The novels:

I am the Local Atheist

• Written over a period of 5 years in between finishing a Bachelor of Music in Composition, writing and performing in the Heavy Progressive Epic Rock Metal band Innominado, disbanding the Heavy Progressive Epic Rock Metal band Innominado, various part-time jobs including working at The Salvation Army Men's Hostel in Invercargill and stints at meat processing plants, completing a Teacher's Diploma, and returning to Gisborne to pursue teaching as a career, I am the Local Atheist is the story of a young man ('New-Adult' as some have termed the late teens/early twenties) in search of himself again and trying to find his place in a world that had once loved him, only to suddenly disown him, leaving him with little more than an alcoholic mother, drug dealing flatmates, and video games to keep him company.

 

• More than just a "first novel", this is an attempt to involve the reader in character discussions and how those conversations impact on character actions; it is just as much a character study as it is a contemplation on the meaning of egoism and its effect on the Christian spirit.
  

Auralye on a Harp

• What started out as a cliché Teacher/student story, soon developed into a study about relationships, obsessions, and misunderstandings that explore males and females under stress in a high school environment. Expanded into novel length, the narrative takes shape around Patrick Almont's desire to see his "perfect woman" in one of his students only to be deceived and confused by all that goes on around that student, suspecting her to be caught up in potential drug dealing within his own classroom. Other events begin to shatter his obsessive delusions until finally he learns that he simply can't judge people solely on how they look or act without some knowledge of their past to inform and empathise with.

 

• This second novel uses economy of writing to get to the point and bring to the fore many of the delusions males live with.

The music:

It's all about the songs.

• Mostly. From the start, music was a way to put words to images that often conjured in my mind. The music developed to the point where I was no longer just trying to express ideas or thoughts into words, but was searching for musical expressions as well - more often than not, of musical paths that I had not trodden previously. Even when you listen to a great artist like Mozart, if you listen to enough you can start hearing the same phrases and cadences repeating themselves (Queen of the Night Aria/Rondo from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik) - it seems inevitable when you are composing to completion on a regular basis. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to pursue orchestral composition as a way of developing ideas alongside the rock songs that took me down a completely different path.

 

• But mostly, it's about the songs. I quite like compartmentalising music in terms of its structure, rearranging songs out of their standard verse/chorus/verse/chorus tradition.

 

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