When she was 10 years old, Melissa Yuan-Innes’ parents decided to pursue their dream of seeing the world, and uprooted the family to move to Europe. At the time, Melissa had a tight circle of friends, a routine, and a strong desire to stay in Canada. By the time she returned to her homeland a few years later—where she found everything to be different from how she had remembered it—, she had come to hate travel.
But things had a funny way of coming around for this Ottawa-born physician.
Yuan-Innes now works as a physician at Glengarry Memorial Hospital in Alexandria and also writes medical thriller fiction under her pen name Melissa Yi. After recently signing a five-book contract with NARAT, a leading organization in worldwide adventure travel, Melissa has come full circle. She has been tasked with creating novels set in exotic locations around the world.
“Now I’m more interested in exploring and meeting new people and learning about new cultures,” she said. “If I can chat with people and get to know their history, I find that more interesting. I perk up.”
The writer-physician visited the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador in February 2019 to kick off research for her new series. Four more international trips, as part of the new book deal, are planned by the end of 2020. And if that isn’t enough, on top of being a mother and a doctor, Yuan-Innes is currently writing a seventh thriller from her Glengarry home, due out in December 2019.
Illustration: Kyle Beaudette
