In 2020, Wollongbar resident Jake Avila won the prestigious Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize for Best Unpublished Manuscript. Earlier this month his now published novel was released internationally. Jake shared his writing journey from an English teacher at Woodlawn to a novelist with Sara Browne.

I grew up in Sydney. Eastwood and Glebe were my stomping grounds but I moved to the Northern Rivers in '94. We were tree-changers. We had lots of dreams about a permaculture lifestyle in the Border Ranges.

We were on the farm for 13 years and we really loved it but we couldn’t really ever make a living out there. During that period, I went back to university. I was writing but I was struggling to get a novel out, I started doing freelance journalism for publications like the Big Issue, Inside Sport and Alpha but the income was patchy. Eventually, I surrendered and did a Dip Ed at Southern Cross.

My plan was just to be a casual teacher but I soon realised I enjoyed it so I worked my way up and became a full-time English teacher. I got my first permanent position at Woodlawn. I did teach at other schools around the traps. I was at Woodlawn for about ten years and became Head of English.

I guess I was good at articulating what the students needed to do, breaking down difficult concepts and hopefully making it more palatable. I was also fairly approachable. You always have kids who don’t like you but I think most of them liked me. The kids were great for the most part. They were usually the best part of the job.

It's such a full-on job, quite exhausting, so writing was off the radar. It was always there on the back of my mind. It usually reared its head in the last week of the long holidays and I’d think yeah I should pull that book out.

I wrote a couple of novels that weren’t very good back in my journalism period but I had the idea for the book that’s now published. I wrote half a dozen pages just of what was in my mind and that’s what sat on the hard drive and that’s what I would think about. I knew there was a story there, I just had to find the time to write it.

I had some early interest back then from some agents for the first two novels, it got me quite excited, one was a big agent in New York who said ‘send me the manuscript express post.’ So that was really exciting but it just wasn’t ready. I could write but I hadn’t learned how to string a whole novel together. The other novel was a vampire bikie story set on the Gold Coast. It was just a lot of fun really, a detective romp. They weren’t particularly commercial. I knew that this story that was in the back of my mind had some potential.

When I first started the rejections were painful but I was optimistic. When I finally wrote Cave Diver – end of 2015 was the first draft and I started trying to sell it in 2017 – those rejections were particularly painful because I was convinced it was a much stronger story and I felt like it was more commercially viable. I just couldn’t understand - how come I got this interest in much lesser books ten years before and now nothing? I think I’ve understood now that the world has rolled on and that fiction has become a harder sell.

I wasn’t even getting rejections I was just getting ignored. You spend hours crafting a tailored letter to an agent or a publisher and get nothing. It was pretty disheartening but I didn’t give up. I ended up self-publishing the book and I moved on to the next project which is still to be dealt with. I did what I could. I did in a way give up on finding a publisher but then these competitions came along. It was through the competitions – particularly the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize – that things changed for me.

Wilbur’s given me a lovely tagline, he said “breath-takingly researched, brilliantly executed” – it was fantastic to get that. As a boy I’d read Wilbur Smiths in the holidays, pick them up in the library or second-hand bookshops. I’ve got a dog-eared copy of one that I’ve had most of my life. If I ever just want a bit of raw escapism I pick that up.

He’s in his 80s now and to cement his legacy he’s set up this Wilbur and Niso Smith Foundation – Niso is his wife – among other things awarding prizes to the best-published adventure novel and the best-unpublished manuscript - which was mine – which then gets a shot at a book deal. Then there’s a kid’s adventure writing prize so he’s doing some good things for those starving authors out there.

I don’t know how many entries were received but I imagine it’s a hell of a lot. It’s a worldwide thing and it’s such a significant prize. It wasn’t guaranteed they’d publish it. They’ve got a caveat that if it’s not worthy it’s not going to happen.

At University in 2001 

I left teaching because I was basically burned out. I just felt like I couldn’t give anymore. The funny thing was I took long service, three months off. I planned this trip, just me, my wife said ok get it out of your system. I borrowed a mate’s ute with a sleeping canopy. The plan was drive to WA and just surf and fish and have some time out.

