“And he said, ‘We were raised to believe that killing a person is akin to killing a snake’.”<\/p>\n
When Dalton called that statement “absurd”, the man said he wanted to show him something.<\/p>\n
“He had this sort of half a basement thing that I had to crawl into,” Dalton says.<\/p>\n
“My editor didn’t know where I was, and all I was thinking about as I walked into this guy’s basement was how good this was going to read.”<\/p>\n
There he saw rusting machinery, covered in cobwebs and dust. One looked “medieval” and was used for making bullets.<\/p>\n
“He pulled a lever, and it went, crunch, crunch, crunch, and a bullet fell out of this machine, and it fell into his hand,” Dalton says.<\/p>\n
“He handed the bullet to me, and he said, ‘I want you to take that and remember me by this’.<\/p>\n
“I just remember thinking: ‘What am I? \u2026 What will you do for copy?'”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dalton describes his love of finding a story as a “compulsion” and a “storytelling addiction”. (Supplied: HarperCollins)<\/p>\n
The question of what a journalist will do for a story is at the heart of Dalton’s new book, Gravity Let Me Go.<\/p>\n
It’s the story of Noah Cork, a crime journalist who lands the scoop of a lifetime when a killer leaves a note and a music box in his letterbox.<\/p>\n
“I know very few crime journos who would pull themselves away from such a story,” Dalton says.<\/p>\n
“Naturally, in a feverish bout of writing, he writes a bestseller, but at what cost?<\/p>\n
“At the very peak of what should be the best time in his career, his world begins falling apart.”<\/p>\n
Always writing about himself<\/p>\n
Dalton readily admits the character of Noah Cork is “embarrassingly” similar to him.<\/p>\n
It makes Gravity Let Me Go an examination of who Dalton is today: his failings, ambitions and motivations.<\/p>\n
“And what gets left behind,” Dalton adds. “What does a wife and two teenage daughters have to deal with, with a man who does that [writes books exploring his past]?”<\/p>\n
It follows three books that unearth aspects of his tumultuous childhood.<\/p>\n
In his bestselling debut Boy Swallows Universe \u2014 which has become both an award-winning<\/a> TV series<\/a> and a play<\/a> \u2014 Dalton told the story of Eli Bell, a version of his younger self, who runs afoul of a local crime syndicate in deep suburban Brisbane.<\/p>\n In his next books, All Our Shimmering Skies and Lola in the Mirror<\/a>, he created new protagonists who bear some resemblance to a young Dalton: Molly Hook; and in the latter, a mysteriously unnamed and unhoused teenager.<\/p>\n \u200bTrent Dalton explores childhood trauma in new novel<\/a><\/p>\n The bestselling author\u00a0returns with Lola in the Mirror, a love story set in Brisbane.<\/p>\n Both those books featured versions of a “horrible man” who was in the lives of the author and his mother in the 90s.<\/p>\n He was someone Dalton chose to make into the villain in those stories \u2014 and who, until just two years ago, haunted his dreams.<\/p>\n “I would have this regular, weird dream where I’d be running from something and I’d hop in a vehicle,” Dalton says.<\/p>\n “I’d think I was making my getaway, and I’d turn and look at the driver, and it was this guy from my past.”<\/p>\n But as he wrote Lola in the Mirror, Dalton realised he had “killed the monster” from his dreams.<\/p>\n Having seemingly processed his past through fiction, the author needed to find something else to write about.<\/p>\n “[I thought] OK, man, if you’ve got any issues, it’s just you,” Dalton says. “So, let’s look at you, finally.”<\/p>\n The personal toll of storytelling<\/p>\n As Gravity Let Me Go opens, Noah Cork is celebrating the release of his debut non-fiction book: an investigation into the murder of local mother Tamsin Fellows.<\/p>\n It’s a scoop that arrived in the nick of time, as Noah considers giving up crime writing for good. The note in his mailbox, signed “TF”, sends him hunting for clues, via the local reservoir, a church cemetery and a long-abandoned house.<\/p>\n In that house, he finds Tamsin’s remains in the oven \u2014 an image that haunts him. He thinks he sees her skeleton everywhere, whether in his closet or waiting for a bus, which he attributes to a “post-book-publication mental breakdown”.<\/p>\n But Noah isn’t only haunted by Tamsin. He feels guilty about the six months he spent writing the book in his shed, ignoring his wife, Rita, and two daughters, Erin and Clem.<\/p>\n ABC Radio National’s Top 100 Books of the 21st Century<\/a><\/p>\n Top 100 Books is Radio National’s new annual countdown where we hand over the reins to you to vote for your favourite books, and then we celebrate the Top 100 in a big weekend broadcast!<\/p>\n By the time copies of the book arrive at his door, Rita appears to be making her displeasure heard, or rather, unheard; she’s choosing not to speak to anyone, despite Noah’s protestations.<\/p>\n The only way she seems to be talking is through the perplexing phrase “Gravity let me go”, written in the morning condensation on the bathroom mirror.<\/p>\n “The guy becomes obsessed with the true crime scoop of his lifetime and becomes in danger of missing an even bigger scoop, and that’s the one that’s unfolding inside his own home,” Dalton says.<\/p>\n That obsessiveness is a trait the author sees in himself \u2014 and hates.<\/p>\n “I have to learn about humans because I’m so desperate to learn about myself,” Dalton says.<\/p>\n “It’s sickening, and it kind of gets in the way of this incredibly powerful story, which is being a dad, which is being a husband.”<\/p>\n But Dalton had a revelation when he was writing Boy Swallows Universe, and spotted, through the louvres in his writing space, his youngest daughter Sylvie skipping rope.<\/p>\n “There’s nothing I’m about to put down onto this laptop that is more important than me being out with Sylvie in that moment.”<\/p>\n Everything’s possible in Brisbane<\/p>\n Like Dalton’s earlier books, Gravity Let Me Go puts Brisbane on the page. Noah lives with his family in a rundown house in the fictional Jubilee, in the city’s northern suburbs.<\/p>\n It’s a suburb modelled closely on Dalton’s own “sweet, family-oriented” home, which, like everywhere across Australia, has its “dark, macabre stories”.<\/p>\n September’s best books<\/a><\/p>\n Wondering what to read next? This month’s best books include the latest from literary giant Ian McEwan and Buckeye, a multigenerational family saga set in America’s Midwest.<\/p>\n They’re the kinds of stories Dalton told throughout his 20-year career as a feature journalist, writing mostly about social issues and true crime, including that famous killer’s brother.<\/p>\n