This is a hard letter to write. As you know, I was working as a creative writing teacher on board the Marco Polo, en route to S. America. We got as far as Rio and then received a phone call to tell us our elder son had been killed in a road traffic accident in China. He was there on business and he was in a taxi on his way to the airport when there was a collision and he suffered fatal head injuries. Of course, we had to cancel the rest of the cruise and head for home. It took us 28 hours to get back. Since then, life had revolved around arrangements for the funeral, which will take place on March 18th. We have had to wait such a long time because it took weeks to get his body repatriated. It is a time when your whole view of the future is completely disrupted and so much needs to be re-thought. He leaves a wife and two children – Amy was 18 just a week after her father’s death.

Needless to say, I have not been writing; but there seems little point anyway. My career as an author has hit the buffers. Now that Robert Hale Ltd has gone out of business I am without a publisher and so far I can’t get any agents interested in my work. I have two volumes of a projected trilogy set around the time of the First Crusade ready to publish, but no one is interested. I don’t know whether to go back to writing about WWll or try something completely different. We had such hopes of Twice Royal Lady. John Hale said it was one of the best pieces of historical fiction he had ever read, but sales have been disappointing. It seems you have to write either about the Romans or the Tudors to find a readership these days.

Enough of my moaning! Perhaps I will be able to write more positively in a month or two.