FOR four coffee-soaked years, William Elliott bounced from his parents’ home to share households as he churned out one manuscript after another, fantasising that one day he would be a recognised author.

By the age of 27, despite hundreds of hours of toil, he had published nothing but a couple of short stories in a downmarket magazine.

His fifth novel was going to be his last before he gave up his dream and got a real job. That may no longer be necessary.

Last night, Elliott was named the winner of the national ABC Fiction Award for Australia’s best unpublished manuscript.

He beat 900 other contenders to win with his novel The Pilo Family Circus, which will be published by ABC Books in October.

At an awards ceremony last night, ABC chairman Donald McDonald announced the once-struggling writer would receive a $10,000 advance for his book, which would also be serialised on ABC Local Radio and produced as an audio book.

One of the four judges, bestselling novelist and literary critic Delia Falconer, described Elliott’s book as a “world of comic book violence that is underpinned by a more sinister and ancient evil”.

“When the hero Jamie is press-ganged into working for the Pilo Circus as a clown with supernatural powers, he has to face up to thedark side of his own human nature; and so, by inference, do we,” she said.

Elliott admitted yesterday he felt “sucker-punched” by his own triumph, which had launched him overnight from an introverted and unsuccessful author to one feted as one of the country’s brightest new writing talents.

“This was to be my last year of writing,” he said. “I would have walked away for a few years and seen a bit of the world. It is a very timely shot in the arm,” he said.

Of his manuscript, Elliott said it “grew by itself”.

“I wanted to throw a real person into a bizarre netherworld of nightmarish apparitions,” he said. “When I write a book, I want a setting where anything can happen with unusual characters and let them tell the story.”

Fuelled by his sudden success, Elliott is working on his next novel, which is yet to be titled.

ABC Books publisher Jo Mackay said the flood of entries demonstrated not only an abundance of undiscovered talent in Australia but also how difficult it was to get published.