My short story ‘A quiet afternoon on the bay’ is part of this year’s collection in Going Down Swinging #38.

I remember the first copy of GDS I bought back when I was young, wide-eyed and recently moved away for university. I thought it was the absolute beez-kneez and – a bit like a wanker – was so inspired I filled in all the blank spaces around the poems and stories with words of my own. Then I clutched it to my chest, much like Gollum or a cast member from The never-ending story, and whispered, dramatically, ‘one day, you will be miiiiii-iiine.’

It took 13 years, but I got there. So when my copy arrives in the mail next week I suppose the only thing to do is to extract it carefully, pull it to my bosom, and whisper, dramatically, ‘I told you, you will be miiiii-iiiine’, then lurch-scurry back into my eery cave-dungeon for another decade or so.