Although I read and enjoyed the short stories of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke as a teenager (and read Interzone now and again throughout my twenties), it never really occurred to me to write short stories myself. Proper writers wrote novels, so that's what I was going to write too. But at the beginning of 2003, when I was finding it hard going writing my second novel (partly due to having two extremely young children to look after), and inspired by reading some of Greg Egan's short stories, I decided to try my hand at the genre. I joined the T-Party, a London-based writers' group specialising in genre short stories, and started writing!