Hello. How are you doing? We never hang out any more. I miss you. I miss us. Everyone’s just so busy, that’s the problem. But we have to find make the time. Soon. We should get the whole gang together. We can drink Bloody Marys like we used to and talk about the old times. Do you ever think about the old times?

Do you remember how it used to be when we were together?

Once, we drank Bloody Marys together, just the two of us, just the once.

We didn’t have so many commitments then, any of us. So much work, so much keeping up with everyone to do. But we tried harder as well. Let’s not tell ourselves that it was just easy. We used to try, that’s the difference between then and now. One of the differences, I should say. I know there are others.

Now I only ever see you at weddings, haha, it seems like, only at all these weddings, though there can’t be many left now.

Then when will I see you?

When I think of those times, the times when the whole gang was together, do you know what it is that I think of? this is what I think of:

We’re sitting at some table, the whole group, or some configuration of the group, at one of those countless tables that we sat around and endlessly chattered, as we came together and played games and shared meals and celebrated birthdays, as we drank wine, argued about politics and had falling outs that didn’t matter even as they were happening. And in this aggregate memory of who knows how many nights over the course of, god, it’s upsetting even to guess how many years…, what I think of is the two of us. Though we’re not sitting beside each other, maybe we’re even at opposite ends of the table. But somethingsomething has been saidbeen said, some comment by Laura about a boy of hers, or by Faisal about that dog, that fucking dog of his, and I’ve looked up at you and found you already looking at me. Or maybe nothing at all. Maybe I’ve just fallen into a pleasant red wine slump of contentment and gratitude, where I’m happy to be in this place with these people, and I’ve looked up and found your eyes already waiting for me. And you smile, and it’s like lying in bed in a stretch of sunlight on a freshly laundered Sunday morning.

And you roll your eyes and smile.

It’s like lying in bed in a stretch of sunlight on a freshly laundered Sunday morning.

I think of those moments, how we’d hold them between us, until the sling of our gaze would pull apart, and the moment would fall.

We knew each other’s thoughts without ever having to speak them. We were just held in the curve of the same wave, and we lived there for years, without ever thinking it was something special. It’s only now that we’ve been carried apart that I realise just how special it was, and I begin to worry that I’ll never have it again.

What do you worry about, I wonder?, whenever I take a moment to check on the pixel-thin version of you: the denatured, diminished social media shadow that is all of you that I’ve left myself. That only makes me miss you more.

My name is Alan Alan Trotter. You can contact me at alantrotter@gmail.com, or sign up for my newsletter. (I send the newsletter once or twice a year. It will tell you about things I write – where to find them and that sort of thing.)

You can also follow me (if you want, there is really no obligation) on social media. I am on Twitter and Instagram, and also Mastodon, because why not, pile them on I suppose.

I am yrs years old. Unless I am dead. There is a snippet of code which calculates my current age to display it above. It has no way of knowing if I am still alive. It just presumeshopes, as I hope, and maybe you hope too – if you know me; depending how you feel about me.

I grew up in Aberdeen, Scotland. Now I live in Edinburgh with my partner and our dog, Sylvie Sylvie the Miniature Schnauzer. A photo? Of Sylvie? Oh, haha, I don’t know if I have any. Oh wait yes I do.

It’s beautiful here. Before this we were in BrixtonBrixton, South London for eight years. (My partner and I. We didn’t have a dog yet.) But you know how itLondon is. It’s expensive, is how it is.

I have a PhD in English Literature from the University of Glasgow. It was funded by the AHRCthe Arts and Humanities Research Council. Without that funding it couldn’t have happened, so thank you, AHRC – and you, UK tax payers. (Maybe you are a UK tax payer? If so, thank you.)

My thesis was on writing that makes unusual use of its unusual form. This website might be was an example. Along with the writerwriters B.S. Johnson, and Alasdair Gray and others. I made a short film about B.S. Johnson, too. You can watch it on YouTube.

I write fictionwrite fiction. My first novel, Muscle, is out now published by Faber & Faber. It’s available to buy (you can get it from your local independent bookshop if you have one or from Foyles or Waterstones or Blackwells or Hive or Wordery or get a signed copy direct from me or you can, if you really have to, get it from from Amazon), and people have, unavoidably,, happily, I suppose, had opinions about it. They have said things like: ‘Dazzling… Trotter is a very fine writer and Muscle is an unadulterated ultraviolent delight.’ 1

And: ‘Muscle turns the noir novel on its head… A unique debut.’ 2

And: ‘Reads like a tragi-comic mash-up of Elmore Leonard and Samuel Beckett… Trotter is undoubtedly a writer to watch.’ 3

And: ‘Essential reading… Bold, blackly comic and satisfying, this page-turner’s sure got smarts.’ 4 The Sunday Telegraph

As well as: ‘This is a remarkable, radical, historical novel… You are practically strapped into a broken chair in a smoky, dingy room and forced to watch a writer at play, to watch his imagination, and what imaginations he gives his characters, zoom.’ 5

And also: ‘Amid the violence and vendettas, it’s the intricate, razor-sharp prose that really hits you… Reading Muscle is like being being thwacked in the stomach by Marlon Brando after he has just recited the works of Milton from memory.’ 6

In addition to which: ‘A novel of strange ennui and sudden horror, of stories within stories within stories… When it all converges, it does so with the elegance of an unpicked safe.’ 7

Other people who have said nice things about Muscle include Daisy Johnson, Nikesh Shukla, Kevin Barry, Jess Kidd and David Keenan.

Daisy Johnson author of the Man Booker-shortlisted Everything Under said: ‘Muscle unfolds like a series of Russian dolls, each more Beckettian, winding and wonderful than the one before. Compelling enough to read in one gulping go.’

The editor and author Nikesh Shukla (The Good Immigrant, The One Who Wrote Destiny...) called itsaid: ‘A dazzling, muscular debut that is as gritty as it is absurd, Muscle manages to surprise at every turn.’

Kevin Barry, winner of the Goldsmiths Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award, was good enough to say: ‘What a rare and accomplished debut this is – it teases out classic noir riffs and set-ups but in a language sinuous enough, and with invention ripe enough, to make them feel new.’

Jess Kidd, winner of the Costa Short Story Award, author of Himself & The Hoarder: ‘Muscle bowled me over. The language of it – the complete boldness and control. A striking debut from a fierce talent.’

David Keenan, who wrote This is Memorial Device and For the Good Times, called it: ‘A breathless, breakneck debut; a dizzying amalgam of exploded hard-boiled-isms, modernist acrobatics and halucinatory sci-fi, propelled by relentlessly inventive prose.’

I also write short stories.

Some of them are available to read.

‘The Taking of the Birds’ I wrote for Somesuch Stories. It startsgoes: This is it:

‘Godspeed’ was published in Under the Influence. This is how it opensgoes if you want to read it here:

You can buy ‘A Hospital for Boys’ as an ebook. It’s a horror story and pay-what-you-want. I get an email when someone buys it, telling me how much they paid. I really don’t mind when they pay nothing. I’m just glad someone’s interested in reading it. I just thought that you might want to know about the email I get.

‘All this Rotting’ is a digital short story for phones. (‘Mesmerising’ Big Issue. ‘Nauseating’ Irish Times.) It was published by Editions at Play and cost about £3, but now appears to be free (??).