Author Blog

November 2025

18 | 11 | 25

The end of the year is fast approaching, so are we all ready for another revolution around the sun? Have you achieved what you wanted in 2025? There is still time.

My plan is to have Inversion finalised by the end of the year, ready for first stage edits. There's quite a lot to process, and I am lagging behind. It's a journey, always will be, and it's always the road less travelled. I have been on the hunt for some inspiration to help bring out that creative energy, and I have been spending some time in some local places which I've been inspired by. Once I am in these places, I find myself immersed in the elements, and with it, a level of connectedness to my characters and their world. I want to share with you a special moment I encountered, but before I do, I want you to have a peek at the below extracts.

__________

Extract 1:

Josie stood in the monochrome outside the heritage pub. Its white façade was well kept, and pale blooms sat in pots along the second-storey balustrade. She crossed the street to the narrow red door and peered through the window. Inside, the bar’s mirrored splashback was smeared, like mist on glass. The pub was empty, just fragments and dust. Silent, eerie and dull, and it made the loneliness harder. Over the mute was an unnerving hum, like the motor of an old AC unit. Josie stepped through the red door, passed the bar and slipped a narrow door, before taking a booth seat along the side. She sighed, leaning back against the glass that overlooked the beer garden below. Tucking her hair behind her ear, she tried to collect her thoughts. In front of her, apparitions flickered into view, jittering and tearing. Then echoed a voice.

“Soon, my queen. You’ll be amongst the stars.”

Extract 2:

The dining area fell quiet, and the music returned; Fly Me to the Moon drifting through the cold. Frost crept along the windows, and Josie’s breath steamed in the air. She folded her arms, tucking in her hands for warmth, then moved into the bar. Bottles lined the shelves behind the polished counter. Her gaze settled on the mirror beneath them. Her reflection was hollow. A dark smudge, distorting and shifting with every flick of her hand. 

The special moment

My wife and I try to get a a family outing in at least one a month (Mother, Father and Japanese Spitz). Let's be honest, sometimes life gets in the way and it's always about finding the right balance, so these times are incredibly important. When we go out, it is usually preceded with the drive from A to B. Most of the time, we pick somewhere familiar that we can walk around with the dog, get some food, and just have a great day together. Well, when my wife and I moved to the Illawarra back in 2020, we once drove through a lovely suburb nestled in the escarpment, surrounded by forest. We soon discovered the towns charm, beauty, and rich heritage, but is shadowed by a tragic history; the mining disaster of 1902 where 96 people lost their lives. Within the town, is also the oldest weatherboard hotel in the Illawarra, established in the late 1800s.

The extracts above were a descriptor of the Mount Kembla Village Hotel (MKVH), and is my inspiration for this scene. In this scene, Josie is in a dreamlike version of her hometown in the Illawarra, searching for something. That something you won't know until the book is released, so I'll keep that secret. Her hometown is based on the quiet suburb of Mount Kembla, but with denser forests and more mysteriousness. In saying that, whenever I visit this place, I feel right at home. I love it there, and take the chance to visit whenever I can.

Is this the special moment?

What I experienced was warm, cold, colourful, unnerving, and beautiful all at the same time. Something almost the inverse of 'author's bleed'. A spill over between reality and fiction. Elements of their world spilling over into our own. Perhaps coincidentally or spiritually, it depends how you look at it.

So … what happened?

It was my dog's third birthday and we love to spoil him, so we decided to take him to lunch at MKVH. On arrival, we sat down in the courtyard at the back and settled, before I went to get some drinks. (We don't drink alcohol, so it's usually coke). When I stepped into the room, I approached the bar, and there was some music playing over the radio. But when I looked at the narrow, mirrored splashback behind the bar, the music suddenly changed. I didn't recognise the song at first, but then it hit me. It was Fly Me to the Moon; or at least a modernised, lesser known version of it, (and no, not the one from Squid Game - and yes, it was coincidentally a part of an R&B mash up). But the song was playing the moment I stepped up to the bar. It was surreal, uncanny even. It was as close to my narrative world as I could possibly get. Then a warmth sparked inside and I gave a half smile, and as I left the bar with the drinks, the music shifted away to the original R&B song. It was well timed. At that moment, I was in Josie's hometown, at her local pub, ordering a drink while listening to a song that shares a crucial element in her story. 

Once I sat back down, I handed my wife her coke. I just smiled. She gave me a strange look and turned back to the dog. I placed down my drink, then watched as a butterfly flew gracefully past my face, tap on my cheek and kept moving. My wife then told me the butterfly reminded her of Inversion. I said, I understood.

What is the significance of the butterfly?

I can't give much away, but they play a big role in Josie's narrative arch.

__________

What do you have in the works / planning?

