By the time I was 15, everything changed—I had a computer. No more typewriters or scavenging old magazines for pictures. With a keyboard and the infinite possibilities of digital design at my fingertips, I was unstoppable.

That’s when I founded Hostile Magazine. The name wasn’t just a catchy title—it was a declaration of who I was at the time. I was hostile to the world around me, to the endless doubt and disbelief I’d faced growing up. Most of all, I was still furious that no one seemed to believe in aliens yet.

When I was 15, I discovered something that would blow my creative obsession wide open: Quake. It wasn’t just a game; it was a canvas for chaos, and I had a paintbrush made of code.

I started messing around with the game, diving into its files and hacking it to bits. Before long, I’d customised everything—the characters, the levels, even the dialogue. My friends and I turned death matches into full-blown comedy routines, battling against avatars we’d created to represent ourselves, complete with all our ridiculous trademark sayings.

I was hooked. The day after The Brackla Tattler launched, I decided I couldn’t stop there. Why wait for a competition when I could make my own newspaper? I got straight to work, fuelled by the rush of creating something from nothing.

This time, the front-page story was even bigger—or at least, it felt that way to me: “Riot at Strangeways Prison!” I was 11 years old, covering prison riots like a seasoned journalist.