About this time of year in 1997--16 years ago, although that barely seems possible--I sat down in front of my very first PC. I was determined that, having run out of excuses, I would write the novel I had been promising myself for years. I had some vivid characters and the outline of the plot.
That Friday evening, after a day at work and a light dinner, I wrote the opening chapter of The Zael Inheritance. (It transpired, in a process that all novelists will understand, that I'd actually written Chapter 7).
