Latest News!!!!!!
Street Kid: A Rent Boy's Tale
is available in Paperback from
Amazon
and
Gay Pride Shop, Manchester
This is a revised edition - including layout, grammar and textual changes. The ebook has now also been revised.
Only available on Kindle from: |
Street Kid: A Rent Boy's Tale
A new story by Ned Williams
Sexually abused by his father and barely tolerated by his mother, Steven vows revenge but “because I couldn’t take it out on my father directly, I knew that it would have to be with someone else. It would be some poor, unsuspecting sucker who would have to shoulder the responsibility of my father’s licentiousness. This whole dilemma became my obsession.” So, 13 year old Steven took his first tentative steps as a rent boy in an English provincial city. Taken in hand by Andy, Steven is inducted into the local gay rent scene by a tight knit coterie of lads who provide the care and security denied to him at home. Juggling the demands of the racks, school, home and his obsession with art, Steven embarks on a journey which would bring pain, laughter, sadness and anguish as well as discovering the value of friendship, and what monsters some people could be.
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Music References in the story
Popular and classical musical life, particularly in the major centres of the English provinces in the two decades following the second world war, was broad based and vibrant. Leading orchestral and operatic ensembles whether based in London or the regions regularly toured bringing a veritable feast of musical goodies. Of particular note at this time was the prevalence of Soviet bloc orchestras such as the Czech Philharmonic, Leningrad Philharmonic, Prague Symphony and the Leipzig Gewandhaus who all made regular appearances outside London. And with the orchestras came the conductors: Karel Ančerl, Václav Neumann, Rudolf Kempe, William Walton, John Barbirolli, Arthur Bliss, Constantin Silvestri to name but a few - oh, those were the days!
Little need be said about Pop music - this was the 'swinging sixties' after all and most of the outstanding singers and groups of the period were constantly on the road playing gigs up and down the country. |
Some thoughts........Ned Williams
I have been asked many times as to whether this story is true or not. If it has come alive for the reader then that is all that matters. I neither confirm nor deny the veracity of the account as, to me, it is unimportant. As for the name of the city... it could be any one of a number of places in the UK but my idea was to show that the events in the book could happen anywhere and to anyone.
On a personal level, I am looking for Jonny Edward Radford. Does anyone know where he is? We can highly recommend............
Tales of the Lost is Richard Howard's second book of short stories that bring us face to face with some very strange encounters and some unexpected twists along the way. Each story inhabits its own individual world and is told in a very direct style. As the author says in his introduction, the themes for these later stories are darker in mood than his earlier works. The longest of them, Flora's Return, was inspired by what the author regards as "the finest ghost story ever written", The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. These new stories range from realms of complete fantasy to modern day settings. Some are ghost stories, others are just scary, and most have a twist in the tail. In each one there is a character who, in one way or another, is lost, hence Tales of the Lost. Website: http://www.richard-howard.com |
Street Kid: A Rent Boy’s Tale has been germinating and gestating for over twenty five years and it is only because of the perseverance of many friends that it has been completed. I owe them a debt of gratitude that has only been repaid in small part, by the completion of this book. eBook published on 9th March 2017 Paperback published on 26 May 2019 Sales: March - December 2017 eBooks - 73 Pages read in 'Library' - 82,319 (137 Copies) January - December 2018 eBooks - 49 Pages read in 'Library' - 60,589 (101 Copies) January - December 2019 eBooks - 40 Paperback - 18 Pages read in 'Library' - 46,670 (78 Copies) January - December 2020 eBooks - 57 Paperback - 45 Pages read in 'Library' - 59,603 (99 Copies) January - December 2021 eBooks - 67 Paperback - 24 Pages read in 'Library' - 60,174 (100 Copies) January - December 2022 eBooks - 54 Paperbacks - 26 Pages read in 'Library' - 89,621 (149 Copies) January - December 2023 eBooks - 28 Paperbacks - 18 Pages read in 'Library' - 62,157 (104 Copies) January - February 2024 eBooks - 8 Paperbacks - 5 Pages read in 'Library' - 7,646 (18 Copies) |
Ned is currently working on a new book provisionally entitled 'Change for a Copper' which will feature some of the characters from "Street Kid".