An audible gasp was heard from around the room the day Michael Robotham re-told one of his more infamous childhood memories.
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"I was in Wagga and I told the story of the day I was playing with matches in the backyard of our home on the outskirts of Gundagai," Mr Robotham recalls.
"I let one go and it started a fire that took brigades to put out while I was hiding away hoping no one found me."
As he recalls, the fire caused no damage, but it set in motion the spark of inspiration that led to Mr Robotham's enormous success.
Although, it was not the only time during his early years that he found himself falling dangerously close to the wrong side of the law.
"When I was growing up, I only came home when I was hungry," he said.
"When I was about 10 years old, the police brought me home after I'd been with friends pretending to be blind on the main street of Gundagai, begging for money.
"I think we were hungry and thought if we made a sign saying we're blind, we'd get enough money to buy something from a cafe.
"Of course, you don't tend to see too many groups of young blind boys hanging around the streets of Gundagai."
Speaking with The Daily Advertiser, Mr Robotham recalls his childhood was entirely idyllic. Almost too idyllic to set the backdrop for the tales he would craft in later life.
"Writing was in my blood," he said.
"My father was an English teacher at Gundagai High School ... I'd grown up around books, but I felt like I had nothing to write about.
"Mark Twain had already taken all the best stories set in small towns."
So, to begin his writing career, Mr Robotham set out to see the world from by becoming a reporter.
As a news writer, Mr Robotham said, he became particularly enamoured with reporting details of crimes and court cases.
"I've always been fascinated by why people do things," he said.
"I worked the late night crime rounds, so murders, suicides, family court bombings. What fascinated me was why they did it. What went through their mind.
"My [fiction] writing is not forensic, it's about what goes through the minds of the murderer, the investigators, the families."
While working the crime beat, Mr Robotham chanced a meeting with a young ghost-writer. The job title, he admits, was one he had never heard of before, but immediately wanted to explore.
So began the decision that changed the course of his life. Over the next decade or so, Mr Robotham would ghost-write 15 different books for the likes of Spice Girl Geri Halliwell, decorated sailor Tony Bullimore, singer Lulu, and even Rolf Harris "before we ever knew who he really was".
In the company of such fame, he was introduced to "the way the other half lived". He was welcomed into George Michael's house, writing much of Geri Halliwell's book beside his pool.
Stopping by for drinks with Lulu, he was introduced to actress Meg Ryan - and even had her call some of his friends just to say hello.
"It was all about capturing their voice. If done properly, my fingerprints would not be on the book, it would all be in their voice," he said.
"That taught me that I did have the perseverance to spend a year telling one single story."
Between writing Rolf Harris and Lulu's books, Mr Robotham found himself with a spare three months to turn his attention to other pursuits.
He used the time to pen 117 pages of his first novel, The Suspect and it subsequently sparked an international bidding war.
"From then on, every dream I had of becoming a writer came true, it was like winning the lottery," he said.
Now assured that his words would be worth reading, Mr Robotham set out to find a very different voice to the ones he had crafted on behalf of so many others.
He had to find the voice of his villains, and never was that more apparent to him than when he began to write his fourth novel, Shatter.
"It's from the point of view of villain, and I almost traumatised myself," he said.
I'd come out of writing all day, have a scolding hot shower and curl up in bed telling the voice to 'get out of my head, get out of my head'
- Michael Robotham, crime author
"I vowed I'd never go that dark again.
"They live and breathe in my imagination. Hopefully they become real for the reader too."
Over the years, Mr Robotham has written 15 crime fiction books, but he still does not consider himself to be a "prolific author".
Last week, he made history by becoming the first Australian writer to win a British Crime Writers' Association's Gold Dagger twice. The first he won in 2015 and the latest he was awarded for the 2019 novel Good Girl, Bad Girl.
"Not bad for a little boy from Gundagai," he said.