He writes for a living, you see, and has done so for 20 years.

It’s a milestone he seems modestly surprised to have reached and is celebrating the big two-oh with the release of his third and, he says, final novella The Beach Volcano.

“I was walking my very elderly dog up the hill the other day and I just realised I’ve been writing for 20 years, so this kind of celebrates 20 years and from next year I’ll do something completely different,” Featherstone told the Post on Monday.

The Beach Volcano is the third novella for Featherstone; a form of writing somewhat overlooked in modern publishing.

It follows two wildly successful predecessors – Fall On Me, which won the 2012 ACT Writing and Publishing Award for Fiction and I’m Ready Now, short-listed for the 2013 ACT Book of the Year and the 2013 ACT Writing and Publishing Award for Fiction.

All three have been published by the same small independent press in Canberra – Blemish Books.

A traditionalist of sorts, Featherstone prefers to write with pen in hand rather than with fingers on a keyboard. It’s the mechanics of the thing that takes something away from the process, he thinks.

That’s just about the only writer’s ritual he refers to. The rest just comes down to a love of the craft.

It was never his direct intention to write and publish novellas, it happened by “sheer mistake” while taking up an artist’s residency in Launceston Tasmania four years ago.

“I do love reading short novels, maybe I’ve got a short attention span, but things like The Great Gatsby is a novella and Orwell’s Animal Farm,” he explains.

“In 2010 I had an opportunity to spend a month in Launceston as a writer in residence.

I went there to write short stories and to write by hand, because I write everything by hand.

“So I went to Tassie with a writing journal, pad, pen and just started writing stories. They were meant to be short stories but they grew into these novellas by mistake!”

Featherstone’s three works have no progressive theme. No same character. No same background story.

What they do share is an exploration of family-life, in its countless forms. He finds himself inspired to write by everyday social normalities and that which contradicts it… human behaviour, reactions and the situations which shape a person.

“People say a family is mum and dad and two kids and that’s it, and that’s just bollocks. It isn’t true,” Featherstone says.

“Particularly in a town like Goulburn there’s single mums, single dads, there’s gay parents, there’s grandparent’s raising children singlehandedly. It might even be a woman and two aunts raising a child or friends raising a child.

“If anything these books try to explore than family happens in many, many different ways.”

The Beach Volcano, inspired in part by a particularly mischievous childhood memory explores that idea, and pans over a single weekend.

“It’s the bizarrest story,” Featherstone says of his latest release, set to officially launch next Thursday.

It follows Canning Albury, a washed up Aussie rock star and his journey back home to visit his estranged family after 25 years for his Father’s 80th birthday.

He carries with him on his trip a potentially destructive secret, not about only himself but his family’s murky past.

“He has put two and two together and is pretty sure his father has been very dodgy indeed… is he right?” Featherstone teases.

Until his next project, of which he has no idea or direction, he will remain in Goulburn; writing, journaling and disconnecting.

“Most of the time while I’m here I’m just a complete recluse. I’m up there in my little house in ugg boots, tracksuit pants, holes in my jumper. Often days can just go by… I haven’t had my home phone connected for about six months and I’ve been in absolute bliss.”

He says writing itself is not so much the addiction that keeps him going, but rather the clear-headed emptiness that comes in the aftermath.

Something akin to a love of cleaning jars, he muses.

He could give it up in a heartbeat, happily, and walk his dog for the rest of his days.

“Probably every season I will say “I’ve had enough, I’m burnt out” and I’ll just sit on the couch and read with a coffee, chocolate and the dog, and I’ll think “this is the best day ever, no more writing!” and then the next day I’ll go “I’m just going to do that again”, and then by about lunchtime I’ll have the journal out writing a few things and by the next I’ll be back at the desk.”

• The Beach Volcano will be officially launched on Thursday September 18 at Electric Shadows Bookshop in Braddon.

The event will start at 6pm and RSVP’s have been requested by Monday September 15 to info@blemishbooks.com.au.

Alternatively you can pre-order the book from blemishbooks.com.au at a special pre-order price of $19.95. To keep up with the latest work of Featherstone see his blog opentopublic.com.au.