I really don’t know precisely when their friendship began. It was sometime after she’d published The Sunne in Splendour. Sharon told me the story once, though she told me so many fascinating stories about her life over the course of our friendship, it’s hard to keep them all accessible in my memory. Her fan base won’t recognize her name, because she was a quiet, gentle soul who loved her privacy. And for this reason, I won’t use her real name, will only call her Vivian.

At some point, Vivian reached out to Sharon in the form of a fan letter after Sunne was published. The very notion of having “fans” was brand new to Sharon, because everything about being a published author was brand new. Vivian gave Sharon what most authors consider priceless treasure: detailed feedback. As a result, Vivian and Sharon went on to exchange frequent letters. And very quickly after that, Sharon began to rely on Vivian as a writing partner.

We call them alpha and beta readers now– indispensable critique partners who serve as sounding boards for new books. And in Vivian’s case, for every chapter, one at a time. Vivian became Sharon’s rock as she navigated the drafting and editing process, using Vivian’s opinons and good sense as her support. Along with her brilliant editor, Marian Wood, much of Sharon’s writing success can arguably be credited to dear Vivian.

And she would need a rock, for immediately after writing Sunne, she began work on her Welsh trilogy. As her fans know all too well, Sharon would soon find herself embroiled in an emotional rollercoaster as she unfolded the tragic story of her beloved Wales.

The following are portions of a letter Sharon wrote to Vivian in September, 1990, as she neared the final chapters of The Reckoning:

The letter goes on to explain to Vivian how she plans to break down the next events in Davydd’s life (or what remained of it) for the book to end. And as a result, she goes on to explore the idea of endings in general.

And because Sharon knew how hard these scenes were for her to write, she worried that they might just be too much for her readers too.

I think she carried that pain with her for the rest of her life, because she always referred back to Davydd’s death scene as being the hardest thing she’d ever had to contend with.

“I’ve never experienced anything like this,” she said. And I don’t think she ever did again. Henry, Eleanor, and their brood certainly had plenty of dramatic moments for her to record, but nothing ever really seemed to touch her quite so tragically again as the story of Wales.