Shay McNeal

Shay McNeal is passionate about creating compelling fact-based books that engage and inform readers. With a strong work ethic and a commitment to excellence, Shay McNeal is known as a whip-smart renaissance woman who is fearless when calling balls and strikes as she sees them.

During McNeal’s professional career, she has been listed in numerous Who’s Who over the years, and is the winner of countless awards for excellence in advertising and marketing for domestic and international clients.

She really enjoyed heading up, as a political consultant, the media campaign that led to the defeat of David Duke, the former neo-Nazi and Klansman in the closely contested Louisiana Governor’s race.

After running on the fast track of the media world, she wrote her first book, The Secret Plot to Save the Tsar . Its successful initial release in the United Kingdom landed the book at the top of Amazon’s list for weeks. The book also received many positive reviews, including an almost full page review in The Sunday Times , in London.

Finishing a lengthy book tour, she settled down with her husband, Claude Poulin, at her farm Aspen Dale, in Northern Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C. A new challenge emerged. A few years on she taught herself to make wine and founded Aspen Dale Winery at the Barn. Ultimately, she won the best Cabernet Sauvignon and the best Sauvignon Blanc on the East Coast, presented by the American Wine Society on Capitol Hill at the Cannon House Building in Washington, D.C. She sold the winery in 2012.

Continuing to write, she became Associate Publisher of The Charleston Mercury , in Charleston, South Carolina where she published a column, Meet You in the Middle for over 13 years. On October 22, 2018, she published a very prescient book, entitled, The Road to Trump: How Failure to Meet in the Middle Fueled Trump’s Rise and the Resurgence of China and Russia. The book is a compilation of her columns with emphasis on China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. It highlights decisions made in the global body politics that led to the election of Donald Trump amid a climate ripe for turmoil both here at home, in the United States, and across the world.

Shay has spent the last three years unraveling the Alex Murdaugh case.