“I’m interested in things that are classed as adult: sex, drugs, rock and roll, trauma”: Holden Sheppard

Holden Sheppard never wanted to be a “professional homosexual”. Turns out, though, when you write books about what it’s like to be gay in WA everyone wants to talk to you about it. Gay men. Straight men. Women. Strangers on the internet. Lots of strangers on the internet. Sheppard’s young adult novels Invisible Boys and The Brink won him critical and commercial success — Invisible Boys became a hit TV series and a sequel, Yeah The Boys, is in the pipeline — as well as a lot of fans. Some of whom were keen to turn him into a poster boy for the LGBTQI community. But, with the release of his first adult novel King Of Dirt, out now, Sheppard says he wants his art to be his activisim. “I’ve been openly homosexual since I was 20, when I started going out with my now-husband, Raphael Farmer,” the self-confessed bogan says over an on-brand Monster energy drink. “I’m proud of who I am and I’m proud of my books about gay and bisexual men. “But . . . if you’re in the public domain and people know you’re gay, people try to make you into a ‘professional homosexual’ — you can get a lot of political shit and activism and daily outrages projected onto you. “Other people expected, even pressured, me to be angry and vocal all the time about everything, or to be this politician-lite poster boy for LGBT activism to be wheeled out at Pride events — but I don’t want any part of that. “I’m outspoken and I will publicly Hulk-smash about any issue that pisses me off. I am a Gero boy after all. “There are multiple instances where I’ve spoken up about homophobia, of which there’s a resurgence currently. But I don’t want to make a career out of that, and I’m too much of a bogan to ever be the golden child poster boy for activism.” Sheppard’s books are as much about what it is like to be a gay man in WA as they are about what it is to be a man, period. Masculinity — hold the “toxic” — has always been a big part of Sheppard’s work. Invisible Boys and The Brink were about young men struggling not just with their sexuality but with how to bridge the gap between adolescence and manhood. King Of Dirt’s protagonist Jack Brolo may be physically grown-up — like Sheppard he’s in his 30s — but he is no less steeped in loneliness, confusion and a sense of arrested development than the teenagers of Invisible Boys. The book finds him working FIFO, largely closeted and estranged from his family, since fleeing Geraldton as a young man. A wedding invitation calls Jack back to Geraldton, where the object of his teenage infatuation still lives. The result of this premise is a banger — at times literally — of a book that walks the tightrope between dark emotional headspace (“This is what shit mental health looks like,” as Sheppard puts it) and a compelling love story. “It isn’t just about sexuality, it’s about being a man, being a bloke,” Sheppard says. “(Jack’s) blokey as fuck and I wanted to represent that. “I love when my writing is seen as being about the male condition more broadly, because my books are just as much ‘men’s books’ as they are ‘gay books’ — I am just as passionate about writing about masculinity as I am about writing about homosexuality. “I write about men dealing with stuff we don’t get to talk about in polite company — or the stuff that, if we do raise in public, we get shamed for. “I write books about men who suffer from depression, anxiety, panic disorder, suicidal ideation, and the same epidemic of male loneliness that I sometimes feel myself as a bloke in his thirties. I write about men who have anger management issues, men who have been on the receiving end of both psychological and physical violence. My male characters drink, gamble, smoke, do drugs, have sex, wank, watch porn. “My male characters feel and think and love intensely and don’t always express themselves the way they wish they did.” Jack might be a fan of souped-up Holden utes — as is his real-life creator — but you don’t need to be into cars to enjoy King Of Dirt. The same goes for his sexuality. “That most of my male characters tend to be gay or bi is largely irrelevant, as I see it: these characters and books are still deep explorations of what it means to be a man in this century,” Sheppard says. “I’m glad when people see my work like this. People in the industry have commented to me a few times on my book tours how they’ve never seen so many men in a library or a bookshop as they have for a Holden Sheppard event. I’m chuffed that so many blokes — gay and straight — read my work and turn up to hear me talk about it.” If you’re a Geraldton boy from a big Italian family who is into men and you write about Geraldton boy from a big Italian family who is into men, it doesn’t take much for a reader to draw parallels. Having “hidden myself in teenagers” in previous books, Sheppard says there is more of him in Jack than in any other character. Still, Sheppard is keen to emphasise that Jack’s fictional family does not reflect his own. There’s a good reason for that: Jack’s family is the absolute worst. “Although I also grew up in a large, Catholic, Sicilian-Australian family in Geraldton, my family was even bigger than Jack Brolo’s is in the book — and thankfully, they reacted much, much better to me coming out as gay than the Brolo clan and I didn’t need to flee town for 16 years, like Jack did,” Sheppard says. “In fact, the book is dedicated to my father, Jim. King Of Dirt is about being both a son and a father, so it seemed like the right book to dedicate to him. Dad’s acceptance of me when I came out was a huge deal to me. “He’s worked as an earthmover for years and some of my favourite memories growing up are working as a labourer on various jobs with Dad, my brother and my uncle. My dad was a real role model for me, and he’s also the reason I barrack for the Collingwood Football Club.” For Sheppard the switch from writing for young adults to adults has not required much of a gear change. Freedom to up the profanity and sex has, however, come as a relief. “I honestly feel like I’ve always been writing adult or grown-up content,” he says. “It happened that the things that were really urgent to me, that I wanted to write about, were about the teenage years. “After Invisible Boys and The Brink I kind of didn’t have anything left in the tank to explore so it was just an organic next step to start writing about an adult character. “I’m interested in things that are classed as adult: sex, drugs, rock and roll, trauma. “I actually feel like I can be myself a lot more and I don’t have to think about gatekeepers or, you know, who’s going to book me for a talk or who’s going to put my book on a shelf. “I feel like I can be more myself in person, in my writing, on social media and just not have a filter.” Sheppard takes a pause for a moment of self-reflection. “Not that I’ve every really been known for having any filter.” King Of Dirt is published by Pantera Press.