Description "Slob" is the story of julian, a closet heterosexual floundering in a future society run exclusively by women and the homosexual elite class. Julian lives in a "breeder" colony, a last bastile of the old way of living, a crumbling and futureless microcosm surrounded by finely tuned and slightly glittery men and women, crumbling from the inside. Julian is desperate to escape his humble and dead world, and to make it as an artist in the elite society. On the yellow brick road to the end of the rainbow he dances like a photosensitive flower, failing in the light. The book is about the protagonist"s (and author"s) heartbreak and desperation. his struggle to deal with drug and alcohol dependency, subsequent mental breakdown and hospitalisation. Of being sectioned and then released, falling back into drink and drugs, being forced to give it all up when it gets too terrifying, then struggling to stay sane; to keep flailing through when depression, loneliness, isolation and madness stand in the way of connecting to any notion of family, friends, society. It tells the story of a person forced, forced by fear and anxiety and all of the above, to spend 4 years of their life shut up alone in one room, and what happens to such a person when a new relationship stumbles across them, how the lights are turned back on and the world is there again. but when the realisation comes that the other half of this relationship isn"t occupied by the right person, then what can be done except retreat, retreat back into yourself and wait life out. Because for julian (and the author), nothing beats heartbreak. About the Author The world was introduced to ash hale on December 14th 1981, some would say they got off on the wrong foot. he spent his early years in the back garden of an anonymous looking house, searching for worms and stability. After moving to Aylesbury, Bucks at the age of four, he spent an unhappy year in the shadow of a father that was merely waiting for the right time to leave. That time never came, but his father left anyway. Ash"s mother was forced to take up three, at one point four jobs (which she continues to this day) to keep the family existing. Ash"s mother"s mother came to live with them for a short while, and ash enjoyed a very close relationship with her, and was inconsolable when not long after coming to live with them she died of cancer. Ash never forgave himself for not visiting her more often in hospital, despite his young age. Ash"s mother soon married ash"s step-father, a violent abusive bully who ash lived in fear of, quietly and desperately resenting the treatment he witnessed toward his beloved mother who became little more than an emotional punch-bag for his stepfather. He would grow up either being ignored or bullied by this tyrant (who at the same time doted on ash"s young sister) until his mother made the long overdue decision to throw him out, but not before he could cause irreparable harm, both physical and emotional, to each member of the family.