I’m a devoted fan, Mr. Cornwell. I have read a broad selection of historical fiction writers and you stand out as my clear favorite. I always eagerly look forward to the release of your next book. It has long been a curious mystery to me how we ever got from the mead halls of the Danes and Saxons to the socially corseted gentry of Jane Austen. I can see that transition in a very satisfying way in your span of stories between The Warlord trilogy and Gallows Thief. Absolutely fascinating stuff! Thank you for making the journey so enthralling. For me, and I would suppose many fans of historical fiction, there is an element of searching for clues about myself in stories of people like my distant ancestors. I realize that Derfel, Uhtred, and Sharpe are intentionally larger than life, as they need to be in order to carry the frenzied pace of the stories, but along with the vicarious thrills that their heroics provide I feel that we’re getting a glimpse of live history delivered in a way that is so much more real than what we can get from sterilized history textbooks. I’d love to see more emphasis on work like yours as a companion to history textbooks in schools. I was amazed to find that you were able to do such a fine job on your very first novel. I would love to spend my workdays weaving these kinds of tales, but I expect that I have way too much to learn about the craft to attempt a novel yet. I have been writing short stories in hopes of learning how to begin, briefly develop and to end a story effectively. I understand that a novel is not the same sort of beast as a short story, but I hope the practice is not a waste of time. What do you think of this approach? -Bradford Robnett