The Hitchhiker is getting a print release!

This has been in the works for a while, but I’m stoked to confirm that my Audible Original The Hitchhiker, maybe the biggest hit of my career (one month at #1 last year), will be published in print by HarperCollins in August 2024.

It’s no secret that I’ve been hoping this would happen for a while, especially given how many people have asked about it. I’m extremely proud of The Hitchhiker and given how closely linked it is to The Caretaker, I’ve always felt it deserves a spot on shelves between that book and The Inheritance (especially as it’s in many ways a prequel to the former and a sequel to the latter).

With High-Rise not due out until 2025, it also made a lot of sense to release it as my adult novel for next year – although this puts me in the very strange and lucky position of potentially having four releases next year, with Andromache Between Worlds out in February, Hitchhiker sequel The Lodger hitting Audible in April, The Lecter Variations tentatively scheduled for some time mid-year, and then The Hitchhiker’s print edition in August. Which is absolutely wild, but you will not hear me complaining.

High Rise Update

As anyone who follows me on Instagram will know, I’ve been buried in High-Rise this past month and am loving it. More than anything I’ve written before this has been a process of discovery – I started without any real plan and haven’t stopped since.

There’s always a recency bias to anything you write – we tend to believe the book we’re in the midst of is our best yet. Time will tell if that’s true of High-Rise but for what it’s worth this feels special. In stakes and urgency and action it’s a return to The Hunted’s mode of high octane but contained storytelling (one setting, one night, compromised heroes against impossible odds) but I think I’ve also factored in lessons I learned on The Hitchhiker and The Caretaker – looking for key moments to slow things down to build tension and character.

As it stands I’m maybe about halfway through. I do not know how this book is going to end. I’m only vaguely sure of what happens next. But based on what I have so far, I can’t wait to find out. 

Music Talks Interview

A little while ago I was invited to be a guest on Terry Smith’s Music Talks podcast. Terry and I were put in touch by Jesse Jackson, whose Set Lusting Bruce I’ve appeared on more times than I’m confident in counting.

The premise of Terry’s show seems simple – guests pick a song for every decade they’ve been alive, and through explaining their choices effectively tell the story of their life.

What I wasn’t prepared for was how in depth and emotional this would get, how strangely cathartic it was to talk about tracks that, to one degree or another, encapsulate different chapters of my 32 years. This is easily one of my favourite interviews I’ve ever done, and while listening back I was a bit thrown by how raw and honest it is at times, it was a fantastic chat that I loved getting to do. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts, or directly here.

Continuity Blog

Anyone who follows my books will know that they all tend to interconnect and intersect in terms of characters and plot points, and this has especially come into focus with the writing of High-Rise, which I’m trying to make standalone while building on and paying off plot points from several other stories. Naturally this is a tricky balacing act and I wrote a blog to explore how I’ve tried to handle that. Check it out here!

November Events

For a month in which I didn’t have any new books out, November was a big one for events and each was a complete blast in different ways.

Early in the month I flew up to Sydney for my first ever BAD Crime Writer’s Festival, something I’ve been itching to be a part of since The Hunted came out (and I would have been if not for something else that happened in 2020, can’t remember the specifics now).

No such barriers this year. I flew up for the last couple of days of the festival, which did leave me with a pretty massive sense of missing out after hearing how great the parties had been the previous few nights. But that was more than made up for after meeting heaps of authors I’ve admired from afar and even getting to be on a panel with a few of them – plus plenty of reuniting with good mates. There were lots of laughs, insights and beers after the festival was wrapped. I left completely exhilarated and grateful for this wild career I’ve managed to bag for myself and the people I get to share it with.

I believe the recording of our session will be online at some point, so stay tuned for that.

Then a couple of weeks later I was off to Ballarat for a library event at the brilliant Mechanic’s Institute, a building literally overflowing with history. Lexie Jeuniewic kept me on my toes with some insightful questions and there was some terrific audience discussion afterwards – I could not have felt more welcome and will be back in a heartbeat if they’ll have me.

This was followed two nights later by a Books in Bars Christmas Special hosted by Dymocks Knox. If BAD hadn’t been enough of a joyous author party, then this night gave me another round of great chats with great people with plenty of Hunteds, Inheritances and Caretakers sent off signed to new homes.

And finally it was a total honour to launch Jack Heath’s new book Kill Your Husbands – easily one of the best Aussie crime novels of the year and one that pulled me out of a grim reading slump. The launch, at Purple Emerald in Northcote, was a fantastic night and a great way to celebrate a great book.

Surprise Words and Nerds Appearance!

I love chatting with Dani on Words and Nerds with every new book release, and so it was a lovely surprise to be asked to pop in as a surprise guest for her NaNoWriMo series – joined by none other than rockstar YA author Holden Sheppard. I’ve spoiled the surprise now, but we covered a lot of ground and had a great chat. Check it out here!

Recommendations

I want to kick off with a caveat – the first two of my recommendations this month are probably only worth looking at if you’re already a fan of, or at least familiar with, the works they’re based on/continuing. But given they’re properties that can at times be a little contentious, I think both of these are seriously interesting, if never quite excellent.

First up; Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. To contextualise this, there was a time in my life where I loved Scott Pilgrim Vs The World. As in, watched it near weekly and could quote just about the whole thing. That time, predictably enough, was when I was nineteen and you can imagine just how perfectly that film grafted on to my sensibilities/concerns.

I still think it’s a great movie, but I’m in my thirties now and it doesn’t speak to me on the same level. I don’t think I’ve watched it in about a decade. Still, when Takes Off dropped on Netflix I pressed play with an unexpected rush of nostalgia. And was pretty surprised by what followed.

The show’s been out a while now so I THINK its big innovation is pretty public knowledge for anyone who cares. But in case you’ve missed it I’ll play coy with spoilers and just say that it’s a clever subversion of the original film/comics, coming at the story and characters from a new and more adult angle. It’s also worth noting that for my money at least, the series isn’t as sharp or as funny as the movie and I don’t think anyone will be quoting it extensively years from now or even, like, now. But if you had any connection with the film at any point then it’s worth a look.

The next recommendation I make with even more caution. As a kid I adored Christopher Paolini’s Eragon novels – at least until it was pointed out to me that they are beat for beat the plot of the Star Wars trilogy. This realisation left me feeling kind of betrayed and I’ve never quite been able to shake the resultant contempt I felt towards them.

But contempt and nostalgia aren’t mutually exclusive and it was the second that won out when Paolini announced Murtagh, a new spin off book centred on a fan favourite character. I bought it with mild trepidation but I was curious to see how Paolini has developed as a writer (he famously wrote the first book at fifteen) and how he picks up a somewhat adolescent story as an older man.

Honestly, pretty damn well. Murtagh has problems – it’s too long and the first half is basically a series of video game style fetch quests – but it’s also well written and thoughtful with some smart character choices. If you don’t have any attachment to the Paolini novels then I would not go near it, but Paolini has very cleverly taken what was at its core a teenage boy power fantasy and pivoted into something closer to an intimate, morally ambiguous character study.

And finally, because maybe I feel like I have to somewhat reclaim some esteem after those two, I caught The Royal Hotel the other night and really liked it. Maybe obviously, given its parallels to The Hunted in theme and setting. But The Royal Hotel is a quieter, slow-burn story that is more about the threat of violence in an isolated location than the violence itself. It’s an effective, punchy movie that’s well worth checking out.