Gary Lonesborough remembers first holding a book, aged six. He's always considered them really cool.
The Yuin man from Bega in NSW credits his passion for writing to his primary school teachers.
When he was in grade three, a Canadian exchange teacher made his class write scary stories for Halloween.
"I wrote a story about me and my friends going on a school camp and we were all the main characters and they all died in horrible ways because we were chased by monsters," Mr Lonesborough told AAP.
His teacher enjoyed the story so much young Gary was asked to read it aloud in front of the class.
"I remember thinking that my writing can make people feel things and make people laugh," he said.
At the end of grade six his teacher wrote each student a personalised Christmas card.
"Inside of my one she wrote to send her a copy of my first novel," Mr Lonesborough said.
"I was 12 years old when I got that message and the support of my teachers propelled me to pursue creative writing."
Mr Lonesborough's debut young adult novel The Boy From The Mish published in 2021.
His second book, We Didn't Think It Through, launched this week.
It was inspired by his work in juvenile justice in western Sydney.
"I was really surprised and shocked by how many Aboriginal boys were actually incarcerated," he said.
"It was almost 50 per cent at one point and there were a lot of recurring themes with all these boys."
Many of the children at the juvenile detention centre were from broken homes or care, had poor mental heath or learning difficulties and were disengaged from school.
"In my role working with these boys I was limited in terms of the support I could actually provide them," Mr Lonesborough said.
"I wanted to write this book to give a voice to those kids because I felt really inspired by them and their resilience."
Mr Lonesborough said the stories of the boys he worked with in detention were often unheard and inspired a character in the book called Jamie.
"Once I let Jamie take the lead in where the story was going it morphed into this story about reconnecting with family, culture and finding an artistic channel to express and understand your emotions," he said.
The main message Mr Lonesborough wanted to portray in We Didn't Think It Through was of hope and resilience.
"I say the word 'resilience' a lot but that is the main driver of the story, and to show there is always a way to get through," he said.
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