Book signing in Bega with launch of new Young Adult novel by Yuin author

Gary said he is looking forward to meeting some of the readers and describes book tours in Bega as coming home, still finding it surreal that people want him to sign books.

"I feel really kind of privileged to do that with readers, just be able to be there, to be present with the readers who support me in Bega," he said, before describing the great support he has felt from Candelo Books.

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"It's definitely different when I am in Bega. You get kind of into this kind of repetitive process when I'm doing events in Sydney, or doing bookshop visits in Sydney, and it becomes kind of like work, I guess.

"But whenever I've signed books in Bega or for people from Bega, or have a connection to Bega, it always feels a lot more personal and a lot more like myself."

With experience working in youth work, Aboriginal health, child protection, the disability sector, the youth justice system, and the film industry, Gary noted that the main character within his latest release has been inspired through those he has met.

His debut Young Adults novel, The Boy From The Mish, was published by Allen & Unwin in 2021, and published in the US in 2022 under the title Ready When You Are, which has sold over 11,500 copies and won several awards, including being shortlisted for NSW Premier's Literary Awards Indigenous Writer's Prize.

"The Boy from the Mish I put a lot of my own thoughts and feelings and tried to articulate how I felt as a teenager, through that main character," Gary said.

"And with the new book, a lot of it was, I guess, trying to use my own passion and my own frustrations to tell a story of these kids that I was working with, a fictionalised version of accommodation of these kids I was working with."

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Gary described a scene in the new book where the main character, Jamie, is having a memory sitting outside the local rural show, as they watch the fireworks.

"That was inspired by the moment when I was a ride at the Bega Show, and I could see this mother on a blanket with her two little kids huddling together outside the gates just watching us on the ride," Gary said.

"I think it is impossible to write a story that readers connect with without putting a bit of yourself in there, without finding some level of vulnerability, because that's what readers connect with, I think."

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