I have written maybe a dozen short stories over the years. Not all came off, but three have been published and I thought a fourth was interesting enough to put out.

Dugga Dugga Dugga – the first story I wrote – appeared in the Winter 1994/5 issue of Metropolitan, a now vanished literary magazine. It also won joint first in a Radio Clyde competition – judged by Janice Galloway no less.

A Story by Borges was published by Chapman in 1997. It is very loosely based on fact – I did have a Borges-fan girlfriend who I’m sure told me Borges had written such a story. I might have another go at it in due course; this is the published version.

1 Samuel 17 – a re-telling of David and Goliath story – was in Southlight 5 in 2009. I’d picked it up and put it down several times – again, I might have another go.

I just found (to my relief – tucked away in an old email) my only recent story – A Career, written in 2018. It’s partly a bit of near-future dystopia, partly a chewing on my ambivalence about the heavier end of female combat sports (I have an MMA habit). Also a coll-narrative experiment. Re-reading it, I’m more pleased with it than I thought I’d be. My apologies to Glaswegian MMA fighter Joanne Wood (nee Calderwood) whose nickname I lifted but who bears no other resemblance.