News Today, Billie is finally released on an unsuspecting world. This is the cumulation of a couple of years work; initially, sketching out the skeleton of the story on a scruffy A4 pad (probably 3 years ago now) and then endlessly revisiting the tale ever since then until it resembled the original intention, although, admittedly, in a far more polished and detailed guise.
On a personal level, it has been quite a learning curve, but I hope it's something that will hold me in good stead as I have already started the process again for a second novel which will, all being well, use some characters we fleetingly meet in Billie and then we go on to tell their remarkable story in a similarly uncouth fashion.
I have been very pleasantly surprised by the support from Austin Macauley along the way and, in particular, that they have not sought to shackle Billie; the story is very much as it was intended. Billie contains a healthy dash of everyday profanity as well as numerous explorations of some good old fashioned dirty sex along the way, there are plenty of funny moments too, but everything is set against an increasingly darkening backdrop. It's a story that I'm rather reluctant to hand over to my mother to read for fear of maternal chastisement let's put it that way!
Of course, the scary bit is upon me now; will anyone actually buy it? will folks that do so hate it? I can't predict how this will go from this point on, but my original goal has today been fulfilled imagine, if you will, a dungeon laboratory in a thunderstorm and as the switch is activated there's a blinding flash and a belch of smoke rising in the air then from the table he rises. Billie lives! That's, kind of, how it feels today.
A few people have already commented upon the spelling of Billie being indicative of a female where, as you will quickly gather, Billie, in my story at least, is most definitely a bloke. All I can say on that is that if a man called Shirley can be "Big Daddy", a tough guy called Marion can, with some menace, tell you to, "Get off your horse and drink some milk", a Jesse can be an infamous murdering outlaw and a rocker called Billie-Joe can front one of the biggest punk-rock bands on the planet then my amigo, Billie, is in very good company.
Now my hope is that folks take up the story and enjoy Billie for what and who he is.
I might go off for a pint to celebrate!