ABOUT ME
Born in Sydney, Australia, in 1978, I have always had a strong interest in the literary arts. For the last 20 years, I have dedicated myself to writing and hope this blog may be a conduit for some of my more discordant thoughts. I have completed several novels and two collections of short stories. In recent years, I have also started dabbling in Japanese haiku and tanka poetry.
My interests are both broad and contradictory. From the mainstream Classics through to the lessor-known outcasts of the literary landscape, I have always been an avid reader. Whether it's a celebrated heavyweight like Dostoyevsky or a lessor-known rebel like Comte de Lautréamont, my passion for the written word never wanes. And yet, with that being said, I would say my own writing style leans more towards the avant-garde and the experimental than it does any mainstream genre.
In no order of importance, and far from an exhaustive list, some of my favourite writers include Georges Simenon, Nikolai Gogol, Henry Miller, Yukio Mishima, Marquis de Sade, Mikhail Bulgakov, Louis Aragon, Andre Breton, Comte de Lautréamont, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Matsuo Bashō, Arthur Rimbaud, Dashiell Hammett, Elmore Leonard, Jean Genet, Iceberg Slim, Umberto Eco, Alberto Moravia, Cesare Pavese, Friedrich Nietzsche, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca the Younger, Georges Bataille, Isaac Babel, Fernando Pessoa, Saigyō Hōshi, Ikkyū Sōjun, Ryōkan Taigu, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Eiji Yoshikawa, Louis Ferdinand Celine, William Burroughs, Jean-Patrick Manchette, Italo Calvino, and many, many more.
I also have strong interests in both the fine arts and film, with an immense love for artists such as Egon Schiele, van Gogh, and Hokusai, and for film directors such as Akira Kurosawa and Jean-Pierre Melville.
Granted, my tastes are eclectic, and I'm still not sure as to my aims here, but I do nurse the faint hope that some of these frivolous words might resonate with somebody out there on this mysterious globe of ours.
The title Hidden Leaves stems from the Hagakure, a prohibited, 17th century, Japanese text written by Yamamoto Tsunetomo that outlines the author's views on Bushido — The Art of Dying.