The fictional novel is a gothic Australian thriller which centres around Parker - an eight-year-old boy living in western NSW who fears something is wrong with his brain which sparks a series of events that have deadly and devastating impacts.

However he returns to the bush years later as a young father, where he finally addresses the consequences of his childhood actions.

It deals with themes of fatherhood, masculinity, mental illness, and the ruggedness of rural Australia.

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"It's about the tension in country Australia, between the harsh country and the stoic people, and the mental health gaps that people can fall through in the middle of that tension," Mr Watson told the Daily Liberal.

The fictional novel is an insight into living in isolation, a lack of services, and not being able to get access to proper mental health care.

Growing up in Coonabarabran, Mr Watson moved to Sydney to become a nurse at the age of 18. He explained the book reflected his own lived emotions, rather than experiences.

"Once I was living in Sydney I found myself thinking about the bush, particularly mental illness in the bush," he said.

"I was a pretty unhappy teenager and I think a lot of my mental ill health as a teenager was kind of perpetuated by that remoteness and lack of access and just the different culture around mental health in the bush.

"When I got to Sydney and was doing my own thing and a lot happier, I found myself writing a lot about the bush and the way that manifests and how different it is to the city."

Mr Watson has been back in Dubbo for two-and-a-half years working as a nurse in the emergency department at the hospital.

He explained he had been writing seriously since the age of 22, and despite his busy career, writing had become a form of therapy.

"It's just a really good way to work through things, to work through emotions particularly," he said.

"One of the reasons I became a nurse when I was 18 is because someone said to me nursing is a great way to support a creative career, because it's flexible in terms of the shift work and hours, but also you see so many interesting things and meet such interesting people and that was so right.

"I think nursing's the perfect career to balance with something like writing."

In 2021, Mr Watson won the Penguin Literary Prize for his novel, and said winning the award has meant writing has become a viable career option for him and he is looking forward to working on further novels.

"It's amazing. It still feels so surreal," he said.

"I feel so lucky because it's the opportunity to start a career, to have a book published and hopefully have an ongoing relationship with the publisher, and the opportunity to do more things.

"I'd be doing this anyway, regardless if someone was paying me to or not, so the fact there is a market for it, and people are interested in reading it, it's such a bonus. It's so lovely."

He said he particularly hopes to continue with themes that illuminate different mental health struggles.

"I think Australia as a society has got better at talking about things like anxiety and depression, but there's still this huge other iceberg of mental illnesses under the surface that we're not so good at talking about," Mr Watson said.

"They're things that can be really difficult to talk about and really difficult to think about or hear about and read about but I think it's really important to be confronted in order to empathise and hopefully understand a bit better what people are going through.

"If I could keep doing things like that, I'd love to keep doing that."

The book will be launched at the Macquarie Regional Library on July 19. Bookings are required. Contact Dubbo Library on 6801 4510 or visit their website.