Pete alive.

It doesn’t take long for the sisters’ desperate hunt for answers to become a terrifying fight for their own survival. The Peakers are hiding something. Something deadly …

To conenct with Holly .....
https://hollycraig.com/
https://www.instagram.com/hollycraigauthor/
https://hollycraig.com/the-write-club 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

It's good morning, Holly Craig. Welcome to Yellow Shelf.

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hi, thank you so much for having me, Joanna. I'm so excited to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

It is not as exciting as me having you here. Holly, your book. I have a copy. Congratulations. Your latest book, Find Me. What do we need to know about the book?

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Well, it's a survival suspense thriller. Um, it's lots of like action-packed kind of um like you know themes and just a really fun kind of thriller that I feel like once you get to the end, the readers will be like, oh my gosh, like we made it, we got there. But they will read it in the safety and comfort of their own home. There's lots of kind of like horror elements in there. There's like a few kind of supernatural, like it seems supernatural, but it's not lots of folklore, all that kind of stuff in it. Um, did you want me to give you like a little brief rundown?

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Tell us, tell us. I mean, I've read the book, so I mean, you know, I think you've been read it. Yeah, I've read it. Um, I was lucky, I got a I got an early copy. Um, you know, there are lots of eerie themes, definitely like a thriller, but tell us, do you maybe share a bit about the story, you know, yeah, the sisters and what you want us to know.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Okay, awesome. I'm so excited because it just came out today. So I'm like all like, ah, I can't wait to finally start talking about. So it's about two estranged sisters who um Hallie and Gertie, who are completely different characters as well. Like one is Hallie's like a practical SES worker, she's an award-winning search and rescue um worker, and then we have Gertie, her sister, who's like really kind of bohemian, and she's like maybe a little bit irresponsible. And the two have been reunited because their mother just passed away, and her final dying wishes was that she they want she wanted them to reunite after five years of not speaking. So we're already getting like a massive betrayal between them, and they have to go and search for their missing brother, Pete, who disappeared up Mount Mercy three years ago. And this mountain, Mount Mercy, is this isolated kind of um place up in Tasmania. It's like a fictional um, obviously, mountain, but it's rumoured, it's got all these strange kind of rumors around it where it takes people. Men are the only ones that go missing up the mountain, like there's all this folklore behind it. So, anyway, the sisters head up the mountain to search for him in the last place that he was located, which is a secret commune up the mountain that's been up there for 50 years, with you know, people know it's there, but they don't know where it is. It's like that kind of secret, and they want to keep it. So they go up to find him or find out information about where he last went missing up there. Um, they don't realize that these the Pekers is their name, they're actually hiding a deadly secret. And then when one of the sisters, which is Gertie, goes missing, Hallie now needs to go and um uncover where she's gone and face the mountain alone. So there's lots of, like I said, action in there. We've got like sibling rivalry. I feel like, in a way, having the two sisters, and I wanted to write a book this time about sisters, like in all my other books, like The Shallows, The Rip, um, and Mayday, my Audible original, they were all kind of like about partners and you know, like, you know, husband and wife, and kind of more domestic thriller type genre. This time around, I wanted to write about sisters and I wanted to write where they've had this conflict because I feel like sisterhood, like I've got a sister, it's such a complicated relationship. Like a lot of the time we mirror one another. A lot of like what sisters do kind of reflects or like triggers the other sister as well, like when they're making big kind of life decisions on anything, like really, like, you know, divorce or having kids or whatever. So I wanted there to already be this massive kind of backstory between these sisters before they even head up the mountain. So that we've got this conflict going on, but it then also the fact that they're now on this mountain, which I feel like I love the fact that I've written now about a genre like being like where they're just being placed and plonked into the wilderness and in a way where it's um, you know, it's unforgiving, it's isolated, and that in itself has that kind of comp complication as well. So there's all these layers of complication going through it with the sisters, the isolation, and then them obviously trying to find their brother as well, and what happened to him. So yeah, I just really enjoyed writing it. It's a really fun book to write.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

