Author Interview

Literary Titan

Real Aussies:
John’s Heartbreak

Date: 4th May, 2024
URL: Go to interview

Real Aussies: John’s Heartbreak follows a man struggling with family drama and his identity, who finds himself questioning his life choices and their impact on who he is now. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

There are plenty of brilliant authors out there, each exploring their own genre, offering their own lens. But something’s always struck me: as readers, we usually watch a story unfold. Whether it’s first or third person, there’s still a barrier — you’re seeing the world through someone else.

My work shifts that. I don’t want you watching. I want you inside it. I want you experiencing everything as if it were your life. No inner monologue distractions. No cinematic distance. Just you, immersed. That’s the goal — that the life unfolding on the page feels indistinguishable from your own.

Where many authors focus on plot, I focus on consequence. Cause and effect. The way people stay stuck in self-inflicted nightmares because it’s all they know. My job is to make it real. That’s why it hits hard. It’s confronting. And yes, it’s designed to be. Not for shock — but to surface what’s buried. I write to draw out the emotional junk most people never look at.

Call me a literary exorcist, if you like. My job isn’t to write pretty metaphors that need decoding — that’s useless to someone having a breakdown at 3 AM. My job is to make a reader feel, viscerally, so they process. It’s therapy without the label. Even Beatrice — when she speaks to John, she’s really speaking to the reader. “Good to see you.” That’s intentional.

The inspiration wasn’t John. It was the reader. My intention was always to unearth something in them — to bring them face-to-face with the parts of themselves they’ve ignored. That’s why the novel has a warning up front, why the blurb literally tells you to have tissues ready. It’s not a story about you… until it is.

That’s also why the novel ends with a poem. By the final page, I shift focus directly back onto the reader. Verse-by-verse, I hold up the mirror. You realise it was never about John. It was always about you. The choices you’ve made. The patterns you repeat. But there’s solace in that. You get to use John’s story as a scaffold — a safe space — to unravel what’s unresolved in your own story.

So far, every review echoes the same thing: “It lingers.” “It hit me harder than I expected.” It’s not a light read, by design. If you’re lying to yourself, this book won’t let you. It’ll show you — cracked mirror and all.

I didn’t write this to win awards. I wrote it for the people who didn’t know they needed it. And the most unexpected part? The reviews don’t reflect me or the book. They reflect the readers themselves. You can watch the healing (or resistance) play out in the reviews. One star, five stars — it’s not about John at all. That’s the art.

Is there anything about John that came from you or your life experiences?

Absolutely — but it’s not about facts, it’s about feeling. Every emotion in the novel is real. I don’t want readers to witness John’s feelings or mine — I want them to sit inside their own. That’s the point. I’ve spent years deconstructing emotion — peeling away the polite language and self-protective narratives we use — until I could write it raw, in its unfiltered form. That rawness is what bleeds through John.

Love, hate, despair, anxiety, disbelief, torture, horror, hope, humour — it’s all there. These aren’t just themes. They’re mine. I’ve lived them in one form or another, and instead of dressing them up in literary robes, I hand them to the reader as they are: messy, confusing, overwhelming. That’s what makes the novel so confronting.

My writing isn’t about literary awards or clever turns of phrase. It’s about impact. I write for people who don’t usually read. People who’ve been through real pain. People who are emotionally constipated and don’t even know it. That’s my audience. That’s who I care about reaching. My job is to make sure the work remains readable in 20 years — 50 years. That means: no sugarcoating. Just as I’ve never had the luxury of a sugarcoated life, as someone who grew up autistic, dyslexic, and an outcast — this work had to be just as honest.

Setting the novel in the past wasn’t just for the killer music (although — quote me — it is the best). I wanted to lull the reader into a false sense of nostalgia. That dream-state safety net. Then — rip — pull them deep into emotional terrain they weren’t expecting. That’s how real healing begins. When you’re least prepared.

The Real Aussies series isn’t fiction in the traditional sense. These are my emotional truths, fictionalised just enough to get under your skin. I make them yours. That’s the goal.