I have a few short stories and novellas, and an unnamed novel.

Short Story

Echo Trail; A lone camper in the snowy pines experiences strange phenomenon

Hum; The hum persists. It taunts Mira to the point of insanity. Is it in her head, or is there something much bigger at play? 

Novella

Intrusia - Novella 1 of the Agent Young series (An inversion spin-off); Can you pass Intrusia's Game?

Prosperity; This is most distant from my usual themes. Set on the scout ship Sirius X, on the reaches of the Alpha Centuri. A psychological thriller about Captain Marissa Everly, dealing with the aftermath of an significant EMP titled 'Nova'.

Novel

Veil (Working Title)

__________

What's on repeat right now?

I have two songs on repeat. One is Hospital for Souls, Bring Me The Horizon. This song cuts deep, musically and emotionally. I can relate to it in a way. The song is about moving past immense struggle and embracing positive change and renewal. Though the song is focused on the lead singers addiction, it reminds me a lot of my times coping with bipolar depression; heavy hitting, deep, and lonely. 

The second is I Am Just One, EsOterica. Interesting song, with some heavier elements toward the end. I think the lyrics can be interpreted many ways, but the common consensus is that we are a slave to our own minds. Free your mind, the rest will follow.

4 | 11 | 25

Almost a month later. I am really not great with this, though I don't think I have spilt my time effectively. Writing has decreased, and pointless tinkering has increased.

I'll begin with Inversion. It's safe to say my manuscript is just below 120,000 words now, and well on it's way to completion. For context, it had been completed in part months ago, but the narrative has expanded into something … a little unique. I now have multiple angles, making significant impact on the overarching narrative. You're in for a real treat (I hope!). I am working my way through the 'Inversion' part of the narrative. It's a little wild and obscure, but also haunting in a sense. Somewhere between a waking state and an uncomfortable dream. 

Below is a small extract that captures this environment well:

At times, the environment flickered and tore, and digital artifacts jumped across her view. Josie took a deep breath, then glanced up into the forest canopy. Every fragment she had experienced—pain, joy or frustration— it was all deeply familiar. A lost history relived. Had she created a place where reality itself had inverted? Could she be reaching into something at the quantum level?
No. That couldn’t be possible. Then what is it? She looked downstream.
The white beech and coachwood stretched out over the water, their branches meeting the moss-covered rocks on the opposite side. The water defied gravity, floating upwards until it rippled metres above the ground. Behind her, the falls were cascading upwards, dissolving into a faded white sky. The world stuttered around her, glitching and faltering. The vine-covered trees vanished, replaced with a scatter of rocks. The falls inverted, settling above her like a mirrored world.
It's corrupting, she thought.

On to tinkering

I have spent a number of hours in my free time putting together what I am labelling as PyParty. Titled appropriately may I add (RaspberryPi and Python Programming) and as you may expect from its title, it knows how to entertain. It is a very bare bones thingy that consists of numerous coloured LEDs, a microphone, and an analogue-digital converter (ADC). It was great fun to make, and not the most pointless thing I have put together, but it is up there. Below is the snippet of code if you are looking for your Pi to host a party. Don't mind the comments, they are my references.

In Python

import smbus
from gpiozero import LED

from time import sleep

from random import choice

threshold = 30 #reactivity level

chip = smbus.SMBus(1) # 1 corresponds with default SDA/SCL (pin 3 and 5)

channel = 0x4b #Confirm channel with sudo i2cdetect -y 1

yled, yled2 = LED(14), LED(25) #LEDs at their corresponding position (GPIO14 and GPIO25)

rled, rled2 = LED(4), LED(24)

gled, gled2 = LED(17), LED(10)

bled, bled2 = LED(18), LED(23)

leds = [yled, yled2, rled, rled2, gled, gled2, bled, bled2] #lists all LEDs for ease of access

while True:

chip.write_byte(channel, 0x84) #RPi and ADC communication initiate

pickup_value = chip.read_byte(channel) #reading from microphone

if pickup_value >= threshold:

led = choice(leds)

led.on()

sleep(0.05)

led.off()

else:

None

And to see it in action, check out the video below! The song is Trash Classic, Frankie and the Witch Fingers. 😁

__________ 

Pineapple on pizza? 

Mixed bag. Lately, no, and now I'm not so sure it belongs. #teamnopineapple

What is something you regret learning about?

