MUSSELBURGH author Alex Brown has been “blown away” with the support shown for the official launch of his new book next weekend.

He was hoping to mark the release of Hit Me back in June but this was postponed due to some delays and then the FIFA World Cup, trades holidays and Edinburgh Festival.

Mr Brown, an ex-boxer, is now looking forward to welcoming invited guests to the launch event at The Biscuit Factory on Anderson Place, Edinburgh, next Friday (September 7).

Hit Me is his first novel – a dark comic thriller about an ex-boxer who is wrongly diagnosed with cancer and ends up in the fight of his life.

Mr Brown, who owns Ideal Flooring Solutions in Musselburgh and Tranent’s Bronx Boxing Gym, said: “I am really looking forward to the big day as it’s been a long time coming.”

Davie Martin from Radio Saltire will provide the music at the launch, which will be compered by Bradley Welsh of Holyrood Boxing Gym, who had a role in the hit film Trainspotting 2. There will be readings from the book and a question-and-answer session.

Mr Brown said: “I am delighted with the amount of people who have accepted invites and there are lots of friends from East Lothian coming to show their support. It’s pretty humbling. I am blown away with the response.”

The book will be available on the website hitmebook.co.uk, online from Waterstones book store and from Ideal Flooring Solutions at 99 High Street.

It is also being stocked at The White House, Craigmillar, which the pub in the book is based on.

‘Hit Me’ tells the story of Barnabas Wild, an outgoing, happy character, who has been lucky in everything he has done.

The main character is named after a clergyman who served for 30 years at the former Tranent Methodist Church, which was transformed into the Bronx Boxing Gym.

Known as Barney to his many friends, the book’s central character is given less than a month to live following a cancer test result.

With a debilitating fear of illness and hospitals, he cannot face the slow agony of dying in a cancer ward, which he knows only too well, as his parents and young brother all died this way.

Devastated and unable to bring himself to suicide, he contacts a childhood friend, now a crime boss, to have a hit put on him.

But Barney receives an urgent call from a consultant at the hospital who explains an error in the test results. He does not have cancer.

Barney rushes to have the hit taken off but the crime boss has gone missing.

Thirty per cent of all pre-orders of the book will go to Marie Curie, which provides care and support for people living with terminal illness and their families.

The charity helped Mr Brown’s mum June, who died of cancer in 2009, aged 66. He also lost his dad to the disease in 2014, aged 72.