Throughout his twenties Malcolm Knox lived by the beach yet he never set foot on a surfboard. It wasn't until his mid-thirties that his wife gifted him a lesson and his surfing life began. Now, eight years after easing in via the soft-top and whitewash route, he lives at Queenscliff and surfs as often as he can.

Knox has just released his fourth novel, The Life, which charts the life of fictional cult hero, Dennis 'DK' Keith. In the vein of all obsessive surfers attempting to increase their water time Knox chose a book on surfing "to justify the amount of time I'd spent surfing by calling it research." I recently spoke to him about The Life.

Unlike many books or films with mainstream release The Life makes no concession to non-surfers by explaining language or references, where you worried that non-surfers may not 'get it'? I was worried that it might happen but the first six people who read it – all women, all non-surfers - were each completely blown away and into it. That sort of surprised me, but then again it didn't. Think of all the police dramas we watch and detective novels we read. Most of us don't have any personal experience of that kind of world but if the artistic experience immerses us enough then we find ourselves taken away by it.

Personally I can think of lots of books where I've had no connection with the subject matter and the author has been equally as obscure in their references, yet I've been swept up and taken into another world. With DK, the reader needs a complete immersion in his life and his sort of craziness.

You came to surfing late, did that help or hinder? I think that coming to surfing late gives you the equipment to talk about it and describe it because it's not instinctive. For example, I just went to Indonesia with a mate who's surfed all his life. He's the most hopeless teacher because he says things like "well, you should've been there and not there". He has no ability to articulate what he knows because it all comes so naturally to him due to having learnt it at such a young age.

I think when you learn surfing late, and you have to struggle for it, then you've got the words for it because a lot more happens at the level of articulation. I can't imagine that I would've written this book if I'd been a lifelong surfer as I wouldn't have had the words for it.

It's a fictional work yet it runs very close to historical fact, at times uncomfortably so. Why parallel MP's life so closely? First of all I wanted it to be a historical novel talking about the way a certain part of our culture changed really quickly at a particular period of time. Of course surfing history changed but the Gold Coast also changed at the same time and it's always been a symbolic place for people on the east coast. Similar things happened in smaller towns up and down the coast where working people could live in fibro shacks on the beach, and then suddenly it all changed. So I wanted to capture that moment of historic change and that's why it is grounded in that time and that place.

As for MP, I derived inspiration from his story up until the point where it didn't fit with the novel anymore. His story is an incredible story, it's better than fiction anyway. I think Sean Doherty's book, MP, is just fantastic.

Do you think you were able to say more things about the real MP then Sean was? Oh, definitely not. Sean met him I'm just making a character up.

But you can use the tools of fiction while he had to rely on literal storytelling. Yeah, I guess he's limited by the fact that's he's dealing with a really elusive subject. On one hand he is actually telling the truth whereas I'm kind of free to go in a lot deeper and range and speculate. On the other hand I'm dealing with a made up subject. The books probably complement each other in that way.

Sean read this book as a manuscript and he was very amused by it. He found it an interesting speculation on what was behind the sunglasses. The parallels to MP are quite obvious but I'm not claiming for a minute that this is a representation of Michael Peterson. Imagine someone who read it who hadn't heard of MP, but maybe they're from California and they've heard of Miki Dora. They could probably read the book and go 'wow you've done the story of Miki Dora and set it in Australia'. Because DK owes a lot to him. Yet DK also owes a lot to Nat Young and people like Rabbit and Occy, all those kinds of people – the surfing archetype.

And then there's the stuff that's completely made up, the Lisa character and what happens to her, which makes up the narrative spine of the story. I found the real MP story inspirational but when the novel wanted to go somewhere else it went somewhere else.

Surfing is a popular pastime in Australia yet there is a distinct lack of surfing fiction, have you any idea why that may be? I think probably the reason is that most surf writing is by surfers. You know, Nick Carroll, Sean Doherty and even going back to John Witzig, they're basically surfers who wrote. There aren't that many writers who surf, if you know what I mean. Tim Winton is a writer who surfs.

The other barrier is that it is so bloody hard because...well, it's even hard to talk about and do any justice to the surfing experience. And that has probably been a bit of a block to other fiction writers because as soon as you try to render the experience in words you're failing.

Well you've pulled off your first story of surfing fiction, do you have any plans for further books on the topic? Ha, it's dangerous, isn't it? We had the book launch the other day and that very day I got a fin chop and cut my head. There I was at the launch with a fin chop on my head and the question came up 'how long after a book is finished can you keep on saying you're doing research?'

No, I don't really have any more plans. This may be the only shot that I've got in the locker for surfing fiction.

The Life is published by Allen & Unwin and retails for $32.99. Buy it online here.  Read a review here.