About

Damian Major writes mysteries and thrillers for young readers, and horror and thrillers for older ones. He has spent his career in education and cybersecurity. The tradecraft in his fiction is real: the ciphers work, the hacking techniques are how hacking is actually done, and the surveillance is... well... surveillance. He lives in Ballarat, Victoria.

Damian Major grew up in Melbourne's outer western suburbs and now lives in Ballarat, Victoria, on Wadawurrung Country, with a zoologist partner, a cat named clover and a flock of hens led by the opinionated Brahma hen named Lucy. By day the work is assessing cyber security threats — which is where the tradecraft in the fiction comes from: real methods, carefully scaled down for readers who still have homework.

The current novel, Brackenwylde: The Fair Unknown, is an upper middle grade mystery about a boy with dyscalculia who cannot do arithmetic but can read a pattern the way other kids read a comic. Like its narrator, Damian still can't do maths, and has stopped apologising for it. The novel has a neurodivergent protagonist whose difference is his method rather than his obstacle, and grew out of his wish for there to be a novel about an Australian protagonist who goes on global adventures. Which is the book he wanted at eleven and didn't get.

The short fiction ranges wider — crime, thriller, horror, for adults and for teenagers — but tends to come back to the same ground: small towns, big landscapes, big sky, people who notice more than they let on. Regional Australia does a lot of the work.

Elsewhere

For manuscript requests, rights enquiries, or festival and school invitations, the contact page is the best way to reach him.