I began my literary career with short stories. Or rather, I began with monologues. I wrote them for myself and my friends so that we could trot off and perform in auditions without exhausting the, if I recall correctly, 12 available bits for women that were in any way kind and supportive to the would-be thespian. Once I had become a permanently resting ex-drama-and-theatre-studies student (easily done) I also became someone who sat up in bed to keep warm and made small, voice-based things which eventually became short stories. There was a lot of becoming – that often happens with the arts. And eventually, way back when there were barely Amstrads, I banged together my first anthology of short stories and a publisher actually inflicted it on a waiting world, rather than asking me to save it until after I'd managed to produce something more financially prudent like a novel, or some porn.
