A COUNTRY boy turned suburban writer using inspiration from his life on the land.
That's the simple story of Michael Trant who grew up at Eneabba and recently had his second book, Wild Dogs, published by Penguin.
Mr Trant was never really a farm kid and while he would help out if he had to, he much preferred staying inside, reading books and playing Nintendo.
Despite that, he still ended up returning to the family farm after high school and eventually married a girl from Three Springs.
Together they built their own farming enterprise.
That enterprise includes Gabyon station at Yalgoo, which became the inspiration for his first novel, Ridgeview Station.
Mr Trant said going out to Gabyon and having a crack at running sheep on a 271,000 hectare property was very different to the 1600ha wheat and sheep farm that he was used to.
"We started running it as a tourist destination and when we started having visitors out there, people were stunned and amazed at how it all works and how we managed to do it," Mr Trant said.
"Ultimately it was a nice setting for a story and we'd had a few adventures that I thought would make a nice tale, so I collected them all together and wove them into an interesting yarn.
"In the story, they're battling the elements, that's where the conflict lies, and that's what farming is."
Described as a sweeping tale of love, loss and the spirit of the bush, Ridgeview Station portrays the highs and lows of life on the land.
But before even starting his first novel, Mr Trant had already been writing about those highs and lows on his blog, A Farmers Way of Life.
The blog was mostly just funny stories from the farm, but every now and then he would write something serious about live export or other topics that maybe weren't heard as well as they could have been.
"People really seem to take notice of those more serious posts," he said.
"I've found that if you're funny most of the time and then suddenly you're not, people pay attention as they realise it must be important if I'm not joking about it."
His books reflect that sentiment, with dramatic and often heavy moments lightened up by witty, dry and classic country dialogue between characters.
Having spent his life farming and having his business almost destroyed by new live export rules, Mr Trant knew about struggle and getting both his first and second books published was no different.
After separating from his wife about six years ago, he still had the manuscript for Ridgeview Station sitting in a drawer and started shopping it around to publishers.
While it was rejected multiple times, he knew there was something there and it was eventually picked up by Allen and Unwin.
Then his publisher resigned right around the time it came out and without someone to bounce ideas off, Mr Trant struggled to write something new that was worthwhile being published.
"I thought it would be easy once I had broken the ice and got my first book published, but it didn't work like that and they didn't want my second manuscript," he said.
"I was trying to write something in the same genre as Ridgeview and wasn't having much luck, so I decided to write something entirely different."
With Wild Dogs, Mr Trant was aiming for something Wilbur Smith might write if he was Australian.
A big adventure, high-tailing it through the outback.
And this time, he wanted an agent in his corner.
Mr Trant started writing the book in 2017 and it took four years for him to get a call from literary agent Alex Adsett which got the ball rolling.
"I didn't know what the hell was going on with Ridgeview, I didn't know what to ask or what to expect," Mr Trant said.
"This time around, we had a Zoom meeting with a couple of the publishers before I'd signed with anyone and they started getting into the nitty gritty of contracts and I was able to sit back while Alex put her game face on."
Eventually, he chose to sign with Penguin and that deal even included a second book.
Wild Dogs is set in the drought-ridden rangelands of WA and centres around Gabe Ahern who makes his living trapping wild dogs for local station owners.
Still coming to terms with his wife's death - and the part he played in it - the old bushman leads a solitary life, until one morning, when he rescues a young Afghan man, Amin, from certain execution.
Now, with a gang of people smugglers on his tail and the lives of Amin's family on the line, Gabe is drawn into a ruthless game of cat and mouse.
His main opponent is Chase Fowler, a kangaroo hunter with bush skills as wily and sharp as his own.
As the old dogger and 'roo shooter go head to head, Gabe will need all his cunning to come out of it alive.
When it comes to his writing process, Mr Trant said his was actually quite simple in that he doesn't have one.
Unable to think of an idea before he starts, he simply starts writing and the story flows as he goes.
"For example, I always knew how I wanted Wild Dogs to end and someone chasing the main character through the bush, but that was it and I figured the rest out as I went," he said.
"I wrote a scene where Gabe bumped into a 'roo shooter and thought he would work as the bad guy, but then I had to make that idea work earlier on in the story, so there's a lot of back tracking.
"It's almost like a jigsaw puzzle, I write the ideas as they come to me and then grab scenes and move them around depending on where they might work best."
Having gone through that grind of not knowing where to begin, Mr Trant said the feeling of having his books published was one of utter disbelief.
He'd grown up seeing books by these big names on shelves and wondering how they did it.
Then one day he saw his own book in a big pile at Dymocks right next to a Stephen King novel.
"That was completely nuts to me," Mr Trant said.
"They managed to get Lee Child to cover quote Wild Dogs and it blew me away that a fella as well renowned and busy as Lee would take the time to read this unknown Australian author's work and be happy enough to put his name on it."
To Mr Trant, that simply spoke volumes about the writing community which is what had surprised him the most about the whole experience so far.
"There's no animosity towards other writers," he said.
"If someone has success, other authors are there cheering them on and it's not fake, they're genuinely happy that other people are succeeding.
"I think it's because they know the grind that it takes to get there."
With a deal already inked for another book, Mr Trant is busy writing and the next novel is set to follow on from or tie into Wild Dogs in some way.
If that goes well, hopefully the publishers and readers will want more and he can make it a full-time thing, but even if that happens, Mr Trant will always be a farmer at heart.
It was about five years ago that he got a call from his dad, who was working for a local farming family in Three Springs, asking if he could come and drive the chaser bin for a season.
Since then, he's gone back off and on every year.
"It works out quite well now - I'm not up there full-time and can go back and forth as needed, so at the moment I'm ripping and spraying.
"They're a great family to work for and don't mind when I bugger off back to Perth for writers' events or to get some pages done.
"It's more or less a FI-FO job, I go up there and work for two or three weeks, maybe a month, and then come home for a similar amount of time to do some writing."
When it comes to his advice for other writers, Mr Trant likes to keep it simple - just do it.
While he knows that sounds simplistic, he said you just have to sit down, start writing and eventually you'll come up with something that you can work with.
"Go and get as much feedback as you can from other writers or friends, keep polishing and keep re-submitting," he said.
"Often a rejection isn't because your writing is bad, but because it doesn't grab the person you've sent it to or there's no market for that particular story at the moment."
That idea of rejection and it potentially being a positive is something Mr Trant experienced first-hand.
He was told by one agent that they liked the story and his voice, but it just wasn't for them.
Another publisher told him she loved the book but had an author who was releasing something too similar.
"I was pitching manuscripts and not having any luck, so I found out you just have to keep trying," Mr Trant said.
"The only thing you can do is keep grinding at it, keep writing, re-writing, submitting and getting feedback."
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