What really did happen? What happened was that William had been sent a letter telling him to "desist" from his statements about Rowling and her associates - not by Rowling's lawyers, Schillings, but by her agent's legal hound Neil Blair. Tom, our spokesman, who conducted the interview with the paper made the perfectly sane remark that we had been "contacted by Rowling's lawyers". Did any of us think at the time she needed more than one? Were we supposed to know?

 

Obviously, the article indicated we were being taken seriously by Rowling personally and clearly we had no right to that dubious honour. We did have a right to be taken seriously by her agent's legal man Blair, however, but only to shut us up, if he could, from making what he confidently stated were untrue allegations. Not that he was acting on Rowling's behalf or anything. From Will's point of view, and ours, Blair and his ilk can "state" whatever they like, with bells on it. it makes no difference.

 

In any case, on this, to us, absurd technicality, they swooped as they needed to do and, for no reason worth mentioning than to wrest an apology from The Derry News and so, by proxy, discrediting us. Their charge J.K. Rowling is thereby protected from the danger of incriminating scrutiny as to the origins of her book or even a possible link between William and her. This is the direct effect of such action irrespective of whether it be intended or not. Basically, they have any number of rights to discredit you, using whatever spin-doctoring tactics they can get away with; but you have no right whatever to moot anything that might discredit them or their clients. You can't take them to court unless you got a goldmine but they sure as hell can take you there. In the so-called legal system you find the class war in all its brutal nakedness. To find out for yourself what the conflict is really all about click on the similarities (right).

 

Rowling's legal team's job is not the protection of anybody's 'rights' but their clients', in this case, by shutting people up and using legal camouflage to prevent scrutiny, as Professor Martin rightly stated, nothing more, nothing less. You got your car stolen because you left the keys in the ignition? Serves you right! You accept that? If you do, then there is no need for courts and you have no rights at all and you may well believe that Watts invented the steam engine, President Kennedy died from misadventure, the Holocaust never happened, bombing Hiroshima was a humane gesture and that the earth is flat.

 

The book TRAVELS WITH LI PO was written in 1990, in the very year Rowling claims she was writing hers. Rowling has mentioned that the "idea" for Harry Potter came to her on a train journey in 1990 between Manchester and London although we have not been able to discover the exact date of that journey. William Kelly wrote his book as a sequel to the short story with which he won a nationally televised short-story competition that drew in over 600 applicants from all over the UK. His winning story The Ace of Hearts was broadcast by UTV throughout N.Ireland reaching Scotland and Northern England and was later published in the popular Writer's Monthly magazine (June 1990). Rowling, who denies ever having heard of William or his book came across Travels with Li Po while she was working at Amnesty where he had sent his book for consideration. She read this book and entered into a searching correspondence with him about it before informing him that Amnesty would not be publishing his manuscript. It is very unlikely indeed that she was empowered to make that decision. As Will says; "There is scarcely a single important idea in Harry Potter that Rowling did not take from my story and my correspondence with her dealing with it, especially the notion of "The Chosen One" that provides the very fuel for my projected series and which derives directly from my upbringing as a Northern Irish Catholic. I know, with or without proof, that she was enabled and encouraged in gutting my work by others. Nobody questions her about any of it because nobody is allowed to. Harry Potter is a fake from head to toe and everybody loves him just as they would love a phoney Elvis if they had never met the real one. Fortunately, the real 'Harry Potter' is alive and well in the pages of my book for anyone to read. It speaks for itself as it did in 1990. Not a word of the first draft has been changed so that the reader can gauge the impact it had in a pre-Harry Potter world on the likes of Rowling and her associates. For the sceptics among you, particularly those who make a living out of scepticism (lawyers), my correspondence with Rowling was anything but a pass-the-time-discussion 'inter pares' on the craft of writing. It was a strictly one-sided affair that took the form of a series of specific questions on postcards sent in Amnesty envelopes about my manuscript all of which I answered very comprehensively... in longhand... at her request. Even though I felt very uncomfortable I assumed, as anyone would, that I was talking to Amnesty International whose professional ethics I had no reason to doubt. She was "particularly interested in the philosophy behind" my story. I delighted in expounding to her at great length on just that, the fruits of years of creative inquiry into the phenomenon of low self-esteem among adults and children and my forages into Jungian psychology as a way of coming to grips with it. I explained to her how these ideas were incorporated into the character and his name (Muldoon) and the various other elements of my story with its projected series of seven volumes. I mention all this in the preface to "Li Po" so I take leave to state it again here even if I run the risk of loading with my own bullets the gun that may well be fired at me. You heard it here first, please note. "

End of story..... and the beginning of another. Much more can be said about this that you can read  from our blog.

 

But it was not the end of Will or his book. We have been selling copies of Travels With Li Po since it was published in December 2008 from our studio and many people have read it. "An awesome read" one man wrote to tell us. He certainly wasn't the first as most everybody who read it in the 1990's returned a similar verdict. Many tourists indeed were relieved to get their hands on it for something didn't quite seem right about Harry Potter to them and they didn't know what it was. Now they do. 

 

Why, you must ask yourself, haven't we, the publishers, been stopped? Why haven't we been dragged into court with the rest of the unfortunates who have fallen victim to the Rowling oligarchy and its merry band of copyright holders? Could it be that the last people on earth they want to see in court are the publishers and author of ".. Li Po? A better question may be - how come you, the reader, are only now finding out about this? Why hasn't it appeared in newspapers everywhere? We tried.

 

The answer however is simple. The embarrassment not just for those directly involved but for the British establishment in general would be colossal to put it mildly. What would the neighbours think? Who in the British media (or Irish for that matter) would be that brave? We found no takers; leaving us to wonder who on earth they think we are. Would a self-serving misperception of us give anybody the right to take what they want from another writer's work and pass it off as their own? On that question we leave you to reflect.