. A source for second hand books is Abe Books, which searches a huge number of secondhand bookstores worldwide. Another method is to search online auction sites such as eBay.
How can I contact William Horwood?
The usual procedure is to write to an author c/o his publisher. The address given in The Boy with no Shoes published by Hodder Headline is
William Horwood,
c/o Headline Book Publishing
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
However, it has been many years since he has been able to read all the letters sent to him, let alone answer.
As of February 2010, William Horwood has now an official website and blog at http://www.williamhorwood.co.uk/ (Down as of June 2012.)
This website, WilliamHorwood.net, is a fan website rather than an official one. I do not have an e-mail address for William Horwood and I have no ability to forward messages to him.
Wasn't The Wolves of Time supposed to be a trilogy?
Yes, that was the original plan. However, it did not comes to pass. To quote the answer William Horwood gave to me in August 1999, when I asked this question:
When Volume 1 [ of The Wolves of Time ] was published in the UK as a hardback it was extremely successful. Unfortunately a trade dispute between the publisher HarperCollins and our biggest book retailer WH Smith meant that the latter took punitive action against the former in the autumn of WOLVES 1 paperbacking, along with two other of that publisher's autumn titles. As a result Volume 1 of Wolves was effectively wiped out. Because trilogies rely on a high sale of the initial volume to sell on the next two volumes there was statistically no chance of Vols 2 & 3 having significant sales. Publishers and the public are unforgiving and attach blame to authors not themselves and booksellers [...] I myself took the decision to rewrite Volume 2 to include the main part of Volume 3. Effectively it was Volume 2 that was scrapped not Volume 3.
In The Stonor Eagles, what is a Sleark?
Sleark is another, local name for a Golden Eagle.
How do I pronounce those names?
I haven't had the definitive word on many of them, but for a few:
Characters in The Duncton Chronicles:
Tryfan [ Trih - fan ] or [ Trih - fin ]
Alternatively, Andria Police mentioned that "I speak a bit [of Welsh], and Tryfan is pronounced tree-van. The "F" in welsh is spoken as a "V", and the double "FF" is spoken as "F"."
Jim Finnis wrote that "correctly, this name is pronounced "TRUHvan". The UH is a schwa sound, like the "o" in "honey"."
Characters in The Stonor Eagles:
Cuillin [ Coo - lin ] — Rhymes with 'win'
Finse [ Fins ] As in Fish, as the character himself mentions at one point in the novel.
Bjorg [ Bee - org ] — The 'g' is soft. (Supposition on my part, following the pattern of 'fjord'.)
Characters in The Wolves of Time:
On being asked about these three, William Horwood do not offer a pronounciation, but agreed that those I offered "sounded fine". Specifically about the name Jicin, he said that he had never considered it as a name to be said aloud—had chosen it instead as something with looked good and worked well on the page.
Dendrine [ Den - dreen ] — Rhymes with 'clean' — Emphasis on the seconnd sylable.
Vollutt [ Voll - utt ] — Rhymes with 'cut'
Jicin [ Jih - kin ] — My own inclination has been to rhyme with 'thin' — Emphasis on the first syllable. There's a fair bit of debate about this one. I've tended to lilt it as [ Jih - ken ], and I've run into two people who pronounce it with a soft 'c', as [ Jih - sin ].)
My name is Katherine Delany, and I live in Canada. I'm a library paraprofessional.
I began this website in 1997.
This website is a fan website rather than an official one. I do not have an e-mail address for William Horwood and I have no ability to forward messages to him.
As of February 2010, William Horwood has now an official website at http://www.williamhorwood.co.uk/