About three weeks into the journey, I found out it wasn’t actually a very good car. It couldn’t get above about 90 ks an hour, it didn’t have aircon and the engine was losing power as I was heading onto the Nullarbor Plain. I had this decision to make – do I get stuck literally in the middle of nowhere or do I turn around? And when I turned around I knew that I wasn’t going to come back. I thought – it’s over. I felt pretty bad but as I was driving back home I thought –how are you going to make this precious time count? As soon as I got home, I started writing the book and I churned out a draft in the ten weeks I had left. There was a lot more work after that but at least I had something.

Then the whole next year I toyed with it in the holidays. During that year I thought – yep you’re done, teaching’s over. I think a lot of teachers reach that point and not all of them leave. But I knew for me I had to leave. So that’s what I did.

Now I can say I’m a writer which was hard to do before I got this publishing deal because you always feel like a bit of a dilettante. When you’re not getting anywhere or getting any recognition you feel like you’re just kidding yourself. It takes a fair amount of fortitude to keep going. And you’ve got to have a supportive partner, which I fortunately have, who believed in me and let me do it.

One famous British novelist Len Deighton was asked why did you retire so early? You had a swag of bestsellers. He said ‘I like telling a pretty girl at a party about my books but I don’t like spending my life in front of a typewriter.’

I saw Harlan Coben interviewed on youtube recently and he basically said the sacrifice of being a writer is you’re creating imaginary worlds while the real world is outside your window. I definitely feel like that. Some days you go to your desk and it’s all got to come from you. There is a real-world out there, it’s about getting a balance. I’m not there yet but I’m trying to get there.

I work eight til five most days, sometimes a bit on the weekends. I know an author who writes 2000 words religiously every day, she’s tremendously prolific. Today I had a good day, I wrote 2000 words. I didn’t particularly like them but I got them down.

I’ll have another day where I might write 500 and I’ll be pleased with them but quite often my day gets broken up with research. You’ve got to be careful because as we know the internet is unlimited and you can quickly find yourself down a rabbit hole.

I haven’t got the contract yet but I’m writing a sequel to Cave Diver because the publisher indicated that preference of my two ideas. If Cave Diver does ok perhaps there’ll be a deal on the table. So I’m trying to get that story out as fast as I can…also in the hope of getting that editorial input.

When I wrote Cave Diver it was friends, family reading it. I did get a manuscript assessment, I entered it into competition and got feedback so it grew all the time. But when it finally came time to get it published, I had to rewrite big chunks of it anyway. I would like to give the book in a less finished state to a publisher and save myself god knows how many months of writing that might be just thrown in the bin.

I think there’s always an element of the writer in all our constructions. We’re human and we emote and we interpret the world and other people. It’s like a pastiche – elements of me, elements of my experience and knowing other people. There might be something a person says or does that will inspire a moment that finds its way into the story or a character.

There is a strange creative process where the deeper you get into the book it starts to filter up into your subconscious. When that starts happening, I like to have a pad by the bed because it’s often at that time when you wake up from sleep. That first 20 minutes when you’re dozing …ideas that have been bothering you from the day before…solutions and ideas bubble up. I like to grab those while I can.

I guess I make myself consciously observe. I’m more experiential. I do get inspired by things…events, landscapes…they can have an impact on me and I don’t forget the impact. I try to work out a way to bring that to life on the page.

When I was a kid – amongst the usual policeman, army/air force type fantasies – I think I wanted to be a cartoonist. I had a knack for drawing and everyone said Jake will be a cartoonist. I guess was sharing ideas in those drawings. And then it became comics.

I went to graphic design school when I was young but it never panned out. In hindsight, I recognise that storytelling was always there and that came out when I went to uni. I was studying multimedia and information technology but what I seemed to be drawn to and good at was writing for purpose.

