Dear Bernard, I grew up on your Sharpe books & you have been one of my favourite authors ever since. My favourite books of yours are the Warlord chronicles. I just love the fantastic characters you created & have carried an obsession for the King Arthur myth ever since I was given an Enid Blyton rendition of Le Morte d’Arthur as a young boy. It is so refreshing to read an Arthur story with characters so real you feel you were almost there. I especially love the portrayal of Lancelot as a coward- a stroke of genius. I am now 28 and one day I hope to be a writer too. If I may however I would like to ask you for some advice. I do try and write but I have two major problems- 1) I have several ideas for stories I would like to write, but can’t seem to decide which one to write first. Do you have the same problem? I am constantly deciding one idea is better than the other and then moving on to another one.

How much do you plan your stories before you start writing? Some I have only a basic concept, but some I have gone as far as mapping out the entire plot, sometimes if I do this in too much detail however I seem to lose some enthusiasm for this story. Help!

2) Anything I write or have written I scrutinise every word. Sometimes I write something and I am happy with it, then when I return to it I hate every word! Other times it takes me hours to write a single sentence because I repeatedly change the words used or the sentence completely. How do you avoid this? I think sometimes I just need to try and tell the story in the plainest language I can, but I think this is one of the easiest things to say, but the hardest things to do! Thanks Bernard for inspiring me & providing me with half a lifetime of fantastic historical fiction so far. I heard a rumour that Azincourt may be adapted into a film? I wish that would come true, as well as the Warlord chronicles of course, but I say that with trepidation as I would be devastated if the film didn’t live up to the books (which let’s face it, they rarely do!) Thanks again, Andrew Weaver