Debut novel takes flight with Israeli inspiration
A fantasy novel, four years in the making, is a dream come true for a budding Melbourne author who wrote much of the book while in Israel on youth programs.
When 20-year-old Corey Tusak finally held his published novel in his hands last month, he jumped for joy as it marked the culmination of four years of work in Israel and Australia.
Tusak, who has been trying his hand at creative writing since early primary school days in Melbourne, began writing Hylenia: The Great Prophecy at boarding school in central Israel when he was 16 on the Naale Academy program for Diaspora teenagers.
Tusak attended the Ayanot High School, which combines academic studies with hands-on work on an agricultural farm and attracts day students from around Israel and overseas, boarders, olim and basketball academy students, to study and fit in his writing.
By the time he returned to Melbourne in 2022 for his Year 11 studies at Elwood College, Tusak had written most of the novel, a fantasy story about a student at a magic school who notices strange events taking place and joins a club to investigate these occurrences.
“It went through about four different drafts and a lot of character development and plot revisions,” Tusak recalled when speaking to The AJN in Melbourne after he had returned home in early January.

“It’s a coming-of-age fantasy with lots of magic involving the elements. I did not want to submit it to a publisher before it was ready as I thought it may not be taken seriously.”
By mid-2023 Corey was ready to send his final draft to a publisher and approached Austin Macauley Publishers in London after receiving advice about pitching his work to the right publisher.
“Although Austin Macauley is a British-based publisher, they have a global reach. They responded that they were interested in my book and about a month later said they would take it on.”
Corey signed a contract with Austin Macauley at the end of 2023.
“The day I signed the contract I was running up and down the stairs of my home in Melbourne screaming with excitement to the rest of my family,” he recalled.

In January 2024 Tusak returned to Israel to start a gap year and joined the Aardvark Israel program, spending a semester in Tel Aviv with about 100 young adults aged 17-21 from the US, Britain, Canada and Australia.
During the year he continued to work with editors from Austin Macauley on email and Zoom and last December received the first printed copies of his 200-page Hylenia: The Great Prophecy.
It brought back memories from Year One in primary school when seven-year-old Tusak teamed up with a classmate to write Adventures of Naribu.
“It was only about seven pages long with large pictures, but it was my first book and that gave me the desire to write,” he recalled.
“I was an early reader and by Year One was reading story books. From that time I was always writing my own short stories and doing creative writing.”
In high school Tusak entered his writing in literary competitions.
“Writing a book was always a life goal – I wrote what I read, which was mainly fantasy fiction,” he said. “Now I am more interested in mystery stories and have merged the two genres.”
Tusak has fond memories of the Naale Academy program – funded by the Israeli Ministry of Education and the Jewish Agency – which enabled teenagers from the Diaspora to study in Israel for free, and how he started writing his novel.

“All the other students were involved in different projects and I decided to push myself with my writing,” he recalled.
“I had a germ of an idea for the book and spent hours on my laptop writing. There were many long nights and hot chocolate breaks!”
After two years Corey returned to Australia to continue his studies before returning to Israel last year to join the Aardvark Israel program, spending a semester in Tel Aviv before going to the United States to work as a counsellor at Camp America in Pennsylvania.
After the 10-week Camp America program he decided to return to Israel and do another semester with the Aardvark Israel program, this time based in Jerusalem and included spending four months until December 2024 as an intern at The Jerusalem Post.
“I got to see many different sides to a major news organisation,” he said. “I worked with journalists on the breaking news desk, general stories and podcasting. It was a good opportunity to learn.”
Participating in the Aardvark Israel program last year gave Tusak first-hand experience of life in Israel in the aftermath of the October 7 terror attack by Hamas and the Gaza war.
“We had many opportunities to travel around Israel and become more knowledgeable and the country and its culture,” he said.
“Among Israelis I met who were around my age, I could see that it had a strong effect on them.
“In the streets you walked past posters with the faces of the hostages. I went to the Hostage Square gathering in Tel Aviv on Day 100 and saw there was a universal feeling of grief, but also a strong sense of community that was very uplifting.”
While Tusak plans to study journalism and English literature at university, his immediate focus is on marketing his debut novel and starting work on a trilogy of books around Hylenia: The Great Prophecy.
Hylenia: The Great Prophecy is published by Austin Macauley Publishers and is available from its website and from Amazon
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