To a generation of young Canberrans the fire that was lit at the time was also a creative flame that has nurtured through the past decade and whose afterburn is beginning to be felt.

Our cinema screens are now alight with the warm hues of Rhys Graham’s exquisitely shot film Galore, whose final moments of teenage melodrama are overtaken with the bushfire sweeping through their suburb and showing its characters the real meaning of drama.

Fire also features prominently in the debut novel of Queanbeyan author and hip hop artist Omar Musa, Here Come The Dogs, beginning with the almost geometric flames that engulf the book’s cover and tear through its pages.

In a setting that reads very familiar to those of us who grew up just across the border, Musa writes about three young men – Solomon, Jimmy and Aleks – looking to make their mark on the world, unsure of where to start. As you turn the pages, and it is a page-turner of a read, the flames in the surrounding hills come closer in the hot dry Australian summer the boys inhabit.

When I ask Musa why this story was the one he wanted to tell for his first novel, he had to pause a moment.

“Actually, this is my first interview about this book,” he says, “I haven’t had to put these thoughts into proper sentences yet.

“After living through the Canberra bushfire, this elemental dramatic Australian phenomenon,” Musa says, “I knew that’s what I wanted to write about.

“I was also interested in writing about powerlessness,” Musa says, “about migrations, masculinity and violence in Australian society, though I didn’t know how to connect it all together.

“Then I heard, I think on the radio, this story about a young guy who masturbated after starting a fire, and I thought what an amazing image of a destructive type of manhood, of impotence.

“I had that image in my head, and I worked backwards to examine how the hell you would get to that point in your life, examining different forms of powerlessness."

Omar Musa is something of an overachiever. Before the age of 30 he was a guest panellist on Q&A and his TED talk (you can search for it on YouTube) needs to be seen to be believed, so textually rich and performative it is.

As a hip hop artist he has released a number of albums both with friends under the moniker MoneyKat and two solo efforts, along with two books of poetry to his name.

Today, he rubs shoulders with the rich and famous. His 30th birthday bash was thrown by Russell Crowe on the Crowe family farm, while Musa was there to perform. Meanwhile, the Here Come the Dogs dust jacket features a quote from the luminary Scottish novelist Irvine Welsh.

"This stunning debut novel has such swaggering exuberance that it will make most other fiction you read this year seem criminally dull," the quote reads.

“We were introduced at the Jaipur Literature Festival and we hit it off,” Musa says about his famous pal.

“I sometimes find it is dangerous to meet your heroes,” he says, “but he had a good laugh, a lot of drinks and kept in touch, chatting online.”

That Welsh offered to read his debut work holds much meaning for the young author.

Let me tell you a little story about how much this means to me. When I was 13, my mum snuck me into Electric Shadows cinema in Canberra to watch Trainspotting, on a whim (it was R rated). We walked in late, during the toilet diving scene. Like many, I was transfixed by the world portrayed in the movie, and after watching the credits, realised the movie was based on a book. I immediately got the book and it changed my life.

This is from Omar Musa’s blogspot. He doesn’t need to tell me this story – I was the usher who turned a blind eye to the 13-year-old getting snuck in to Trainspotting. Canberra is a small place sometimes.

“Having Irvine read my book felt like coming full circle 17 years after first reading Trainspotting,” Musa says.

With a poet for a father and a mother who used to edit these very pages, Omar Musa grew up in an environment that nurtured his love for the arts.

“When people ask me what my training was,” Musa says, “I think it was growing up in the household I did, going with my mum to sometimes three shows a week, observing, watching what worked and what didn’t.

“Being from Queanbeyan too, you’re a little isolated, you develop your own style in a way you maybe wouldn’t in a bigger city, you learn to stand on your own two feet.”

Musa proudly begins talks and performances with an announcement that he comes from Queanbeyan, New South Wales.

“I always represent that, always mention it, because it informs my work in so many ways,” he says, “but funnily enough I write my best stuff when I’m away from it.”

Musa is poetic when questioned about his writing style.

“Like Muhammed Ali,” he says, “I like to float around like a butterfly, using colloquial language, slang, literary poetic stuff.”

Here Come The Dogs moves between first-person verse and prose, depending on which character’s story is being told in a given chapter, and Musa credits Dorothy Porter’s The Monkey’s Mask for helping him find his own voice for the novel.

“I tried writing verse in different forms and I couldn’t quite get it,” Musa says, “but after reading Monkey’s Mask it clicked and I could see how verse could paint pictures and vignettes quickly.”

Writing is a state of being for the young artist.

“I carry notebooks everywhere I go and try to write something every day,” he says, “even if it’s a scrap of dialogue I’ve heard, an interesting image.”

While home for Omar Musa is currently Sydney, he is looking at moving to Asia next year while he concentrates on his next novel about a blind transgender Malaysian sea captain.

“Yeah, it’s way more ambitious,” he laughs.

Here Come the Dogs. $29.99. Penguin Books. 352 pages. Available July 23, 2014. There will be two book launches: July 25 at 6.30pm at The Chop Shop, 25 Lonsdale Street. Braddon. RSVP essential: esb@electricshadowsbookshop.com.au ; July 28 at 6pm at the National Gallery of Australia. RSVP essential: eventbrite.com.au/e/omar-musa-book-launch-here-come-the-dogs-tickets-11985004471.