Imagine a civil war, the very worst kind of war. Friends fighting friends, brothers on opposite sides and even fathers estranged from sons! The people of “poor America” have been poised at the precipice of ultimate loss or ultimate victory for twenty odd years! It must be knackering, I know it is for me.
Mr Cornwell I am a great fan, I first came to your novels when I was a teenager in too Dungeons and Dragons and fantasy (it was all the rage back then) I tried your King Arthur trilogy having become interested in the story by reading David Gemmell’s Ghost King and Last Sword of Power. I loved your take, it was realistic and in period. You avoided the trap of mysticism and of course the shining armour of a period several hundred years off and presented a true vision of Dark Age Britannia. Most of all I loved your realistic battle scenes they were gritty and bloody, something very “new” back then. From there I moved to Sharpe and on to the Fort and others. Your novels seem to have been with me all my life. I recently had a heart attack and a quadruple bypass and since I seem to be reading the same novels I once read again. I expect you know what is coming….. Nathaniel Starbuck, I just finished the audio versions (well read and just as good as I remember) and the series is screaming out to be finished. The format of one or two major battles per novel leads us to anticipate Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and of course Gettysburg, the Wilderness the siege of Petersburg. No doubt Starbuck would have found a reason for an excursion to the West, perhaps for the fall of Vicksburg or Atlanta. I don’t know I just know that I miss Nate and I feel he like me deserves to know his fate before he dies. Something of a blatant manipulation I know but I have been waiting twenty years. Seriously though, I love everything you write and will continue to wait with bated breath for any novel you release just I hope it will soon be the next in the Starbuck chroncles, a series I believe could be as popular as the mighty Sharpe series or the stories of Uhtred of Bebbanburg if it were just completed.
Yours sincerely
Stuart