Lightning Round: All The Questions
My overseas plans, my most embarrassing story & having security called on me
Lately I’ve received a lot of questions to my Substack blog that I really want to answer, but don’t have a whole blog post’s worth of stuff to answer with.
So this week I am doing a rapid-fire lightning round, tackling a whole bunch of reader questions in one mega post so you guys get your answers!
In this post, I cover:
· My plans for touring my books overseas
· The times I’ve had security called on me at author gigs cos I look like a thug
· My advice for entering writing competitions
· My favourite book genre
· How to encourage LGBT+ creatives & why I don’t use the word “queer” myself
· Arm wrestling(!)
· My most embarrassing story – yikes
Lessssgoooo!
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Q: Are you going to travel outside Australia (USA or Europe)? To meet your readers?
A: I have never done an author gig outside Australia yet, but I really hope to do this one day.
I actually had my first-ever USA gig locked in last year: I was lined up to be on a panel at ThrillerFest 2023, which is a massive thriller writers convention in New York City. I was so grateful to the good people at International Thriller Writers (ITW) for giving me the opportunity. I even got a grant to help me make the trip feasible.
I was incredibly excited to go to the US for the first time and meet my American readers (I know I have a few, including a whole book club in Kansas City who read INVISIBLE BOYS). I hoped to build some new relationships with writers and industry people who might help me break into the American market.
Sadly, there was a COVID wave at the time, including at Margaret River Readers & Writers Festival which I appeared at about 2 weeks before my US trip. And bam, I copped a bad case of COVID that completely flattened me. I was too sick to travel and had to cancel the appearance and return the grant money. I was gutted!
I never announced this event, because I felt like COVID was circling me at the time and didn’t want to get everyone excited in case it fell through. Which, given what happened, is probably for the best. But it also means I never got to share the excitement of this US trip happening.
I am ambitious, and very much hope to land US book deals for my books & to tour there for my American readers one day – so, stay tuned on that front.
The same goes for the UK and every other overseas territory I might hope to be published in. One day!
The only possible imminent overseas trip I might do for readers is to France and the Francophone countries of Europe. INVISIBLE BOYS is currently being translated into French and will be published in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, etc. some time in 2025. As an ambitious author – and a French speaker – I love the idea of going to Europe for a week or two to promote the book there and to meet my European readers (I know I have several who have read IB in English).
Of course, 2025 is also the slated time for my Australian touring and promo for both TWO KINGS and the INVISIBLE BOYS TV series, so I have no idea whether this idea will pan out.
But if there is a financially viable way for me to jet to Europe some time in 2025 and support the release of French IB with a little Paris-Lyon-Geneva-Brussels-Luxembourg mini-tour, I am so keen!
Nous verrons! We will see. 😊
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Q: What’s your favourite book genre?
A: Gay fiction, preferably stuff that’s commercial/literary crossover like my own work. I like something readable and absorbing, emotional and character driven but with pace and plot. Literary fiction of any kind tends not to be my cup of tea, especially if it’s really slow – although if it’s gay I’ll sometimes enjoy it.
Gay adult or gay YA, both are good to me. Preferably written by actual gay or bi men themselves.
I enjoy some non-fiction occasionally – self-help or advice books, biographies, shit like that.
I enjoy YA, thrillers and crime, and general commercial/literary crossover fiction.
As an example of what I love reading, YELLOWFACE by Rebecca Kuang is one of my favourite novels ever. I want to write something as good as this.
I do love adventure/fantasy a bit too, but I read a lot of this when I was a teenager, much less as an adult. Either I need to sit down and absorb myself in some classic fantasy novels to properly read in this genre, or accept that I may not love fantasy as much as I used to. The jury’s currently out.
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Q: Are other writers intimidated by your muscles?
A: It’s funny to me that this question came from a fellow gay writer. I could have treated it as a joke question, but it made me think of some funny anecdotes.
Firstly, no, I don’t think other writers are intimidated by my muscles.
I do often feel like a misfit and an outsider in the writing world because I spend more time bodybuilding than reading, but I’ve made my peace with that. Like Popeye, I yam who I yam.
But I have had some funny run-ins looking the way I do (not just the muscles but maybe the gear I wear) in the literary world.
For instance, I was in a festival green room once, guns out, mohawk, punk gear, and I saw a writer I hadn’t met before. I went up to say g’day and introduce myself. Just that. Nothing else. There was no intimidatory motive. I was just tryna be friendly!
