I recently wrote a short, 4-page blog about my two sibling dogs. I wrote a dream sequence in which the male dog dreamed he was a war-dog fighting along side a great warrior around Alfred’s time. (Gee, I can’t imagine why I chose THAT time-frame!) Although I tried NOT to take it there, the character in the storyline kept sounding eerily like that of Uhtred! In fact, I could not find a way to NOT make the warrior’s character sound like “an” Uhtred! Uhtred is absolutely the quintessential anti-hero-hero that everyone would love and want to be like (if they lived during that time, of course). No matter what I did, my storyline sounded like it could have been an excerpt from Uhtred’s life…only with a pair of dogs along his side him in one of the battles, fighting for Alfred. Perhaps my next blog will be along the lines of one of my dogs dreaming of fighting along-side a highly skilled leader of light troops. A field-commissioned officer who happens to be a most dangerous swordsman and expert marksman fighting for the English in the Napoleonic wars… Bah! Overdose of Bernard Cornwell-style inspiration! As always, thanks for your books. I find myself going back to them often, and have now read each and every one. Cheers, Shawson Hebert