PIKE COUNTY, PA — Christopher Mele, a former reporter in Sullivan County, has published his debut novel, “Goodwill’s Secrets,” a mystery set in the Adirondacks.

For Mele, who has been a news reporter and editor for nearly 40 years, writing a novel seemed like a completely far-fetched idea.

“I never thought in a bajillion years I’d try my hand at fiction,” he said. “Nonfiction has always been my turf, so I always felt allergic to the idea of inventing people, places and events.”

He described himself as an “accidental novelist” because he fell into writing “Goodwill’s Secrets” somewhat haphazardly.

“I had a short piece of fiction that I was half-heartedly turning over in my mind during the height of the pandemic but the more I thought about it and the more backstory I added, the more I realized that this could be a longer piece, possibly even a novel,” he said.

“Goodwill’s Secrets” is the story of a community newspaper reporter, Alex Provetto, who is assigned to cover the sudden and unexplained disappearance of Raven, a teenage girl, in the village of Goodwill.  

Convinced that Raven is simply a runaway, Alex initially dismisses this missing-person story as a waste of time. However, as he digs deeper, the idyllic facade of Goodwill cracks, and each lead he chases pulls him deeper into a web of danger and deceit.

Mele, who worked at The Adirondack Daily Enterprise from 1986-88 and then at the Plattsburgh Press-Republican from 1988-92, now works at The New York Times as a deputy editor on its breaking news team after stints at newsrooms in the Hudson Valley, at The Times Herald-Record (where he cut his teeth in the old Monticello bureau), and as executive editor of The Pocono Record in Stroudsburg, PA from 2009-14.

He said he drew on his experiences as a newsman and his time in Saranac Lake and Lake Placid for the setting of his novel. He described Goodwill as a composite of localities and said it captures community life in the Adirondacks.

It took 2.5 years, four drafts and a good deal of reporting to bring the novel to fruition. Mele said he approached the novel as a work of “fictional realism,” and wanted “Goodwill’s Secrets” to be as grounded in real-world conditions as possible.

Ideas often came when he was out for a run. It reached the point where he’d leave a notebook and pen by the front door so that when he returned from a run, he could capture all of his inspiration on paper as quickly as possible before it got forgotten.

“Goodwill’s Secrets” is available on Amazon (both in paperback and on Kindle) and at Barnes & Noble. It can also be ordered through independent bookstores.

And because he’s now been bitten by the fiction-writing bug, Mele said he’s working on a sequel to “Goodwill’s Secrets.”

“So far,” he said, “I’ve got the page numbering figured out.”

To learn more about Mele and “Goodwill’s Secrets,” visit www.chrismeleauthor.com.