It's been more than a decade since author Craig Silvey released his much-loved book Jasper Jones - but he has been busy in that time.
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Jasper Jones hit the shelves in 2009 and quickly became a favourite with critics and readers, evoking comparisons to the legendary To Kill a Mockingbird.
It's taken him 11 years to release his next book, Honeybee, in part because he was busy with the juggernaut of Jasper Jones.
"I had the great fortune of Jasper Jones having quite a phenomenal trajectory so I was able to get that book right around the world for a couple of years," Silvey said.
"The opportunity came up in 2015 to write the film adaptation of Jasper Jones and I leapt on that and adored the experience. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life."
That led to him spending a few more years working on film scripts, before getting back to working on what would become Honeybee.
But there was another novel he started before moving to the Jasper Jones film, one which is sitting at home unfinished.
"It's probably close to around 400 pages, so I got a fair way through it," Silvey said.
"It's a piece of historical fiction and I'm nothing if not relentlessly inquisitive. I just lost myself in the research a lot of the time and it affected my central narrative threads a little bit and I lost the scope of it."
He hasn't given up hope that it might still see the light of day, either as a novel or adapted into a TV series but Silvey admits it can be "pretty dispiriting" to get that far into a book only to give it up.
"The bravest calls you can make are accepting failure," he says.
"As a novelist you fail every day but you fail on your own. You nurse a lot of doubts and you go down a lot of dead ends and there's a lot of errors in your trials. Accepting that with some humility is part of the process of being a novelist."
His new book, Honeybee, is a tale about 14-year-old Sam Watson, who is dealing not only with a troubled mother and a domineering stepfather but also questions about his own identity.
One night, he decides to end it all by jumping off a bridge but is stopped by an old man named Vic - perhaps with the same idea himself - who is smoking what is intended to be his last cigarette.
They form an unlikely friendship, one that ends up helping both of them.
The book has been in the top 10 bestsellers since it was released in September, a sign that there were plenty of people waiting for it.
But Silvey said he wasn't feeling any pressure from those awaiting a follow-up to Jasper Jones.
"I'm only really appreciating the pressure now that I'm being asked about it," he said.
"When I'm at the desk, when I'm really thinking about a novel, in all honesty the furthest thing from my mind are notions of audience or publishing.
"All I'm really trying to focus on is the story itself and the characters inside it. Anything else disrupts the process and intrudes on your creative process. You try to forget you're a novelist with a career and expectations and there is an audience waiting."
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Glen Humphries
I'm an award-winning senior journalist with the Illawarra Mercury and have well over two decades' worth of experience in newspapers. I cover the three local councils in the Illawarra for the Mercury, state and federal politics, as well as writing for the TV guide. If I'm not writing, I'm reading.
I'm an award-winning senior journalist with the Illawarra Mercury and have well over two decades' worth of experience in newspapers. I cover the three local councils in the Illawarra for the Mercury, state and federal politics, as well as writing for the TV guide. If I'm not writing, I'm reading.
