Rob Kaay is an Australian author & musician who is coming into his own.
As a professional touring musician on the road signed to a major American record label, Rob would read books by incredible writers such as Chuck Palahniuk, Hunter S. Thompson, Bret Easton Ellis and Anne Rice. Once his decade-long touring rock-star lifestyle ran its course, Rob began to write his own story that had been rattling around inside his head.
Rob has just released his first urban fantasy novel entitled Silverbirch; A Tear in the Fabric of the Night Sky. By eating an extremely rare mushroom that has a red lightning bolt image naturally built-in to its black-gilled underbelly, Nudge discovers he can create a tear in the fabric of the night sky that will allow his soul to legally leave Earth and enter Silverbirch.
Silverbirch was released at the end of 2009 and cracked the Amazon Top 1000 in its first week of release. It is also available as a free podcast from the iTunes music store.
Rob was asked to be a "Supa-Star Guest" for the 2010 Supanova Pop Culture Expo across Australia.
History:
During his twenties, Rob focussed on experiencing life as a touring musician. He traveled extensively throughout Australia and America in various bands.
Rob began his career in Perth, where he was born, and played local pubs in two different surf/rock bands.
Wanting
to play heavier music with a political message, he eventually
formed an intense-rock band that relocated to Melbourne, an important music industry hub for Australian music. After intense gigging in Melbourne and Sydney, and releasing two EPs from the band on his own record label (funded by a close lawyer friend), the band was noticed by a number of record labels overseas. Rob soon found himself signed to one of the biggest four major record labels in America.
Rob Kaay and the other members were made to relocate to Los Angeles for a number of years where they toured and released a major label album which was recorded in Hollywood.
Eventually the band came to an end, but during this decade of musical discovery, Rob Kaay kept daily notes about his adventures and thoughts about what it was really like to live life in a touring band. He decided to use those notes to help write a series of band-on-the-road, music-related fiction books entitled the Robkaay Journals. It was also during this time that he moved to Santa Monica and began writing music for a solo project.
Six months later, he'd written, recorded and mixed over a dozen instrumental songs. Not feeling a need to release the songs, and begging for a short escape from musical creation, he explored Mexico a handful of times, most notably a cliff-side resort in Ensenada. It was there that he decided to try his hand at writing his first urban fantasy novel. Rob began piecing together the beginnings of a story he tentatively entitled "Control Yourself" that would later become Silverbirch.
A year later Rob moved back to Australia. At first, Sydney, followed by the Gold Coast - where he joined another popular metal band and toured Australia for a couple more years. He continued writing "Control Yourself" during this time, whenever he wasn't rehearsing with the band. Eventually, Rob completed the first draft of Silverbirch and decided to retire from the live-music-touring circuit for good, to concentrate on the art of writing stories. He said goodbye to the crazy music-touring lifestyle he had become accustomed to and moved back home to Perth where he was raised.
Turning thirty, Rob found himself back where his adventures had all begun, ten years earlier, and based himself in Perth. He completed writing and editing Volume I of the Robkaay Journals; My Glorious Nightmare. He officially released the book in Melbourne at the HiFi Bar and Ballroom at the end of 2008.
In mid-2009, Rob finished editing Silverbirch; A Tear in the Fabric of the Night Sky, and also adapted it into a screenplay (unreleased). In October he released Silverbirch from his website and asked his mail list to go and buy it - all on the same day, and it cracked the Top 1000 on Amazon.com(.) He entered the first draft of Silverbirch - the Screenplay, into a screenwriting competition called "The Movie Deal". The script made the semi finals.
Wanting to promote the novel in an un-boring way, he decided to use the songs from his shelved instrumental solo music session in Santa Monica, as well as writing new music, to create podcast versions of Silverbirch. In 2010 he released nine chapters on his website and on the iTunes music store.
The organisers of the Australian Supanova Pop Culture Expo heard the podcasts and invited Rob to be a "Supa-Star Guest". Silverbirch; A Tear in the Fabric of the Night Sky was sold from the Borders Stand at the Expo, where Rob signed copies of the book before completely selling out its first pressing.
To be continued . . .