The guy was an older bloke, and when I approached him and extended my hand, offering a handshake, he leapt back in alarm. And then cried, “I thought you were going to punch me!” There was no real coming back from that, and we did not become mates.
I have also had security guards set on me twice, and the police came after me once too.
One time was in the State Library of WA. I was Deputy Chair of Writing WA, and I dropped in to visit the two new staff I had hired. Two State Library security guards burst into the Writing WA office after me, asking what I was doing and asking the girls if I was bothering them. I had to be like, “No, I am literally their boss checking in on them, not a Norfbridge thug terrorising them.” Ultimately I wasn’t too bothered, because they were just doing their jobs and it was good to know my team would be swiftly protected if there ever was a real threat.
Another time was in Canberra, during THE BRINK tour. I had a routine of arriving in each new capital city over east, taking a selfie with an iconic landmark, and posting it to my socials to announce to my followers in that city that I’d arrived. In Sydney, I took a selfie at the Opera House. In Melbourne, in one of their graffitied laneways.
In Canberra – and I did not think this through, my bad – I went for Parliament House. That seemed like the best-known landmark. However, a bloke with a mohawk, camo pants, boots and flexing set off alarm bells for the cops. I got SWOOPED by the Australian Federal Police: two officers in a car that wheeled around from the car park and parked beside me, and two officers who descended from the entry of the building.
It turned out they thought I was like a Romper Stomper skinhead or white supremacist with an abusive slogan on my singlet or something. Which – despite any rumours that may exist to the contrary – is something I am not. I had to show them my social media accounts to convince them I was just an author doing a fun promo thing, and all four of the officers were really good about it, thankfully. Although I remained watched like a hawk until I left. Again, this is just people doing their jobs well, ultimately.
The last one is the funniest to me because it was dramatic AF. In book week in 2022, I was teaching a series of writing workshops to Year 11s and 12s in a nice private school in the Perth suburbs. I had to chuck a piss, so I waited until the students were working on a writing exercise, then the teacher hosting me directed me to the nearest toilets, in the school’s chapel building. As I left the chapel, a passing teacher looked at me funny, but I didn’t think anything of it.
I got back to the classroom, start teaching the students again, and suddenly, the passing teacher BURSTS into the classroom dramatically, her mobile phone to her ear as she frantically tells a security guard, “Yes, he came out of the chapel! Now he’s in a classroom! OH.”
And she saw me with my little power point slide about characterisation and twenty students and a teacher all staring at her like, “What the fuck are you doing, lady?”
Once we clarified I was an author and a visiting guest of the school, not a thug who had broken into the school to terrorise third period English, the teacher was mortified and profusely apologetic. Again, I guess people are just trying to protect others when they do stuff like this.
But it is a real eye-opener the kind of prejudices and biases you face when you don’t conform to what people think a writer ought to look like. Such is life, ay?
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Q: How to encourage queer folks to open up and express their feelings through art & writing?
A: In some ways, this links back to last week’s post (below) about writing from a place of trauma, and how writing is not therapy: therapy is therapy. My advice to LGBT+ people who want to express themselves through art and writing would be to follow the advice of that post around self-care, writing from a scar not a wound, and so on.
I suppose the specific bits of advice here would be to be really gentle with yourself around times in your life that have hurt you (struggling with sexuality, coming out, facing rejection, facing violence, feeling excluded, etc.). Because a lot of us have had to just power our way through this in our younger years, we can think we are fine with it now, but opening up those old wounds as an adult can still be gnarly as fuck. Go easy on yourselves.
And I think remember that your story, your version of the world, is true to you, and you don’t need to justify who you are to others, or how you call or label yourself. It can be daunting to do this, but I reckon it’s important for us to just use language that feels right for us and not feel pressured to conform to other people’s expectations.
As an immediate example, I answered this question saying “LGBT+ people” because I strongly dislike the term “queer”, and I don’t use it for myself or my characters or my work as an author or advocate. That doesn’t mean I’m telling people who like the term not to use it for themselves, but I’m asserting a boundary for how I speak about my own self. In your own art and writing, your perspective and view on your own self is the one that matters – so don’t be afraid to back yourself in, be bold, and speak in your own voice about how you see the world and what feels right for you.
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Q: When did you last lose an arm wrestle?
