Dear Mr. Cornwell,
I am not one hundred percent certain of this, after all of these years, but I believe that I first read about the Richard Sharpe novels in NATIONAL REVIEW – one of those articles recommending things to read after one had completed a series that one liked. I grew up in Texas, which meant that I can tell you every detail of the siege of the Alamo but never learned Thing One about the Napoleonic wars. I started reading the Sharpe novels as soon as I could acquire them–a long process, because at that time I was, as we say in Texas, so broke that I couldn’t pay attention. (I think I read about half of them from the Atlanta library, and the other half from this service that would lend you other people’s grubby used paperbacks.)
I started reading and reviewing the Saxon Chronicles books for the Bookreporter website–I think as soon as they started coming out, but I may be wrong about that. The nice people at HarperCollins have been very good in sharing advance review copies, which I have always fallen upon with delight.
I just finished and sent in my last Bookreporter review of WARLORD, and I am immensely gratified to have had the opportunity to do so. I wanted to take the opportunity to let you know how much I have enjoyed the Uhtred and Sharpe books over the last twenty years.
I also wanted to let you know how much I appreciate the work that goes into these projects. I decided very early on in my writing career (such as it is) that I was much too lazy to write anything historical in nature; writing about contemporary subjects is markedly easier. As I get older (I can’t plausibly say wiser) I am contemplating putting together a historical work (featuring a distant ancestor) and the amount of work that this will entail seems daunting to the extreme.
Thank you for letting me march along with Uhtred and Sharpe.
Curtis Edmonds