This was my original piece, written in 1999. I’d barely written anything and gave up. It was still a story with a writer who hated his day job and who tried to become a fiction author. It was awful, though, with glimpses of potential. Kitty was my late Irish granny’s name, so I was considering it for a pen name at the time.

I’d lost the original manuscript (was only a few pages anyway) and started from scratch in 2014. Named the book after a comic strip I doodled in the mid-90s, and the new title (Life in the ‘Cosm) captured the essence of the current story quite well.  The Krystal Towers became the apartment complex Virj lives in with Sonny and Splot.

My ma found the original pages after I’d finished the first draft of ‘Cosm. I refused to read them until I was finished the book. When I did look at them, I cringed, but still laughed in spots. I’m glad I’ve improved as a writer since then. I suppose we were all more terribler once, right? 😉