Author, playwright and screenwriter Gabriel Bergmoser will visit the Wangaratta Library on January 25 to talk about his novel, The Caretaker, released last year.
The psychological thriller, set in an Alpine ski resort, is Gabriel’s latest in the genre, inspired partly by his upbringing in Mansfield and also by a more recent visit to Mount Baw Baw during the off-season.
“I was struck by how isolated, eerie and lonely it was there,” he said. “In the off-season the resorts have this washed out, grey, stark, austere and slightly unsettling, ghostly beauty to them, and I’ve always thought – since I was younger – that it would make a unique backdrop to a story.”
Now based in Melbourne and absorbed in his writing, Gabriel started out in the youth theatre scene and completed his Masters of Screenwriting at the Victorian College of the Arts.
He won the prestigious Sir Peter Ustinov Television Scriptwriting Award in 2015, was nominated for the 2017 Kenneth Branagh Award for New Drama Writing and went on to win several awards at the Victorian Drama League, One Act Play Festival.
In 2016 his first young adult novel, Boone Shepard, was shortlisted for the Readings Young Adult Prize.
In 2019 Gabriel signed with Harper Collins for his first adult novels, publishing The Hunted and The Inheritance, of which the film adaptation is currently in development.
He said his foray into writing suspense and edge-of-your-seat thrillers happened accidently, although he was drawn to horror and pulp fiction in his youth.
“I was always a fan of thrillers growing up and anything a bit dark and unsettling,” he said. “Throughout my early twenties I thought I’d be writing young adult or children’s books, writing for a younger age group, but I had no real luck getting anything off the ground. I did have the Boone Shepard trilogy (between 2016 and 2018) but
it was small scale with a smaller publisher, and while they worked hard, it was not on the same level as Harper Collins.”
Gabriel had been trying to get a darker, young adult novel across the line but hit a wall, which led him to try something totally different – plunging into an extreme “pulpy” thriller.
“I wrote The Hunted and I had no idea if it would work or not, or if I had the capability to do this kind of writing, but it got snapped up by Harper Collins and it kicked
everything off,” he said. “Now these fast paced, bruising, high octane thrillers have almost become my stock in trade.”
That’s not to say Gabriel hasn’t also been exploring other ideas with the support of his agent and publisher, releasing The True Colour of a Little White Lie a couple of
years ago, and the upcoming action/adventure novel Andromache Between Worlds – both titles designed for younger readers.
He says while he tries to write every day, he doesn’t set a word target or try to force his way through writers block, preferring instead to write notes, brainstorm or walk if the ideas aren’t coming. He also doesn’t plan each novel to the letter, creating a rough shape and direction, but not wanting to write himself into a corner in such a way that he might miss an opportunity.
“I like to have a little bit of latitude to explore new avenues and take a new direction if something better than what I already had in mind presents itself,” he explained.
The success of The Hunted, which is a best-seller, was something which took him by surprise, acknowledging the extraordinary effort the publisher put in to promote it.
“The real surprise was that they did that to begin with, because The Hunted is so extreme, so bloodsoaked and so over the top,” he said. “Even when I sent it to my agent,
the moment I hit send, I thought I’d made a gigantic mistake because it is so extreme – an unfettered expression of this wild sensibility that I must have in my storytelling
DNA – but I didn’t think anyone else would get it, or that it would appeal to a mainstream publisher.”
More edge-of-your seat thrillers followed, but in The Caretaker, released last year, the violence is stripped back and the journey is more of a slow-burn; a character drama which is both thrilling and menacing.
The action takes place in an isolated and empty Alpine ski resort where a woman called Charlotte, on the run from a controlling husband and his underworld associates in
Melbourne, has adopted a new identity and found a job as a caretaker during the off-season.
Gabriel said the location almost had to play another main character in the story.
“During three months of the year these places are bustling and alive with people, parties and holiday makers, but for a lot of the rest of the time they sit there empty,” he
said. “It’s such a unique and interesting setting and it jumped out at me as the obvious setting for this kind of thriller. The work from there really became about making it as vivid and alive – as stark, terrifying and real -as it possibly could be.”
Gabriel Bergmoser will visit the Wangaratta Library on Thursday, January 25 at 6.30pm, where he will discuss The Caretaker and his writing process, and he is looking forward to meeting readers.
Bookings are essential and can be made by contacting library staff on 5721 2366, email library@wangaratta.vic.gov.au or via Humanitix.
