The Story

I remember a few years ago, when Cassandra came home from school and wandered into my room. I was engrossed, for some reason, in my homework, and didn't actually look up when she entered. Not really caring, she sat down on my bed and paused a few moments before speaking.
"Sebastian, are we rich?" she asked me.
I sighed and looked up from my work. It was so amazingly naive of her to simply have no real concept of this.
"No, we just vote Liberal because we feel bad for the poor bastards in the tax brackets above us," I replied.
She was young enough at this point that she didn't actually get my joke, and just sort of stared at me for a while before leaving the room. When she came back two hours later, she had an enormous grin on her face.
"I liked your joke," she said, smiling.

Inconvenient Things is my first (but hopefully not last) novel. It is, I suppose, a piece of transgressive fiction (read: has a generally unlikeable protagonist, contains unpleasantness, and shows a fairly pessimistic view of people) with heavy helpings of satire and black humour. Of course, the latter depends solely on the reader. I wouldn't really try to make it as a comedy... I just personally find the concept morbidly funny.

The novel is written in a journal format, as written over the course of the final three months of the year 2000 by an intelligent, spoilt brat called Sebastian James Preiss. It chronicles his interactions with friends and strangers, particularly a girl named Keira, his sister Cassandra and his uncle Jack.

The Book

The product page has the hard-cover edition of the novel available for order, along with a preview of the first dozen odd pages of the book. A paperback is in the works now.

Trivia and Comments

I'm not an author who believes that every creative work should stand alone, without commentary by the creator. Sure, some work better without anything resembling a behind-the-scenes thing. Same with films - not everyone wants to know just how certain effects in epic films were achieved. However, some people love this sort of thing... myself included. For this reason, my comments and thoughts on Inconvenient Things are hidden behind a link. The contents should be relatively spoiler-free... but I still don't recommend it if you haven't read the book. Click here if you're still interested.

Thanks

A stupid amount of time and effort goes into writing a novel, and a large part of it's really only possible when you have support and encouragement from people around you. Heh. Bet you've read shit like that a thousand times from pretty much every author ever published, right? Well, there's a reason for that.

For support through the writing process and screaming at me over the worst of the grammattical errors plus speeling mistakes... and for liberating the manuscript of almost all of these before it hit print, I'm hugely greatful to both Louise Bennett and Cassie Murphy.

Louise also did the typesetting on the hardcover edition - something that, I'm sure, she'll think carefully about before saying yes to in the future. :-)

For genuine love of what I write and for laughing at Sebastian with me - my sister Anna and my friend Alex Mustakov.

For making the last few years cool... Jay Mitra and The Bad Man.

For being hands-down one of the most interesting and unique people I've ever met, my brother Leigh.

For believing in me and putting his money where his mouth is - David Murdoch.

For all manner of things, even totally unrelated to writing... Louise again. Somehow, a "shared" credit didn't quite seem right.

And finally... to everyone I've hoisted beers with, watched movies with, played computer games with, driven insane, gone to clubs with, lived with, talked to, walked around Sydney with, or just listened to casually on a train carriage.