Writer Trent Dalton has unveiled his second novel as his debut book Boy Swallows Universe breaks a sales record

As his inspiring and magical debut novel, Boy Swallows Universe, breaks another sales record, Brisbane writer Trent Dalton has unveiled his anticipated, and equally promising, second book.

BRISBANE author Trent Dalton will follow up his groundbreaking novel, Boy Swallows Universe – which will today be announced as the fastest-selling Australian fiction debut ever – with another magical coming-of-age adventure story, All Our Shimmering Skies, set for release in June.

The Walkley-winning journalist moulded his chaotic childhood in Brisbane’s heroin-riddled outer suburbs and his journalistic start at The Courier-Mail into a debut novel that captured the world’s interest, selling over 200,000 print copies in Australia in 72 weeks, which is the fastest any Australian debut novel has sold since Nielsen Book records began.

Writer Trent Dalton will follow his record-breaking debut novel Boy Swallows Universe with a new book, All Our Shimmering Skies, next June. Photo: Russell Shakespeare

Boy Swallows Universe is to be adapted to the stage at Queensland Theatre in 2020 – the table read recently brought Dalton to tears – and a Hollywood screenwriter spent the past week with the author in Brisbane to compile a television series with Joel Edgerton attached.

While his first reaction to the new sales record was to remember his grade six teacher at Brighton State School who told his father she was “terrified that I was going to become the leader of an outlaw motorcycle gang”, Dalton said the overwhelming response had quelled his fears over telling his story.

“I’d squeezed a lot of that stuff down, deep inside my gut for really a long time and shamefully I lied as a kid when people would ask me about where my mum was,” Dalton, 40, said.

“I was put on this earth to tell that story, but I was still terrified to tell it because I was afraid people would have certain views towards the people that I love dearly, and in fact it was the complete opposite – the people of Brisbane and Queensland have let me know that that book is just so familiar to them.”

Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton has become the fastest-selling Australian fiction debut ever according to Nielsen Book records.

Dalton almost immediately dived into his second novel, spending the past four months writing All Our Shimmering Skies, set in Darwin during World War Two in 1942.

The novel follows motherless Molly Hook, a child who has faced such hardship she believes she is cursed and so sets off into the monsoon vinelands of the Northern Territory in search of a sorcerer named Longcoat Bob who she believes put the curse on her family because of her grandfather’s dark past.

Along the way she is aided by four gifts that fall from the sky as well as two unlikely travel companions – an actress and a fallen Japanese fighter pilot.

“It’s a mythological, sweeping love story odyssey set in that beautiful, magical Northern Territory vine monsoon land, which I love and have been there many times as a journalist doing stories and I’ve always felt ‘I need to write something about this place’,” Dalton said. “It’s as far from Bracken Ridge, Brisbane as you can get but the same themes about family and love and hope are there.”

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A look at one of Trent Dalton’s first stories

Dalton admitted he never expected any level of success from Boy Swallows Universe, and simply wanted one physical copy that he could hand to his mother in Redcliffe and say “This is why you’re my hero”.

But, faced with following up that success, he said he had nothing to lose.

“I was basically thinking I could run away from Boy Swallows Universe and go hide in a cave and not actually write anything for 10 years or I could double down and just jump back and dive even deeper into what I was trying to explore about myself, about the world, about the meaning of life and try and write this thing that’s twice as ambitious, twice as sweeping and twice as adventurous,” he said.

All Our Shimmering Skies will be published by HarperCollins under the Fourth Estate imprint on June 16, 2020.