WITH one book only just landing on bookshelves in Australia, a second waiting in the wings and a third swimming around in her mind, Poppy Gee is an author to watch.
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Launceston-born, Gee's debut novel Bay of Fires was officially launched in Launceston last night at Fullers Bookshop and has been selling like hot cakes since it was released on February 4.
Loosely inspired by the Cafasso and Grundwaldt murders on Tasmania's East Coast in the 90s, the novel uses the murder of a Swiss backpacker as the backdrop to a community unravelling at the suspicion a murderer may be in their midst.
"I was a teenager when that happened and I remember at that time you couldn't walk into a pub without people speculating on what happened and who was involved, and there was a genuine fear amongst the community on the East Coast that a psychopath was living in the neighbourhood," Gee said.
Gee, who has two small children, spent much of childhood at her family's shack at the Bay of Fires so it was a natural landscape for her to bed her novel in.
Gee said writing is her obsession and she is not truly content unless she writes every day.
So it is no wonder that when she heard her first novel was going to be published she decided to finish her second, another Tasmanian based murder mystery set in a fictional ski lodge on Ben Lomond.