A Film About Billy

A Film About Billy is a hybrid novel that alternates between comics and prose to tell the story of Collin Heart, a 17-year-old editing a documentary about his dead friend during an international suicide epidemic. After high school, Collin leaves the military base where he grew up to work on his film. Collin grapples with personal tragedy, but fails to see his role in the larger threat. He doesn't connect his family history and his childhood at the base with the odd clips he finds as he sifts through footage of his friend. Meanwhile the human population is being decimated not by a virus, drug, or cataclysm, but by the cumulative effects of independent decisions made by millions of ordinary people. And while a somewhat numbed Collin resolves to stop the epidemic by simply continuing to live, the actions of a desperate government may kill the last person on earth who really really really doesn't want to die.