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Click – and that was that.

When I say I made my living writing stories and scripts, what I mean is that I made a pretty poor living, and that I wrote digital, downloadable short stories and audio scripts for existing intellectual properties. I created what the industry calls auxiliaries, or officially licensed story products, or, in language an actual, real person might use, tie-in material.

For some admirers of Dr Stanley Quinn, this was an unthinkable, abhorrent thing. It made me the tone-deaf kid who’d jump on stage and belt out ‘Ten Green Bottles’ at the end of a virtuoso piano recital. These people always got the same look in their eyes when they heard what I did for a living. For the love of God, it said, if you can’t do it properly, don’t do it at all. Don’t you know who your father was? It hurt me, of course. It hurt me every time. It still does, though mostly in a dull, itchy-scar-tissue sort of a way, as the years have rolled on by. Truth is, I’m not so bothered any more. These people are not the gatekeepers, judges and tastemakers I once saw them as. They’re refugees from my father’s time, a bunch of ageing Bruce Willises from The Sixth Sense, who can’t see that their whole world has ended, and who don’t have the first clue about the world we’re living in now.