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Short Story Anniversary!
February 2008’s edition of the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine includes – as many other editions have – one of my short stories, 'False Colours'. Since my stories have appeared in anthologies over the world, this might not seem a particular cause for celebration – after all, I’ve been shortlisted for the CWA Short Story Dagger, and earlier this year, nominated for a Barry Award. But break out the bubbly I will – because it effectively marks the 44th anniversary of my first being published.
Yes, way back in 1964 I was published in Very Serious magazine written by and for teenagers: 'Sixth Form Opinion'. Most of the contributors were from schools at the upper end of the market, St Paul’s Girls, Manchester Grammar, Bedales – but there was I, a girl from deeply unfashionable Oldbury, waving the flag for the public sector with a short story called "It Can’t be Today".
 To quote The Manchester Guardian (yes, SFO managed to get itself reviewed in that august newspaper), "Disputations about the existence of God stand column by column with black and white and mildly hysterical rantings about overt sexuality and bestiality transforming mindless teenage morons into states of teenage ecstasy. Turn again and we have a scholarly amble over the history pages of medicine together with a piece of due homage to the Quartercentenary on staging the four and thirty works over the centuries. All pleasantly done, but perhaps overdone. Turn, however, to the gem of a brief story by Judith Cutler (Oldbury Grammar School) and one is in a very different realm of prose. With one piece of this quality almost everything else… begins to look a little contrived and overwritten."
Thank you, Ian Finch. If it hadn’t been for you my work might never have reached the eye of my first agent, Murray Pollinger, and none of my twenty-odd novels and countless commercial short stories would have been written. If only there was a magazine out there now with similar opportunities for young writers…
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