Mr. Cornwell,
I hope this email finds you well. I had intended to write you a letter, but am not surprised that this format makes for a more congenial missive as far as you’re concerned. Thus, I trust you’ll forgive me these block letters rather than my more personal cursive scrawl.
I thought (why? Shrug.) I should take a moment to let you know how much I have enjoyed your books over the last twenty three years. As a thirteen year old at a new school, I met another child, a year older, who was equally obsessed with medieval history, and we became fast friends. Sometime in those first weeks of our acquaintance he loaned me his copy of Harlequin, and it… consumed me. Unfortunately, we lived in small-town Québec, and the nearest English bookstore was several hours’ drive away, in Montréal, and my mother took a dim view of plugging her credit card information into shonky-looking websites. Happily, she did travel quite a lot for work, and whenever she did she’d raid the airport and foreign bookstores for me, with your novels top of mind. And I, for my part, read them until they fell apart, taped them back together, then read them again.
Today, I’m a philosopher who specializes in the philosophy of art. You may be mildly amused to learn that I have two philosopher friends–both in their fifties, both quite eminent (one an American woman, the other a Canadian man and a fellow of the Royal Society)–who are also enormous fans of your work.
There we are, then. Thank you for all of the time and work you’ve put into fostering my imagination, and into my historical education. It’s been my delight to send you my and my mother’s money, and I look forward to sharing your work with my son, once he’s ready.
It would be remiss of me to end without noting that my favourite of your works has always been the Warlord Chronicles (although I find the audacity and execution of Stonehenge rather breathtaking). To be honest, they’re my favourite novels period, although I weep every time I finish Excalibur. But so it goes.
Yours,
-Michel-Antoine Xhignesse