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.
The bards sing of love, they celebrate slaughter, they extol kings and flatter queens, but were I a poet I would write in praise of friendship.
At risk of sounding foully pompous I think that writers' groups are probably very useful at the beginning of a writing career.
And yes, there's a simplicity to writing books because you're not a member of a team, so you make all the decisions yourself instead of deferring to a committee.
Writing is a solitary occupation.
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.
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.
We have a gaff-rigged topsail cutter, which sounds much grander than she really is, but she's exquisitely beautiful and shamefully slow and we spend a lot of time aboard when we can.
I still have to crack the French market, though that isn't entirely surprising considering that the Sharpe novels are endless tales of French defeat.
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.
I'm a success inasmuch that I enjoy my life, which is an enormous blessing and that doesn't depend on commercial success (though I wouldn't be such a fool as to deny that it helps).
I have a terrific, marvellous, unbelievably helpful editor in London and she has the biggest influence, but even so we disagree as much as we agree.
I did a TV series for the British History Channel a few years ago and for a few weeks afterwards I was accosted by folk in Britain wanting to talk, which was flattering, but the memory faded and blessed anonymity returned.