Regret is a strong word, but delving in astronomy. I went through a phase where I would not put down the books. I'd be watching content in the early hours, even so that I went out and bought myself a telescope. I fell in love with it very quickly. Late nights, taking notes. Really just observing. Very therapeutic. Generic, maybe, but I was mesmerised by the Orion Nebula in the constellation of - you guessed it - Orion, and located right on Orion's sword. In dark skies you can see it with the naked eye, a faint smudge among an endless black sea. And that is where my fear crept in. The cosmos is so vast … so incomprehensibly vast … it's terrifying. Not a fear of the unknown, but of impermanence. Knowing that we are just a tiny little dot, rotating around a giant ball of mostly hydrogen and helium, in our home, a solar system of 8 planets (sorry, Pluto). You know the saying 'It's astronomical', well, this is the origin. The distance between us and everything else is … astronomical. It's insane! The sun is around 150 million km (93 million miles) away from earth, which is 1 AU (Astronomical Unit). The nearest star (excluding our beautiful sun), Proxima Centauri is 4.24 light years away, so it has taken the light it emits 4.24 years to get here. And when you gaze at Proxima Centauri, you are observing how it looked over 4 years ago.
Cool, right?

Why is this a regret? It sounds fantastic.
What astronomy taught me was we have a timer, and that timer is unpredictable and embedded into us. It made me realise that death is inevitable. It would keep me up at night. I'd think about how one day, I'll be gone and trace memory of me will too fade eventually. My name will be spoken one last time at some point. Pictures of me may be digitised, but eventually trashed. A forgotten blip in time, having lived on this planet for what I thought was a long, long time but in reality, it was a drop in a cosmic ocean. What is it all for? I'd think. Why are we here? I knew the answer. A hot molten rock (Earth), orbiting a hot mass (our sun), in a sweet spot (habitable zone), cooled and eventually thawed and wonderfully, life emerged. At a baseline anyway. Eventually, I came around to accepting that we are on a journey. All of us, together. And we are special in our own right. Each of us unique, but much the same. We are born from the stuff of stars onto this great planet, we breath the same air, experience life, and eventually pass on, to rejoin the cosmos once more. I am not religious. I don't think I could be. But I appreciate it, and respect those who practice.  Though, more recently, I explored Buddhism which is incredibly beautiful. Understanding impermanence, that every moment we experience is temporary, reminded me of the how I once thought so deeply about the cosmos. And interdependence, that we are all interconnected. We are here because our mothers gave us life. We are here because a cell system's self-replication and variation which led to evolution. We are here due to the cause and conditions given by our sun that made earth habitable. Nothing exists independently. Now, this is a secular approach, so please take this as it is.

But in the end, the negative lagged behind the positive. I was stuck in a pessimistic loop for a while before I discovered reason. And it was such a special moment when I realised just how fragile we truly are, and just how much we should appreciate being here on this wonderful planet. So let's care of it, appreciate it, and each other.

__________

Well, I hope you enjoyed a little bit of science and philosophy. Until my next post. 🙌

October 2025

11 | 10 | 25

So, it has been a couple of weeks, and honestly, not much has changed and still very busy with writing. Inversion is certainly taking hold with the current manuscript sitting around 115k. Little improvement from last time I wrote, which is a shame. But it takes as long as it takes I suppose. But once I'm done, I'll jump onto a Novella I've had in the works for some time. Never stops with me 😐

Inversion draws a lot of inspiration from the area where I live - the Illawarra - particularly the suburbs around the edge, and on the escarpment. The forests, and notably those within Macquarie Pass National Park, are the lifeblood of certain sections of the Novel. The orchid, Sarcochilus Falcatus, is a gorgeous native Australian epiphyte and is a common element of the story. Though it's not endemic to the Illawarra, it can be found in some elevated parts of the escarpment.

Below is a small extract that captures their beauty:

Josie studied the hanging orchid. The blooms were small and pristine. Their white petals curved around the yellow centre, streaked with orange and red. The tip brushed faintly in a shade of violet.

She read the tag and looked at her aunt.
“Why does this one have my name?” She shouted at Elena from across the greenhouse.

Elena smiled and as she approached pulled off the gardening gloves.

“That was supposed to be a surprise. A gift from your uncle and me.”

“They’re pretty. Orchids, right?”

“Sarcochilus Falcatus.”

“What?” Josie’s brow creased.

“Orange blossom orchids.” Elena chuckled. “This particular one we collected from a red cedar tree.”
Elena's eyes sparkled. She continued.

“Orchids are very special to me. They remind me of the rainforest. They remind me of nature's resilience. Its delicate tension between chaos and order to survive. Just how important our planet is, and every ecosystem on it. The fragility of nature itself. So, that’s why I am so passionate. They are such beautiful things, but so fragile. Unpredictable. They thrive with chaos, but with the right order, something neutral emerges. You find silent, beautiful stillness. You find balance."
Elena grinned, pointing at the petals.

“White for purity and new beginnings.”

She cupped her hand around the bloom.

“Strength and resilience. Grace and elegance.”

