When you are writing your hero, it can be useful to imagine them differently... to see their virtues through a smokier lens, to root out...

Like the earlier poster in the series, this image was fun to make. It also accurately reflects one of the main narratives of From the Chronicles of Lupa, while at the same time exemplifying one of my favourite literary devices: the insertion of real literary and cultural elements into a fictional narrative in order to achieve better verisimilitude. In this case I have used the very unusual (and I think quite arresting) song by Johnny Cash "God's Gonna Cut You Down". The lyric

In 2009 I wrote a book called Firestick Farmer. The book tells the story of a radicalised Aboriginal academic named Jim Farmer who...