What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?

If you’re Australian, you’ll know the complexity of Australian men. From the outside, we’re seen as fun-loving, relaxed, and some of the friendliest people in the world. But scratch the surface, and you’ll find men are often expected to fit one of two emotional lanes: the hard-working provider, or the larrikin who cracks jokes over beers to mask the pain.

That’s the irony of Australia. Real emotional depth is often hidden. Having any feelings outside the intimacy of your bedroom — with your wife, your child, or your closest mate — is quietly forbidden. For me, it was time to show who the Australian man really is. Setting the story in the past allowed me to amplify that unspoken, strictly enforced social code: once you’re boxed in, you’re rarely reclassified. This limits potential — and creates internal chaos when your truth no longer fits the label.

Another core theme is beauty in pain. We don’t always reflect on the quiet glimmers in our darkest moments — the friend who helped, the stranger who saw us. Life can feel like one storm after another, but if we slow down and look closely, we’ll often find there was always a guardrail. Even in disaster, there’s something beautiful — that’s what carries us forward. This was true for John. For Chris. For Stew. For all of them, their “Refuge” was a club full of misfits — a symbol of chosen family in a world that rejected them.

I also wanted to preserve and spotlight community. Specifically, the LGBTQ+ community in Sydney during the 70s and 80s. It really was as intense as I depicted. The violence, the tension, the desperate need for a safe space — it was all real. Today, as society becomes more tolerant, we risk forgetting what community used to mean. I wanted this novel to capture that moment in time, so we remember how people found belonging through pain.

Finally, I wanted to confront the reader with the consequences of accumulated choice. The novel stretches through John’s twenties, showing how each decision either aligns him — or derails him. Life doesn’t punish. It doesn’t reward. It just stacks up your choices until the result is undeniable. You get what you build. If you live for others, lie to yourself, or compromise your truth — that stack eventually collapses. The novel reminds us: we’re born alone, we die alone. Everything in the middle is experience — but how we carry it determines who we become.

Is this the first book in the series? If so, when is the next book coming out, and what can your fans expect in the next story?

Yes, this is the first novel in the Real Aussies series — and also the first novel I’ve ever written. Quite the mountain, especially when you’re someone who reads words wrong, flips similar-sounding ones in your head and constantly fights to stay on the line. It’s exhausting. But I persisted. Because I had to.

The next novel is Peter’s Nightmare. If John’s Heartbreak was about how our choices align or unravel over time, then Peter’s Nightmare is about when you never had a choice at all. When your identity isn’t something you built — but something constructed for you through trauma, projection, and other people’s pain.

It explores what happens when the lessons you’re forced to carry don’t belong to you — childhood burdens, family shame, expectations you never agreed to. It’s a story about how we unconsciously repeat what we hated. How we become the bully, even when all we ever wanted was kindness. Peter’s story doesn’t hold back. It goes into territory most people avoid.

The schoolyard bully who wrecked you? He was likely wrecked too. This novel digs into that truth — that intergenerational cycles of pain can be broken, but not if we stay in victimhood. Not if we keep pretending we’re not part of the problem.

You’ll finally understand who Peter really was in John’s story. What shaped him. Why he was the way he was. And by the end of it, just like with John, you’ll be holding a mirror — not to Peter, but to yourself.

This is a novel about the parts of life we don’t speak of. The moments society can’t language properly. Peter’s Nightmare will give readers that language. And with that, maybe the power to finally change.

I’m aiming to release Peter’s Nightmare in early 2026. I’ve got a few other projects on the go that need to clear first — it’s a bit of a juggling act (especially when you’re navigating it all with disability compensation!) — but hey, that’s life. 🙂

Literary Titan Book Award

Real Aussies: John’s Heartbreak receives Literary Titan Silver Book Award for skillful prose, engaging narrative, and compelling real and imagined characters. Stand out for innovative storytelling and insightful exploration of truth and fiction.