Willie Egan has always loved writing, despite being told as a young man by one of his religious mentors, “I worry about people who always want to be writing. It has long been my view that writers are not happy people, not happy in or with the world that the Lord in his goodness has given them. So they try to create an alternative world in their head through their writing. Alas, this fantasy world also fails to bring the promised happiness, so they end up in a kind of discontented limbo between the real world and the one in their heads.”
Willie has had five of his original plays produced on stage in Kilkenny’s Watergate Theatre. 125 West St is his first attempt at writing a novel. Will it be his last? You the reader hold the answer to that particular question. He sees this book – drawing on the words of Kris Kristofferson – “…as a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction, taking every wrong direction on its lonely way back home.” (The Pilgrim)
Willie has run his own private practice talk-therapy clinic in Kilkenny for more than twenty-five years, working mostly with teenagers who find life difficult for whatever reason. There’s a chapter in this book which explains his raison d’être for same. He was somewhat of a “late vocation” to this particular profession, having “served his time” in a variety of sales positions and working in the caring profession.