From: mark.harris69@gmail.com To: emily.faulkner@financialtimes.com Subject: Impossible Maths Date: Wednesday, 24 June 2026, 06:02 Dear E Faulkner, You don’t know me. I hope that may change. I have been reading your financial columns for some time with great interest and in the kindest sense, some amusement. I am going to die soon. I mention this not for sympathy but for context. A man consigned to death has little patience for preamble. I would like to share my story. I beli

One man walks into the sentence. A small crowd walks out.

That yummy feeling I get when waking up to page views. For me, this is better than sales.

A small step for those looking to conquer the world. A giant leap for little old me… My latest novel is a dual timeline historical fiction. One half of the book is set in 1845, in a factual town called Newmarket in County Cork, Ireland. The other is set in a small factual town called Paxton, in Illinois, USA, in 2025. This week, I made contact with the libraries of both places. Both have agreed to host me for an afternoon later in the year. I am so looking forward to it.

In November 2024 I sat down and began writing my second novel. This wasn't planned. Context for why I wrote it. In October 2024 the UK government changed agricultural property relief in its autumn budget. I knew what that would mean for family farms and I knew people who could be part of the fallout. I was so bloody angry. I wanted to rage about it, join the protests. Instead, I created a twelve-year-old boy called Alex. The structure arrived in under a minute: it would open

Deep down, I always knew I would be an author. How my sisters actually looked in 1969 compared to how I saw them.

If I were to post a profile overview on a dating app, it would be this lol..... It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive. It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of