I was born in Glasgow in 1968 out of a marriage that had crossed the lines of the city's chasmic and tediously enduring religious divide. My mum was a Catholic, my dad an atheist (or merely "non-Catholic" to the devout, to whom further distinction matters not), and it invaluably shaped my perspective that I was not so much caught in the middle as rather an immune and amused spectator upon the absurdity that is Glaswegian sectarianism.

During much of my youth and adolescence I was also a (sadly not immune and definitely not amused) spectator upon the absurdity that is St Mirren Football Club, which, combined with an unhealthily youthful fascination with Terry Gilliam cartoons, shaped a compelling attraction to the bizarre and grotesque.I don't really know where the writing came from. I didn't declare that "when I grow up I want to be a novelist" and ask for a Fisher Price typewriter for my Christmas. I wrote stories (with self-illustrated covers, natch) for my own amusement from the age of eight, and when I was able to face the reality that professional football was maybe just slightly unlikely as a long-term career option, doing what I was good at seemed a natural ambition.

I exasperated English teachers by habitually responding to one-page "composition" assignments with 2,000 word short stories, the content of which would have guaranteed weeks of "counselling" and psychotherapy these days. Back then, it generally passed without much comment, but for my once being hauled before the head of the English department, who was less convinced of the suitability of necrophilia as subject matter for 14-year-olds in a Catholic secondary school. Less judgementally, my own teacher declared that "you lose all sense of responsibility when you've got a pen in your hand".

One for the headstone, I've always thought.

In 1985 I went to Glasgow University to study Film & TV, English and Theatre, eventually concentrating on the latter two for honours. I dutifully observed the extra-curricular obligation of joining a three-chords-and-an-attitude band as singer. We were called Blindfold and lasted three gigs - in a more civilised society we would have been publicly executed after the first one.

Later on I became involved with the university newspaper as film critic and later co-editor. This had the dual benefits of allowing me to interview the aforementioned Terry Gilliam, and helping me to get a job with Screen International in London. I worked for Screen for four years, eventually becoming chief sub-editor, tolerating the bluster of editor Oscar Moore for the dubious perk of annual trips to film markets in Cannes, LA and Milan.

I resigned from Screen in 1993 with the intentions of escaping London and concentrating on my writing. My wife and I moved to Edinburgh, where I worked freelance as a sub-editor, film critic and football columnist for the Scotsman and the Evening News, as well as copy-editing the odd book for the British Film Institute and contributing to The Absolute Game, an alternative football magazine.

On Saturdays I am usually to be found in some desolate spot that Vladimir and Estragon would have abandoned, wrapped in several layers of clothing, watching St Mirren and attempting to fend off the resultant existential angst. Of an evening I take out my frustrations in semi-competent bouts of virtual combat on Quake 2 Freeze Tag and Quake3 CTF servers. And to anyone who would wonder aloud whether playing these games makes one violent, I say "Fuck off or I'll gib you with my railgun".

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