Steve was sweet sixteen in 1971 when his world cracked apart. He found out, to his shocked amazement, that he was adopted – not once, but twice, by two quite different mums. Around the same time, he came to realise he was gay.

Always a rapacious reader, Steve turned naturally to writing as a way of trying to make sense of the new and devastating truths of his life. But firmly locked in the gay closet, he ripped up each and every one of his stories about his life and consigned them to history.

After years spent as an educator, mixing with Australia’s rural elites and its First Nations People in Australia’s outback and its far-flung regions of Far North Queensland and the Torres Strait, Steve took the conformity of his life into his own hands and shook himself free of it.

Twenty-five years ago, he escaped to the Island of The Gods, Bali, Indonesia, searching for a place where he could step into a life, he could make sense of and where he could allow his writer-persona to fly free.

The result has been a number of short stories, self-published memoirs and novels, all of them based on his rich life experiences. He writes every day, and finds it – especially memoir writing – to be an essential component of everything he aspires to be.