Aged sixteen, having just read Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 'Crime and Punishment', I decided I had two choices in life: start a band or write a novel.  Being an impatient teenager I opted for the latter, thinking it would be the quickest and easiest route to becoming an 'artist'.  Now, twenty-four years later, having just published my first novel, The Pied Patron, I reckon it would have been a lot faster and a hell of a lot less lonely to have learnt the guitar!