About
Juvenilia
I don’t know when I decided I wanted be a writer but I always wrote. My first published poem was in the Hooters fan club newsletter when I was twelve. (This was the band, not the restaurant). It was an ode to their drummer and it started like this: David, Davey, Dave, Our Golden Boy so young and brave … At my new school I started writing my friend’s essays for them. I charged $5-$10 depending on my level of exertion. I also wrote my first Dear John letter to a boy I met on a Christian camp. But most of my writing from this period is in a notebook fixed between the covers of a potboiler called ‘The Bastard’. The Bastard was passed between friends and is rife with code, filth, unflattering sketches of teachers and free advice on toxic crushes (You’re much to good for X. He is a bastard! Plus he has girl hands.) After school I tried to go to University but I was a social retard at a tertiary level – couldn’t even speak in class. After much mooching I got a job in a record store, and got down to the business of ‘livin’.