Writing has always been my thing. Other kids had the guitar, or football, or dance—mine was the pen; my way of being myself.
I began at the age of six, and I’ve never truly stopped—only paused to catch my breath. I’ve taken breaks long and short, but inevitably I need to come back to myself in this special way.
When I was in primary school my teacher wrote the first line of James and the Giant Peach on the whiteboard, and told the class to continue writing the story. I remember it flowing out of me as if I already knew what came next. The joy was in describing it for someone else to see.
The teacher gave the story to my Mum. After she read it, she passed it to family and neighbours. Everyone smiled and offered kind words when they saw me, and it made me feel that I had found something I could do well and enjoy. I knew that was a rare and special thing in life.
I used to notice that my creativity flowed when I was under stress or pressure, and especially when my environment changed. This taught me that writing was somehow more than just a hobby, that it could also become a release—a comfort, an escape. Even then I sensed that creativity was a kind of magic or prayer, a way to bring order to chaos, to find meaning in the storm.
As a child, horror stories captivated me—both reading and writing them. I was interested in tension, how to make the ordinary sinister. But as I became a teenager, I found myself drawn to science fiction and fantasy, where the impossible becomes a lens for examining what it means to be human. Every genre teaches its own way of seeing the world—its own theology, its own hunger.
I think a big part of storytelling for me is mythology, and how our species has always veiled its deepest truths in myth, truths too fine, too brilliant to express directly, as some of their depth would be lost in the telling.
Something I always remember when writing a story: What truth or temptation does this tale press beneath the skin?
Some characters have existed in my mind for 17, 18 years, maybe longer. Creating a world for them to inhabit has taken longer, though. The world is always Earth, perhaps re-imagined, renamed, but still the Earth of my limited experience. The characters will always be people I have met and known, also repackaged and reconfigured.
As Ecclesiastes says, there is nothing new under the sun—and I believe that. But the beauty lies in how an artist re-conceptualises what is already there.
Life gets complicated, and writing rarely survives when push comes to shove. It’s a strangely delicate art, and when the inner (or outer) balance slips, entering that other world can feel impossible. Some novel ideas have sat in my notebooks for seven, nine years. I periodically refine them—sketch a more detailed outline, add a few chapters—then leave them alone again for months or years.
Certain characters just won’t let go, either. They persist because, I think, they’re a real part of me—something with personal meaning I can’t fully articulate. When I return to them, I’m returning to myself, to a part of me that needs to be seen again, pondered, grown into.
Perhaps all writers are pilgrims, forever circling the same sacred mountain from new sides.
I’m at a new road in the journey now. For many years I was working on my epic fantasy exclusively, and because it’s such a vast, slow-burning work, I began to feel like a dragon guarding secret gold.
I’m moving into a new head-space, more confident, more willing to share what I create.
So I’m excited to be taking the time to write some short stories and post them here, and hopefully get some feedback and reactions from people—to see what’s working and what’s not, to grow, to get my work out there. To let the work breathe beyond the confines of my own imagination.
I chose the name iacula because it means ‘spear’—a pilgrim’s staff as much as a weapon, something to lean on and to clear the path ahead.
It also illustrates what writing is all about for me personally: an attempt to pierce through darkness with light.