'Used to Be' review

I've recently been moaning about the lottery of competitions, but of course I'm thrilled whenever I get anywhere in one. Mind you, when I do I tend to find it's with stories I feel less satisfied with: stories in which the 'message' is too obvious, or simple, or the form too conventional, for my own purposes. It's no surprise, I suppose: there's always going to be a danger that when you're trawling through hundreds or thousands of stories, the more obvious things are going to rise to the surface. So I was staggered and delighted when 'Used to Be', which I consider one of my more ambitious stories, won third prize in the 2008 Raymond Carver competition, and I'm now pretty chuffed to have found this review of it by Rio Liang in the Carve blog's Spotlight series.