She gently turned the hanging orchids, then pointed out the irregular spike, closer to the root.

“This one in particular, uniqueness and individuality. It’s a perfect fit for you, don’t you think?”

“I guess,” Josie  smiled. “Thanks, El. I love it.”

“You’re most welcome.” 

I guess that leads me to my next paragraph...

My wife and I recently purchased a few orchids of our own. Initially, my wife got some cymbidiums. Recently, we picked up a beallara. I had been on the lookout for a sarc. falcatus for some time. Eventually, I managed to source one. It is a younger sarc and is starting to spread across it's cork, but the blooms were gorgeous. I remember my wife and I debating about the smell. It was very strong. Something like vanilla. She disagreed. To her it was closer to honey (I think). It's exciting how perception of scent can very between individuals. (olfactory receptors ... am I right?)

(pictures below)

__________ 

Your go to chocolate? 

Usually plain. (Boring, I know) However, I do like hazelnut or coconut, depends on how I'm feeling.

What is your favourite prog album?

This is a really tough question and I am going to struggle to answer this. I think it really depends on what can be defined as 'prog'. There are a lot of djent / metalcore albums that are prog infused too, which I enjoy. I think my favourite at the moment (these change regularly) is Tsunami Sea by Spirit Box. A really unique album that packs punch. 

And if I was to select a more traditional approach to 'prog rock' or 'prog metal', it would likely go to Bloom by Caligula's Horse. A very beautiful album with incredible depth, following themes of loss, growth, and renewal. It helped me through some pretty bleak times if I'm honest. My top three tracks in no particular order; Marigold, Rust, Dragonfly

__________

Well, that pretty well wraps it up. Until my next post. 🙌

September 2025

26 | 09 | 25

Never thought I'd start a blog here, but what the hell. It's Friday and I'm in a good mood. 

I am about to embark on a journey. I wish I could say it was an exciting journey, but not quite. I work in Sydney and commute just under two hours to the southern end of the Illawarra. The trips are usually filled with music or writing, it depends on how I feel on the day. Today is the latter, and so it should be.

I have been putting off writing Inversion for a while now. I've found myself somewhat at a creative crossroads. Do I cram as much in as possible and end up with a mega novel? Do I tone it back and try find order within the current chaos? You can never truly get what you want. Another reason, which I have been told, is maybe I don't want to finish it. I have created this world that I am (very much) connected to. Finishing this novel means I have to say goodbye to something beautiful I have poured my personality into for over four years. It's not easy. Never is. Either way, this novel has to wrap up. I am one hundred and ten thousand words in, with a fair chunk to go, so we'll see where it leads me.

__________

This will be fun. Every entry, I'm going to be asked a few questions by an anonymous source (I promise it's not me - or is it 🤔). This is a little entertainment for you, the reader. So, here goes, I guess. 

What are you reading? 

Ah, I knew I'd ask myself that. I am currently reading Abandon by Blake Crouch. Though, not so much reading, more procrastinating. I find it hard to choose my hobbies at the moment. In between music, writing and reading.

A western supernatural is how I'd describe this book. In the 1800s, a town mysteriously disappears and in modern day, a unique group of people go to investigate. I'm about halfway though, and like a lot of Crouch's works, I quite enjoy them so looking forward to getting it together so I can read again. 

What three tracks are stuck on repeat?

Right now, Aozora by Karnivool takes the top spot. It's a new release, and they haven't released one album in over twelve years so they are always on my radar.

Uh, second. That goes to Hypnosis by Sleep Token. I don't know what it is about this song, it just hits different. It's the atmosphere? Let me just say that Sleep Token is not my thing and I don't quite understand the hype. It's just pop / R&B branded as Metal. Hypnosis is the closest thing to progressive metal they have ever made and that is the only song that I found was decent enough to qualify to make my playlist #notsorry

Third is Unravelling by Muse. I am not the biggest fan of Muse, if I'm honest. Though I do like the Album Absolution. However, Unravelling hits hard. I didn't think Muse could get that heavy, and the mix with synth is incredible.

It's a Friday, so what are your weekend plans?

Honestly, I'm not sure. It's hard to keep up these days. I'll probably walk out to the falls early tomorrow morning, might see if I can spot any orchids. I've been hanging out to see them for quite some time. (How long is a year again? It has really been that long). Sunday, my wife and I will go to lunch with our Japanese Spitz at the Mount Kembla Village Hotel. Lovely spot, and the food is beautiful. 😋 Other than that, try get some writing done, but will that happen? Doubt.

__________

Well, that pretty well wraps it up. Until my next post. I'll leave you with a little joke I wrote, pulled from Inversion. 

“I’m telling you, Joel. She's apeshit insane.”

“That’s bananas.”