Will Kostakis didn’t secure a publishing deal until his final year of high school (slacker).
His early success setting him up for the perfect sun-meets-wax-wings life lesson of a debut novelist who doesn’t sell.
Unfazed, yet informed by a few years’ self-reflecting flagellation, Will subsequently found great success with his second and third YA novels, The First Third and The Sidekicks.
Each book dissecting the absurdity of family, the disorientation of loss, the inability of young men to relate, and the burdens and bonfires of true teen friendship.
He also introduced a little gay into his books, or according to some, not enough gay. His work suddenly questioned as to whether he was inappropriately flying a rainbow flag too high or too low past the windows of a disastrously under-estimated youth of today.
Will himself came out during the publishing of the Sidekicks, his subtle and deeply personal reflection on a struggle with identity escaping from micro-blog to national press, due to a media’s need for schoolyard scandal.
With a penchant for self-deprecation and an insight into the need for young gay authors to pave a way for others, Will is a compelling raconteur and compassionate advocate for Gens Y and Z.
Seemingly redefining his own identity with each new novel, Will’s pages have peeled away the many layers of a young Greek upstart to reveal an informed and ambitious advocate for education and legislative reform.
Where there’s a Will, there’s a way.
And I bet he’s never heard that one before.
(Actually I’m sure he has….)
Is this thing on?
Listen to Will at our podcast via iTunes: https://itun.es/au/MjK8ib.c?i=384058777