I have enjoyed everything you have written particularly The Starbuck books although perhaps surprisingly given my surname I have never read a lot of history re the American Civil War and it was the quality of the writing which made them particularly enjoyable to me.However in terms of writing quality the Burning Land which I am reading now is very good.I have an animus against the way bookstores and some book reviewers classify fiction into genres and how people can be prejudiced against science fiction ,historical novels etcetera and how in some stores there is a category called -Literature-as if anything else is not.I regard The Burning Land as a literary work which apart from telling a rattling good story has a fair sprinkling of philosophy re human motivation, religion etc.I retired early suffering from ill health at the age of 52 from the legal practice which I founded and for 2 years studied creative writing at Glasgow University which I loved partly because I was allowed to challenge much of what might be called their literary canon-that a literary novel could do without plot,action,description of place and character etc.It appears to me that there is an influential body of writers and others including some eminent teachers of creative writing who propose that only a stream of consciousness novel can be classed as literature and having read some of the novels of some of the proponents of that view I came to question whether they were capable of creating a plot or depicting characters or places or if they had anything worth writing about at all.There are people who have good stories but who cannot write but I feel that there are those who can write but who have nothing to say to justify a novel yet who still influence how books are categorised and what books receive literary awards. I am pleased that a historical novel has won the Booker.Have you ever yearned for a Booker or Pulitzer or are they irrelevant.I read all kinds of fiction including of course award winning novels some of which I enjoy and others which regardless of the reputation of the authors were a waste of trees.You may not have won a Booker yet but none of your books was a waste of trees.
Keith Pinkerton