He's an ex-Springwood Public and Winmalee High School student who has sold more than 100,000 books and is now negotiating stage and screen deals.
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Tristan Bancks, 48, has released his second teen thriller Scar Town.
It is a book inspired by the author's experience growing up in the Blue Mountains and his Easter holidays in Jindabyne, where a town was sunk for the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric scheme.
In Scar Town the kids ride bikes and discover bones and money in the wall of a house half-submerged in a lake.
"My childhood in the Mountains was pretty free range / Stranger Thing-sy and that comes through in Scar Town. It's the kind of adventure we dreamed of happening when we used to run a lawnmowing business in the Mountains in the '80s."
Bancks said their goal was to make "enough money to buy a video camera".
"We would push an old, embarrassing lawnmower around Springwood ... transport shears and rakes by tying them to our bikes. But we funded the camera and started shooting little horror movie scenes. It was so much fun and was my intro to filmmaking."
Bancks has called his books a way to bridge a gap between younger, funnier books and the more serious young adult novels and said this one is "my favourite ... my darkest, creepiest, most page-turning story ever."
He hopes it helps lure young readers away from their screens, while providing a safe place to tackle challenging ideas.
Bancks has two boys of his own - now 17 and 20 - and often tries to imagine life as a 12 and 13 year old boy for his books.
"I have a pretty vivid sense of those days and threads of that time weave their way into my stories."
He regularly talks at schools and has been back to the Mountains to speak at Blackheath and Ellison Public Schools and Katoomba High and has done online projects with Winmalee High.
At school he acted in plays at Springwood Public, Winmalee High and the Q Theatre. He had a successful short career on Home and Away as an actor, playing Tug the Thug when he first left school, before realising he wanted to write the words the actors said instead.
Bancks said it is more important than ever to encourage young readers, especially young boys. Earlier this year reports showed Year 4 boys in NSW were failing to keep up with girls in their literacy skills.
"I think authors need to work harder than ever to ensure that they're bringing their A-game and telling the best stories they possibly can. I try to write books that even the most reluctant 10-14 year-old reader will be drawn into."
Role of Artificial Intelligence
Recently Bancks started using AI for various aspects of his writing - not to write a book, but to create teaching materials, blog posts and to brainstorm questions for panel discussions.
"And I recently asked it for five ways authors could protect their careers from artificial intelligence. It had some excellent suggestions. Two that I resonated with are doubling down on your own unique, flawed, human experiences and letting them flow into your writing. And also touring, engaging with readers and sharing your stories in authentic ways."
His books have won and been shortlisted for many awards, including a Children's Book Council of Australia Honour Book, the Prime Minister's Literary Awards, and the YABBA children's choice book awards. The Tom Weekly books, Cop & Robber and The Fall are being developed for TV. Detention is being developed for the stage.
"I spent my high school years filming things and dreaming of making a feature film with my mates and, later, working on TV, so it's a life-long dream to see one of my books adapted for the screen."
Scar Town is published by Puffin and is targeted at those aged 11+ years.