My mother dabbled in writing when she was young. They’ve always been voracious readers in my family, I suppose I grew up immersed in books. That’s carried on to my children who are mad readers. One of my sons I suspect will end up being a writer.

This area has become a locus of family. Dad’s in Lismore. My stepson and his family live in Lennox. Another stepson is just over the border in Currumbin Valley. We’re familiar with it. I love visiting Sydney and seeing all my old friends but it’s a chaotic, busy place and I’m more of a country person. It just feels like home.

My Dad is really excited about my writing career. He has encouraged all my creative endeavours all my life so I think it’s given him a lot of pleasure. He’s very supportive.

There was always this sense that I was a creative person and I’d never found a way to express the creativity. I suppose teaching was good for me in that way because you can be creative in getting kids to learn and to get excited about things. There was a limit within the framework of schools and box-ticking and exams and all those sorts of things. And the crushing workload. I’ve come to that point where I think what else could I really do?

I like telling stories and I think I’m good at it and I’ll get a lot better at it the more I do it. I read somewhere it takes 20 years’ application to become a really good writer and I understand that.

My first books were paranormal romance and comedy horror, very different to the adventure genre. I quite like the adventure genre, especially with this novel because it has that deeper theme of redemption. The book that I spent two years writing after Cave Diver is a speculative saga, set in the 2030s, looking at the end of civilization because of catastrophic climate change. That’s a subject that’s very close to my consciousness all the time.

I feel like I need to pursue adventure fiction because that’s my foot in the door. Having learnt how incredibly hard it is to get published or sell anything or get noticed when you’re not published, I feel like I have to stick with that. On the other hand, I don’t want to let something I’m passionate about wither on the vine.

At the moment the story is with my agent. It’s hard to sell an author in more than one genre, especially if they’re not a big name. If you’re JK Rowling yeah great, do whatever you like, if you’re nobody – a bit harder. I agree that the odds might be harder but I’m not going to let it go. 

Once I get this draft out and hopefully secure a new deal, I will push this story further and try to find a home for it. Its book one of a projected trilogy, its over a quarter of a million words so…it’s going to be a lot of writing.

If I’ve had a good day I’ll read the rushes to my wife. She’s an avid reader. It’s good because she can throw instant feedback at me. It’s funny when it’s your nearest and dearest, I quite often feel slightly irritated with criticism…but just for a minute. If the editor tells you something you go “oh yeah you must be right” but if your wife tells you it's ‘’what are you talking about?”. But then I realise she’s got a good ear and she often detects a great sequence of action but asks where’s the feeling? It’s really helpful. She’s in regulatory affairs, a former academic with a science background. She loves reading and listens to audiobooks.

Quite a few female readers have been pleasantly surprised by the book. There is depth and a character arc, there’s romance, pain, suffering and love. One of my oldest friends said she couldn’t put it down, and she fell in love with my protagonist, Rob Nash. I was so happy that she’d had that reaction. Even though it says for fans of Wilbur Smith, Clive Cussler and Mathew Riley, I do feel like there’s arguably more of an inner human story in there as well. As well as being action-adventure it’s a redemptive quest, unpacking whatever is holding you back.

I did read that if you sit down too long your odds of getting bowel cancer is increased. I have a standup desk so I stand up a lot too. That’s a joke but …I’m a glass-half-empty guy. I don’t want to be a pessimist that’s just my nature. I don’t feel like destiny is calling me to be successful. It’s more like I would love to have some success so I can contribute to the family coffers.

I’d just love to become one of those Australian writers - that rare breed – that can actually make a modest living from their writing. I think only one in five published books is successful - meaning it earned the publisher a profit which might not be huge. I really just want to give it my best shot. I know that I can get a bit cabin feverish. I’m a bit of an introvert.

It was really great working with a team - an editor and copy editors to develop the manuscript. So focused and exciting. As far as a community of writers, I’m starting to meet a few and keep in touch.

Signed copies of Cave Diver are available at the Book Warehouse, Lismore https://www.thebwh.com/