A: I grew up in a house with my dad and two big brothers, and we had a lot of male cousins, so growing up there were arm wrestles everywhere I turned, especially for a few years where my brothers were teenagers. I was about a decade younger than my brothers, so I can happily confirm I lost most of those arm wrestles by virtue of being a tiny little kid (now I think about it, who the fuck allowed them to arm wrestle a tiny kid?). As a teenager I vaguely recall a phase of challenging my brothers – in their twenties by then – to arm wrestles, and I’m pretty sure I still lost those, too. I think I beat my cousin – who was my own age – and that’s probably it.
So, all of my arm-wrestling experience pre-dates me being a gym rat. Which means I might need to get back into it. Should I incorporate an arm-wrestling tournament into the TWO KINGS tour? I’m only half-kidding. I think it’d be sick, but I feel it would be a major OSH risk and what my lawyers and insurers would call a “non-starter”.
Since I can see the identity of the guy who asked this question, I am 100% sure I would fucking crush you in an arm wrestle. If you are ever in Perth, I challenge you to an arm wrestle. Prepare to get rekt, ya fkn dawg.
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Q: Any advice for entering writing competitions?
A: This is timely, since I’m currently judging two short story competitions. But I rarely have anything interesting to say in terms of advice for comps that isn’t the same as any other writing advice.
My main suggestions would be:
· Make sure the story you enter is EDITED thoroughly. Never submit a first draft. Multiple edits will ensure your story is as strong as it can be.
· Don’t try to be clever with overcomplicated language or concept. Just tell an awesome story that makes the reader feel something. The stories I rank highly are always the ones with heart, where I am made to have a human, emotional reaction of some kind.
· Tell a story where something happens: where we are taken from point A at the start to point B at the end. Not just 2000 words of description of a setting, or a scene of dialogue that doesn’t actually go anywhere.
· Write in your own voice. What makes you unique? Lean into that. A fresh, unique voice always grabs judges’ attention.
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Q: What’s your most embarrassing story, and have/would you use it for a book?
A: I have a wealth of embarrassing stories I rarely think about. They sometimes surface, unbidden at random after years of me forgetting them, and fuck, they make me cringe.
I suspect my actual most embarrassing story would be something intoxicated. In my younger years of being a binge-drinking party boy, I would go out partying or clubbing, and there were times I ended up a written-off drunk passed out in a pool of my own vomit somewhere public. The two times that come screaming up at me now are the time I passed out in the dunnies of a well-known kebab shop, but had locked myself in. I was just stuck there for like three hours, on the floor in my own chunder. And there was a similar time where I passed out in front of a major Perth landmark. Actually really bad memories!
I don’t think I would ever write about these or similar nights verbatim in a book, but I think my drunk years may have informed a specific scene in TWO KINGS.
I do have a very embarrassing story from my time working in higher education. I was in my mid-twenties, in a relatively senior role for my age, and attended a meeting with stakeholders from other RTOs and the government. It was a first meeting and I really had to impress them, convince them I was up for the job, and get them on board working with my university.
So, we meet in this room with shiny, slippery floors, and all the chairs around the meeting table were office chairs with wheels.
I stood up as the big wigs entered the meeting, to greet them and shake their hands and make a strong, confident first impression.
Except, by standing up, I accidentally jettisoned my wheelie chair at rapid speed behind me: it went flying across the room.
And I did not notice this until I went to sit down on it, and the chair wasn’t there, and so everyone in the meeting saw me literally stack it and land hard on my arse in the middle of the meeting room, like a fucken idiot.
Worst of all, nobody in the meeting room laughed, or made light of it, or helped it be in any way less awkward. I was just unco as shit and everyone was cold and provided zero help or empathy. It was like sinking through social quicksand.
There was absolutely no coming back from that in that meeting. I still cringe when I remember it.
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Well, I enjoyed doing a rapid-fire lightning round for a change. Thanx for the epic questions!
I’ve been a bit sick with a lurgy this week – I had to miss the gym twice and skip playing a footy game I was looking forward to – but I am hopefully starting to be on the mend now. I managed to smash a decent chest workout today. Now after posting this, I’ll be back into edits for INVISIBLE BOYS 2: TESTICLE METROPOLIS. I’m working hard on making this book as awesome as it can be.
Hope youse have an awesome weekend.
Holden
How about naming some books/authors? Maybe do a post with synopses or reviews? Find it hard to identify good gay fiction.
So many brilliant stories here my friend - I can't believe no one helped you or had a laugh with you when you fell off that chair! (I once mistook one author for another - I didn't know either of them well - and so I had a convo that didn't make sense, tried to have a giggle about it when I realised, and the person in question was completely stony faced and did not forgive my mistake - argh!!!)