During my time at Glasgow University I was lucky enough that From Glasgow to Saturn, the Glasgow University creative writing magazine, was willing to publish two of my stories, The Drunk in issue 28 and Hammond in issue 30. Both are extremely dear to me (as is the magazine) as this was the first time I ever got anything published anywhere. Both are probably an example of me trying to find my own voice by borrowing from the voices of a multitude of authors that I admire. Both include a murder, as many first stories do. Killing someone is just such a brilliant way of fooling the reader into thinking that what happens in the story actually matters. Without a murder these stories would just be a series of events dictated in the first person. It took me a while to build up the courage to see if I could make readers care about the characters without killing (or at least threatening to kill) at least one of them. Some days I still have my doubts.
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