Good news! My short story My Best Friend Chloe has been published in issue 28 of the wonderful Gutter magazine.

Gutter is an award-winning, high quality, printed journal for fiction and poetry from writers living in Scotland and around the world. I was over the moon to be selected for publication, and even more excited to be asked to read at the launch event at Typewronger Books as part of the Edinburgh BookFringe.

I wrote My Best Friend Chloe during my Master’s and, in the years since, have put it through many rounds of edits and additions. It’s been a story that I’ve always loved and dreamed of seeing published, so I was delighted that it got picked up by Gutter – especially as I’d more recently made it just a tiny bit more creepy (and better!).

The story is about Instagram, friendship and jealousy – what happens when your best friend becomes an influencer and starts to leave everything you shared behind. You’d be happy for them, wouldn’t you? Or maybe you’d start to look for their flaws, to wait for a moment that they looked ugly, to like the most hurtful Instagram comment from your secret account…

Here’s a sneak peek of the opening lines.

My best friend Chloe is an Instagram star.

The last time I checked she has 363,598 followers.

It goes up in bursts and waves. I could come back and she’ll have gained just a couple of new followers, but sometimes it’s hundreds – or worse, thousands.

I didn’t always look at her profile so often, keeping tabs on her account and her followers. Lately, however, I’ve found myself searching a few times a day, my fingers gravitating towards her like an itch I have to scratch.

I want to see if she’s posted. Is she wearing something we bought when we were together? How many likes did it get? Where is she now? It’s funny to think that 363,597 other people think that they know Chloe. Sometimes I wonder if she even knows herself.

A huge thank you again to Gutter magazine. It was brilliant (and only slightly nerve-wracking!) to be able to read my story at the launch event last week. My first public reading!

You can read My Best Friend Chloe in the latest edition of Gutter which is available to buy or subscribe to online, and to pick up at various bookstores around Scotland.