Hello Mr Cornwell,

First, thank you very much for Richard Sharpe. I’ve read through the Hornblower series a dozen times in the last ten years (discovered them in my twenties), and only recently came upon the Sharpe books, which have something of the same spirit and are as satisfying and addictive!

Second, thank you very much for your writing advice posted to your website. I took a lot of heart from it, having struggled, on and off, with my own writing.

Third, I am most curious in how you went about breaking down the books and making your charts before setting out to write Sharpe’s Eagle, and was hoping you might perhaps have a few more to share about the topic. I suppose this question is loaded with the same fear-of-doing-things-wrongly that has plagued my fitful attempts at novel length fiction, and that is perhaps enough of a lesson for me from writing this note to you! But, if you can find a bit of patience for my temerity, and willingness to just go into a bit more detail of how you went about it, I’d be grateful. I’ve made some attempts myself, but can’t seem to find a good way to codify things in a way that is meaningful and might serve me as a sort of guide and map to moving forward…

Thank you!

– Gregory