In 2001, I was waiting to hear whether the BBC were going to accept the amended proposal for Heritage. Most writers this close to getting their first novel published might think about contacting agents or publishers, to try and build some kind of momentum to sell the book after that. I decided to make a concerted effort to get some more fan fiction published.
To be fair to myself, at this point in my life my only real ambition was to write Doctor Who. I’d pretty much decided to leave playwriting behind me, and had been focusing almost exclusively on my own fan fiction series Back From the Dead. I couldn’t try to get another BBC book until they’d agreed to publish the first, and I had no idea who to contact at Big Finish. So that left the fanzines: after my stories in the charity anthologies of 2000, and being visible online, two editors got in touch and asked if I had any stories they could use. I wrote them one each, both on similar themes: Sepia went to the editor of the now defunct Circus; Staring into the Abyss went to Matt Grady for the Doctor Who Information Network’s Myth Makers fanzine.
Over the next ten years, I developed something of a relationship with DWIN: I’d first heard of them because someone I can only assume was Michael J Doran handed me a copy of their publication Enlightenment at the Gallifrey convention. That particular issue had Michael’s review of Heritage in it, but also made mention of their fiction sister magazine Myth Makers. I ended up writing four stories for them over the next ten years: every time they ask, if I can, I always try to write them something. Their collections are always worth having, but more than that: I owe them.