First Person Shooter is the novel I was meant to write. It tells the story of Jayden, a 15-year-old boy who lives on the edge of a small country town in the grip of bikies and ice. He stutters, he’s bullied at school, he has a .22 rifle under his bed. Due to be published in early 2016, through MidnightSun Publishing.

It was the summer of getting excluded from school, of seeing a shrink, of guns and ammo. We thought the badness would come striding toward us from the green-tinged darkness of The Pines. We never thought it would come from where it did. But from the time I saw Pete with Shannon, in the backyard, I knew there was only one way to stop him.

Through landscapes of regret, fear and redemption, the stories in The Colour of Kerosene will take you on journeys into the wilderness of Australian life. Here you will find men and women struggling to make sense of their place in the world. In ‘The Dress’, a woman tries to ruin her rival with an act steeped in racism. In ‘Conditional Release’, a welfare worker is asked to spy on a colleague. And in the award-winning title story, a taxi driver accepts a fare he knows he shouldn’t:

‘They headed east, the nude hills of the Geraldton plains, stripped of their trees a century before, leaning into them on both sides as the car climbed into the marginal country. Behind him, Luke heard the gurgle of fluid sluicing out of a bladder and into a cup, smelt the sweet stink of cheap wine. It occurred to him that it was not too late to turn back.’

The Last Protector unlocks primary historical material of the most revelatory and intriguing kind — the correspondence files of the South Australian Aborigines Department. This work presents a compelling case that the South Australian Government acted illegally in taking Aboriginal children from their parents between 1939 and 1953.

‘She’s only small girl. I am lonely without her, she’s in the home.’