Towradgi's Geoff Medlyn knew he had to start taking his writing more seriously when he found himself writing on the job - and on the jobs themselves.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
A bricklayer by trade, Medlyn says he'd be on a site, working with the cement and the trowel when he'd be hit with an idea.
He'd pull the pencil from behind his ear or out of his pocket and jot down his thoughts - on the building he was working on.
"I was working with a Pommy bloke for quite a few years," Medlyn says.
"I used to get ideas and we'd be bricking up a veneer house, putting brick walls up the timber walls.
"I'd have my pencil out and I'd be thinking of something and I'd write notes on the wooden frame. My mate would say 'Look, you're writing a book on the frames'.
"That was in the early '80s; that's when I realised I wasn't going to get anywhere by writing notes on the frames of brick veneer houses. That was when I got more serious about it."
And he bought some index cards to carry with him on jobs in case inspiration struck.
Medlyn has published his first book, Blood Thicker Than Water. It's a hybrid of sorts - part supernatural tale, part crime fiction story.
He'd been interested in ghost stories for years, since sitting with his grandparents and listening to them tell spooky tales. So it was a no-brainer that Blood Thicker Than Water would have a supernatural element - but it took a while for the crime component to surface.
"Years ago, I'd never really been interested in crime detective fiction but I got into reading Sherlock Holmes and then Agatha Christie," he says.
I thought there's so many supernatural stories around there, they've been popular since day one and there's so much crime detective fiction, I thought of combining them.
- Geoff Medlyn on his first book Blood Thicker Than Water.
"I thought there's so many supernatural stories around there, they've been popular since day one and there's so much crime detective fiction, I thought of combining them. Like a crossover from the supernatural fiction to crime fiction novel.
"What I did was I got the characters from this old ghost story and I combined it into crime fiction.
"I'm a gardener so you get a hybrid, which is two different plants combined together. That's what I aimed with this book, just like a hybrid combining the two genres."
Medlyn says he's always been creative - even writing stories when he was a kid.
As an adult he'd come up with an idea and start work on it, only to find himself distracted when a new idea surfaced.
That resulted in him having a number of different stories on the go, jumping from one to the other.
One of the things that defines an author is not so much the ability to start a book, but the ability to finish it.
That's what Medlyn realised; if he was going to finish any of these stories, he had to focus on one of them and see it right through to the end.
"I really like it because you're in a different world with fiction," he says.
"I've got another few going - I think about eight altogether. I thought I had to make a decision otherwise I'm never going to finish any of them if I keep on mucking around trying to work on all of them at the same time.
"So I picked out four that I thought were the best, with this one as the first."
Now that he's focusing on one story at a time and getting it finished, Medlyn has discovered one of the difficulties of writing - simply trying to find the time to do it.
So often real life tends to get in the way; even when you try to get serious.
"I'd go to the club of a night and then work during the day - if we had a few days off from work I'd get into the writing but that was very patchy," he says.
"I have realised you can't do it that way. Today, I've got a big veggie garden here and with a 10-year-old son, there's a lot of running around.
"Some writers say they start writing at eight in the morning and write six hours a day. To try and get into a routine like that is very difficult for me."
With the first book under his belt, Medlyn is already working on the next one.
It's a novel inspired by the true-life story of a reformed alcoholic he knew as a teen and reconnected with years later.
"I bumped into him at The Fraternity Club and he told me how he gave up the grog and how he had a hard life," Medlyn says.
"Then I saw him again and he knew I did a bit of writing. He said, 'you should write a book about me'.
"We got him over of a Saturday morning for four Saturdays and we sat down with the old cassette player and he told me his life story with alcoholism."
Geoff Medlyn's Blood Thicker Than Water is available at Society City bookstore, 274 Crown Street, Wollongong. Copies can also be purchased via mail order - just email him at gmedlyn@hotkey.net.au.
We depend on subscription revenue to support our journalism. If you are able, please subscribe here. If you are already a subscriber, thank you for your support.