Dear Bernard Cornwell, I recently picked up your Saxon Stories series to read and I must say I thoroughly enjoyed reading them! I hope there will be more in the series! I am currently partaking in writing a piece of historical writing for one of my units for my university degree as historical fiction always fascinates me. I have to write about a Viking for my final piece, as I love that period of history, and of course I have used historical facts as well as fictional aspects to make it come alive. As a point of interest therefore, I was just wondering how you yourself like to write your novels. Do you like to research your period on what you are writing about first? Or do you personally prefer to write your piece first, delving into the deep end, and worry about all the historical facts later? For myself, I like to use a combination of both, a little research, and then write creatively before researching some more to check it all makes sense. Thank you for your time, Meg.
research never really stops; I'm continually researching - if not for the book I'm currently writing, then for the one I'll write next, or that I'll write a year or two from now. I've been reading history since I was a child, and all that reading contributes to what I do. However - when thinking about a new book I'll spend some months reading in a very concentrated way, though how long and how much depends on the book. When I wrote The Fort, set in the American Revolution, though I know the period well, I still needed six or seven months of reading. I've spent a lifetime reading about mediaeval warfare, but the detailed research for Azincourt began about a year before I started writing that one. I probably spent at least two years on dedicated research before writing the Arthur books. I don't spend too much time researching Sharpe these days, partly because I've spent forty odd years reading and researching the period, so much of it is now second nature.