Music has always been the soundtrack to my life. From the moment I first pressed play on a cassette player, it was like opening a door to a whole new dimension. Growing up, Nirvana was the band for me—a raw, unapologetic voice that spoke to the angsty teenager I was. So, when my parents surprised me with tickets to see Nirvana on their upcoming April 12th show in Cardiff, I was ecstatic. I remember jumping around the room, disbelief and excitement colliding in a way only a teenager can feel.

At the time, Duke Nukem 3D was the game, a chaotic, over-the-top playground of action and humour. But for me, playing wasn’t enough—I wanted to create.

One day, the idea struck me: what if I turned my school into a map for Duke Nukem? I’ll admit, it was a bold and slightly mischievous idea, but the thought of navigating those familiar halls with explosions and alien mayhem was too tempting to pass up.

Before I knew it, Hostile Magazine was more than just a personal project. It became something bigger—a product. I started distributing copies around school, and before long, it wasn’t just my classmates reading it. I managed to sell advertising space to local businesses, earning a bit of cash in the process.

Looking back, it might have been my most lucrative venture to date, especially considering how naturally it all came together. I wasn’t just creating anymore—I was running a business, even if I didn’t fully realise it at the time.

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.

By the time I was 11, I was part of a global competition to create a school newspaper. And thus, The Brackla Tattler was born—a journalistic masterpiece (or so we thought) with a name that suggested the kind of scandal and intrigue we were determined to uncover.

The inaugural issue had a front-page story so wild it could’ve been straight out of a crime thriller. The headline? “Body Parts Found in Bags Across City!”

When I first woke up, I was in Bridgend, South Wales—a quiet, unassuming place where nothing out of the ordinary seemed to happen. But even as a kid, I was obsessed with two things: aliens and making magazines.

The alien obsession stemmed from my first truly traumatising memory. I was walking home from school one day with a friend, chatting about whatever kids chat about, when they casually dropped a bombshell: "Aliens are already on Earth, hiding in human bodies."

Hey everyone! It’s Heather Vahn, and I am beyond thrilled to share some incredible news with you—I am officially stepping behind the camera as a director for Mean Bitch Productions! This is a huge milestone in my career, and I couldn’t be more excited to take on this new role with a studio that has such a strong reputation in the industry.