Instead of trying to find your perfect match in a dating app, we bring you the “Author-Reader Match” where we introduce you to authors you may fall in love with. It’s our great pleasure to present Melissa Payne!
Writes:
I write stories set in small mountain towns with characters searching for redemption, love, and second chances. There’s just something about a mountain landscape with its jagged horizons and unpredictable weather that provides the perfect backdrop for stories exploring the human condition. My newest novel, IN THIS LIFE OR ANOTHER, set in a rural Colorado town, also takes our main character, Rusty, into the unexplored places where our deepest fears and uncertainties hide: the internal landscape of our hearts and minds. In this tale, readers join Rusty as he navigates the unknown between life and death, ultimately facing his own truth against the harsh and beautiful backdrop of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range.
About:
A mountain girl at heart, I love all activities that get me outside: hiking, running, skiing (when I’m not rehabbing an ACL injury), camping, and sitting on my deck in the warm-ish summer months with a cup of coffee and a good book. I love to cook and to try out new recipes, and after dinner I prefer to sit around the table and talk, so I often go to bed with a dirty kitchen and leave the cleaning for the morning. I’m married to the man who happened to sit beside me in my college Spanish class, and we have raised three children to adulthood, loved many animals, and never tire of the wildness and beauty that comes with living at 9,200 feet of elevation.
I’m looking for readers who love:
• an emotional journey
• a spirit-guide turtle with an edgy sense of humor
• exploring the liminal spaces between life and death
• rooting for a regular guy who wishes his life had amounted to more
• a happy ending
What to expect if we’re compatible:
• a strong desire to visit the mountains
• characters that feel so real you’ll think about them when you finish the book
• some tears, some laughs, and lots of heartwarming moments
• settings that feel like one of the characters
• a bear or two and at least one snowstorm
IN THIS LIFE OR ANOTHER by Melissa Payne
On the brink of death, a man comes to terms with the life he lived versus the one he never pursued in an emotionally rich novel of parallel lives, redemption, and finding purpose.
On the eve of his sixtieth birthday, mechanic Rusty Wilson takes a bullet to save the patrons of a small-town Colorado diner—and awakens to a strange realm between life and death.
However, he finds that this limbo is not the end. There are still choices to be made and a lifetime to review. Paths open for a man who believes the life he did live was one of disappointments, grief, and devastating family estrangements. Given a chance to experience an alternate reality, Rusty is visited by figures from his past and present, sees what could have been if he had pursued a woman he loved from afar, and confronts a family secret that shaped everything. Now it’s Rusty’s choice: accept the imperfect existence he knew, or the what-if that could still be his.
At the heart of this poignant exploration of mortality, memory, and second chances is the profoundly simple question: What makes a life truly meaningful?
Fantasy Magical Realism [ Lake Union Publishing, On Sale: September 8, 2026, Trade Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781662535512 / eISBN: 9781662535505 ]
Buy IN THIS LIFE OR ANOTHER: Amazon.com | Kindle | BN.com | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play | Books-A-Million | Indie BookShops | Walmart.com | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon FR
About Melissa Payne
For as long as she can remember, Melissa Payne has been telling stories in one form or another—from high school newspaper articles to a graduate thesis to blogging about marriage and motherhood. But she first learned the real importance of storytelling when she worked for a residential and day treatment center for abused and neglected children. There she wrote speeches and letters to raise funds for the children. The truth in those stories was piercing and painful and written to invoke in the reader a call to action: to give, to help, to make a difference. Melissa’s love of writing and sharing stories in all forms has endured. She lives in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains with her husband and three children, a friendly mutt, a very loud cat, and the occasional bear. The Secrets of Lost Stones is her first novel.
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