Australian Gothic is my fourth novel, and also happens to be my most unique in a number of different ways. Primarily the biggest difference between this work and my other novels is the writing process itself.
Unlike my other novels, Australian Gothic was mostly handwritten with black pen in a notebook – not typed until the draft was complete. This was certainly an interesting way to do things. Normally I would type up chapters on a laptop, or more often punch out some writing in the notes app on my phone. Handwriting meant the process slowed down considerably, but also meant I could dive deeper into the sentence by sentence structure, and produce prose more akin to the vision I had for the work.
It also meant that I’d essentially write everything twice – once by hand then a second time typed – which caught a lot of errors and made the editing process much simpler. It should be said too, that there is something visceral and deeply personal about using your hands to create; ink smeared on my palm (I’m left-handed so that happens a lot), and sentence scraps thrown onto A5 pages that would later expound into greater ideas.
At around 50k words, Australian Gothic isn’t the longest novel in the world, and in all it took me three months to complete the first hand-written draft, a far shorter timeframe than my previous novels (some which took years to finish). Yet it is a novel that can be read multiple times; without delving into spoilers, there are things a reader might miss on a first pass, and a second read-through could garner more meaning. That is my hope, at least. As you read it, perhaps you might conjure the image of an unstable thirty-six year old man scribbling away in a notebook like his life depended on it. I’ve had a very difficult year mentally. This book is a little piece of my soul, out there in the world, and in more ways than one, helped me through a period of emotional growth that is only now showing green shoots. I do hope when Australian Gothic is released that people enjoy it, and more importantly, that it packs the philosophical punch I set out to share.
P.S.Clinen 