Bernard Cornwell
Bernard Cornwell
Bernard Cornwell, OBEis an English author of historical novels and a history of the Waterloo Campaign. He is best known for his novels about Napoleonic Wars rifleman Richard Sharpe. Cornwell has written historical novels primarily of English history in five series and one series of contemporary thriller novels. A feature of his historical novels is an end note on how the novel matches or differs from history, for the re-telling, and what you might see at the modern site of...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth23 February 1944
Then you start another book and suddenly the galley proofs of the last one come in and you have to wrench your attention away from what you're writing and try to remember what you were thinking when you wrote the previous one.
Love is a dangerous thing. It comes in disguise to change our life... Lust is the deceiver. Lust wrenches our lives until nothing matters except the one we think we love, and under that deceptive spell we kill for them, give all for them, and then, when we have what we have wanted, we discover that it is all an illusion and nothing is there. Lust is a voyage to nowhere, to an empty land, but some men just love such voyages and never care about the destination. Love is a voyage too, a voyage with no destination except death, but a voyage of bliss.
At risk of sounding foully pompous I think that writers' groups are probably very useful at the beginning of a writing career.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if the first book had not sold... doesn't bear thinking about, but I suppose we'd have made it work somehow.
Book tours and research provide a lot of travel - too much, I sometimes think, but we do take vacations.
Not sure what I'd so with a notebook other than swat flies. If I want a break I'd rather go down to Stage Harbor and talk boats.
It just so happens that I write books, and I'm amazingly lucky that the books sell well all across the world, but even the biggest financial success will not compensate for an ill-lived life.
It's better than 9 to 5 because I'm my own boss so I can take off when I want to, and the dress code is non-existent and the commute is terrific.
And though I've lived in the States for over 25 years and am now an American citizen, I still hear British voices in my head.
I start early - usually by 5 am, and work through to 5 pm, with breaks for lunch, boring exercise, etc etc. But it's usually a full day.
The one thing I will not do is read other peoples' unpublished work. The reason for that is that it doesn't help.
Actually I moved to New Jersey in 1980 and didn't discover Chatham until 1990, by which time the books were selling, but it was still a daft decision, based solely on love.
I'd like to cut it down to three books in two years instead of two a year - but whether that'll happen I don't know.
Mind you, even in places where I'm much better known, I walk in anonymity, mainly because folks know authors' names, but not their faces.