Alex Miller, the master storyteller

                                                         Alex and Stephanie Miller
It was a bit daunting meeting one of Australia's best-loved authors right here in Castlemaine.
I double check everything before I go - two pens, an extra notebook and oh yes, make sure the card is in the camera. All good.
I take a deep breath and knock on the front door. A minute later, Alex Miller's face suddenly appears through the window of a side door to the right, beckoning me to come in.
A calm and humble man, he greets me with a ready smile and welcomes me inside.
Mind you, he has not long been back home from a hectic trip to Sydney, where he scored the prestigious Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, for the second time.
He previously won the prize for his fifth novel, Conditions of Faith, in 2001. But this time round it was for Lovesong, a deeply moving story about a chance meeting between two characters - John Patterner and the exotic Sabiha - in a Parisian cafe novel. It tells of their lives together, and of how each came undone by desire.
The judges said of Lovesong: `Miller has crafted a magnificent portrait of desire. With wisdom and searing clarity Miller viscerally creates longing on the page: sexual longing, the desperation of parental longing, the hunger for art and for story. A sense of place - Melbourne, Tunisia and especially Paris - is evoked as powerfully as is each of the thoroughly realised characters. Poignant insights merge with gripping storytelling in this luminous work by a master storyteller'.
I sit in the kitchen opposite the master storyteller - I have read his books, I know he has also won the Miles Franklin Literary Award twice, The Age Book of the Year (Lovesong again) and countless other international gongs, but I can't help but wonder what makes him tick? Why is he living in Castlemaine? Why does he write? And now I am wondering, why is he so .... `normal'?
"This is our eleventh year in Castlemaine - we bought just before the boom," he said. "I like the hard, dry country around here and yet it still sits in the middle of a forest.
"We've got three major industries here - it's not just tourists. Castlemaine has got an army of blue collar workers and an interesting population of old and new. They have always made us feel welcome and it is good living here. It is a bustling town, Castlemaine, there is a lot happening and you can be part of it without standing out."
In his heyday, Alex worked in the Queensland bush and later owned a farm in NSW before moving to Victoria. He has been married to Stephanie - "a Mansfield girl" - for 35 years and you can still feel the strong bond and love they share for each other.
"It's a test run but it is going ok so far," he laughs.
"We have had a couple of kids and survived that ... in all seriousness, Steph has made sense of my life."
It's not hard to see that Stephanie is Alex's rock and that is why he is so grounded with his life and his work.
When it comes to writing, there are only two secrets, he says: hard work and `be genuine' about what you write about.
"I work six days a week. My week starts on Sundays at 7am or 7.30am and I usually work for a few hours and then Steph and I go for a walk through the (Castlemaine Botanical) gardens and then it's back to work. I have Friday afternoons and Saturday off. I have been doing that for 30 years. I love it. It's the only way to get it done - there is a huge amount of work to get through."
Alex says he writes about people and places who mean a lot to him.
"If you are genuine in your approach, the energy will feed into it but if it's contrived then the energy is simply not there."
He said his next novel Autumn Laing, originally based on artist Sidney Nolan's life, will be released in October this year.