Dear Bernard,

congrats on Death of Kings & The Fort. I’m a fan of all your novels but like many love the history novels. I’ve purchased & read all your books in my home country Australia & am now attempting to listen to as many of them as I can as audio books. This is proving problematic as there does not appear to be a coherant policy on what is released. I don’t like and therefore won’t listen to abridged versions of books. So far the Grail Quest and the Arthur novels are not available in full form audiobooks so I am denied the pleasure of listening to them. Irritatingly Lords of the North & Sword Song in the Saxon stories are only available in abridged form whilst all the others are in full format. Some of these perplexingly are available in full form elsewhere but not Australia. I understand there may be publishing areas but a long form book is a different product to a short form book and if a local publisher doesn’t wish or is unable to offer that product I should be able to purchase it elsewhere. Currently through Audible this is not the case. The same thing happens with the Sharpe series. The 1st & 3rd books are available unabridged with the same reader but the 2nd book is only available abridged with a different reader. I whinge about this because I’ve found that listening to the books adds an additional element. I listened to the Starbuck novels in sequence and with an American reader giving the characters accents it was fantastic. I’m an artist so I spend a lot of time on my own in the studio so your books are company. If you could get the inconsistencies in the audiobook range sorted it would be marvelous. I read Death of Kings last summer – my Xmas present and am about to purchase it as an audiobook. My favorite reader for the Saxon stories is Tom Selwood. I’ve read & listened to Ken Follet’s Pillars and enjoyed it immensely. I was disappointed with the mini series. In contrast the Game of Thrones TV series is great & does justice to the books
which I’m currently listening to. I agree with some of your fans that the Saxon stories would be great cable TV with each book corresponding to 12 episodes. Each Starbuck book could be 22 episodes. I like Sean Bean but I’m not convinced that that series has done justice to the Sharpe books. It looks like it needed more money & someone different for Sharpe & Harper. The first book I listened to was Sharpe’s Eagle read by William Gaminara – years ago ( it was on cassette) & I still think he’s an excellent reader. Anyhow I came on to this site because I wanted to see what comes next. I hope your well & busy writing. Cheers

Adam Fisher