First edition of my first book, Milk, Sulphate and Alby Starvation, from 1987. This copy's looking very worn now. I wrote it on an old orange Olivetti portable typewriter with a broken carriage return. After typing each full line, I had to manually push the carriage back to the left side of the page. It took me four and a half weeks to write the book and it was never revised much after that. It was the third novel I'd completed but the first one that was any good. I posted it off to a literary agent I picked at random from the Writer's and Artist's yearbook and surprisingly she accepted it right away. However, it took her three and a half years to find a publisher. I never liked the cover very much but I was so pleased to be published I didn't care at the time.