And to that, I read, Holly, if this is correct, that this was your hardest and most uh, you know, your most complicated book to write, but also completely rewarding at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Definitely. It's so funny because my agent said to me, she said, This is your mountain to climb. Because I remember like falling my eyes out to her when I was halfway through, going, I hate this. It's so unrealistic and it's really hard to do. I really had to dig deep this time because I had I'd written The Shallows and The Rip. That was with an American publisher, Thomas and Mercer. And this time we needed to write a book that was going to be like the breakout book, the one that would attract, you know, Simon and Schuster or any of those top five publishers. And we wanted to go to the US and to the UK. So she said to me, I want you to write something like really dig deep. And I so I'd written another manuscript, sent that to the agency, and they didn't like that. And they're like, Nut, that's still not the one. So when I got to got around to writing this one, I was like, oh my god, like just really feeling that stress and pressure of writing it. It was like the structure, um, the structure in this is really quite like it's a twist in itself. Um, so that was like really hard for me. The twist at the end needed to be like really big and really kind of like out of the blue, but not so much where you go, Well, I never would have seen that coming. Like there had to be like breadcrumbs all the way through. So I wanted the twists to be like this old, like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, that's what's happening up there. So it just was really hard on all those kind of levels, um, coming up with the ideas, brainstorming, structure, just that added pressure to be the breakout book.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Look, thank you for sharing that journey because I find that really interesting as an author. You know, the pressure's on you, isn't it, to find your uh to find your voice. And look, I'm gonna all I'm gonna say is I read this as someone who didn't, oh I don't have a sister, I don't have, I have all brothers, but you know, I was in I was in the story of what you were explaining, that complexity of sister. I've seen sisters, the love, hate relationships that they've had, you know, around me. But um, you know, ultimately, you know, they can be as thick as thieves too.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

That's right. And it felt like to me, it was there were moments where I was getting emotional writing about it as well. Because I've got a really close relationship with my sister, but obviously, like through life, you go through ups and downs. And so it was just reminding me of how almost in a way you do feel responsible for your sister. And Hallie, the main character, the SES award winner, like award-winning um search and rescue worker, she, even though she hates like Gertie's irresponsible, kind of immature nature, at the same time, she feels like, oh god, I've got to like still protect her, even though I feel betrayed by her. And that's why I found that so interesting. Whereas if you write about a couple, you just kind of don't get that level of complexity that you do.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

The intensess of yes, yeah, yeah. Oh, it was there for me. It was there. I want I want people to read this and and let you know if they got got that intensity as well. Um congrats, Holly. Tell us and you mentioned the book's officially out today. Um, you're gonna be really busy doing book launches, busyness, the exciting journey of launching the latest book. Um, tell us if we're curious about you, we're curious to get the book. Do you want to point us in the right direction of website Instagram? Where would you like us to go?

SPEAKER_00 8:08

So come and find me definitely on Instagram. I'm really, really active over there. So it's just um at Holly CraigAuthor and Facebook's the same as well, at Holly Craig Author. I don't like I kind of I tend to go more on Instagram and then I just kind of re-post to um Facebook, but I do also have a website, so hollycraig.com. Um, but yeah, on Instagram, I'm always on there. So I'll always be if you DM me or whatever, or share a post or review, find me, which would be great. Um, I'll always like reach out and thank you and speak. I'm open to everyone. Um, another thing I just wanted to mention as well is um I'm actually the creator of the Write Club, which is uh Australia's online writing community. Um, sorry, it's like not online, it's also in person, but it's actually one of the biggest commun writing communities in Australia. We have over 200 members that have come through the Wright Club. Um, so please reach out to me like on the Wright Club Instagram page as well. So it's at the underscore write club. So for any writers out there who want to join the community, it is incredible. Like the support, the women, like the friendships that have been made. It's just such a great community. So reach out there.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Holly, I will put in links in the show notes to to the Instagram and and to other your website as well. Uh Holly, it has been such a delight. I loved the book. I'm gonna write a review uh now that it's officially out. And um yeah, I know you're gonna keep writing it. And people should go to your website to read your story and your journey a little deeper. It's all isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Oh, pleasure. Holly, all the best. Okay, thank you. Bye.