Bio

               DAVID HOCKING

               yoohoohocko@hotmail.com 

               0411 11 6003                              

Born in Melbourne, 1968, my first memory is looking down passed my nappies at all these cool-looking red rocks which seemed to be glowing (dying campfire). I was 18 months. 

As a young lad I watched Jaws with my grandparents, which had ramifications, and my most memorable moment at high school was winning a speech contest by singing 'A boy named Sue,' by the great Johnny Cash. This too had major ramifications.

Post high school I did first year science at Monash Uni before transferring to James Cook Uni, Townsville, where I studied marine biology. After diving the years away on the Great Barrier Reef and travelling Europe for 18months, I returned to Australia and took up a pearling job based on a small island about 350 km north of Broome. After two and half years I headed back to Europe, and I also made the decision to give science away and write.

After attending Italian-language school in Livorno, north west of Rome, I returned to Australia and moved to Perth where I began my first novel, about a young man who attends Italian school, and who ends up murdering his landlord. (No, I didn't do that, but there was a rather comical moment around which I based the book. Long story......)

As a sideline job in Perth I worked for the council mowing verges as I edited. And then a private joke between me and a good friend spawned the idea for my first official book, WHY SHOULDN'T I CALL MY SON CLINT? - the world's first name dictionary which attempts to describe your personality by knowing what you are called. In a nutshell, it became apparent that if I knew someone's name, I could have a fair crack at their personality. Beats working, right? 

Now in its fourth edition, it has sold more than 12,000 copies.

Both Android and Apple versions of the app are now defunct - sorry about that! -  but it is being rebuilt from the ground up as we speak for launch in 2018! 

Having tired of the Perth council life, however, I took up a job driving ladies of the night for an escort agency, during which I truly began to see the world through the eyes of girls, what they are subjected to, how the male-dominated society views them and what the consequences are.

Eventually I gave that away and worked as a waiter/coffee maker at my favourite beach-side cafe in Cottesloe, Perth. As a dog lover, I compiled my first coffee table book, I, COTT DOG, an expose of dogs and their owners in Cottesloe, with poetry by Gerard Zochling.

In 2010 I relocated to Noosa, two hours north of Brisbane, with the aim of learning to surf. It was here I began work on my latest novel, DRIVEN TO SEX, a fictional love story based around my time driving hookers in the Perth sex business. As a day job in Noosa I began selling WHY SHOULDN'T I CALL MY SON CLINT? at the Eumundi Markets.

This was a revelation.

In 2015 the market life came to a close, but finally I was getting paid for doing something I truly loved - meeting and having lengthy discussions about every-damn-thing, with people from all over Australia and all over the world. One day I'll write a book about my experiences here.

Two years of house sitting and travelling ended in October 2017 and now live close to the beach in northern nsw. The one thing I have discovered is that humans are ostensibly identical in that a loving life, both giving and receiving, is paramount, and that beauty in all its forms is everywhere if you're prepared to look. I think one day I'd like to own a horse and/or an alpaca and new surfboards are also very nice.

David Hocking, November 2017