The Desert Speaks: Why I Wrote "My Life as Akama"

What if the voice of prophecy wasn’t a lightning bolt from the heavens, but a whisper in the sand? What if messiahs didn’t arrive cloaked in perfection, but stumbled out of prison cells and rehab clinics, eyes still bloodshot, hands still trembling—but reaching?

"My Life as Akama: An Autobiography" is the fictional memoir of John Buga-ndi, an Aboriginal man born in the Central Desert of Australia. He is not a hero in the traditional sense. He drinks, fights, runs. He loses. He loves poorly and late. But slowly - through art, through pain, through the rediscovery of ancestral wisdom - he becomes something else entirely: a reluctant prophet, a fractured messiah, a bridge between Dreamtime and modern time.

This novel took root in the question: What does it mean to carry a spiritual calling in a world that dismisses the sacred? John’s visions mark him from childhood, but instead of clarity, they bring him anguish. The colonial weight of history, the trauma of displacement, and the seductive pull of self-destruction nearly consume him. And yet, something deeper - something older - refuses to let him go.

I wrote Akama not as a story of sainthood, but of survival. Of what it means to wrestle your way into meaning. To take the wreckage of your life and build a sanctuary from it.

At the center of this story is the land - red, vast, whispering. It is both a character and a covenant. John’s connection to country is never metaphorical; it is literal, binding, sacred. When he becomes Akama, the first of three prophesied messianic figures, it is not because he has perfected himself, but because he has finally listened.

This is a book for readers who believe that healing is messy, that divinity can be broken, and that art is a kind of ceremony. If you’ve ever felt split between identities, haunted by a past you can’t quite shake, or called by something you can’t quite name—then perhaps "My Life as Akama" is also, in a way, your story.

I'm currently working on the publication of the novel and I would be honored if you would read it. Not because I believe in marketing, but because I believe in resonance. And maybe, just maybe, some part of this desert wind will speak to you too.