Hello from Maggie Pritchard!

Wow, I was browsing the Your Llanelli web pages and I got all enthusiastic and fired off an email. Now I’m sat in front of a blank Word document all excited wondering what to write!

I’ll come clean and admit that I’ve never written a piece for the web before. Oh I do write, I mean you would expect that seeing as this is featured in writer’s corner.

The problem is I write romance. Yes, ROMANCE, and only romance. There you go, at least half of you have clicked on something you are sure will be more interesting, c’est la vie, I’ll talk to the rest of you then.

Well it all began about three years ago, when a friend remarked ‘heavens you could do better than this, why don’t you have a go?’ We had just finished the monthly selection from a major romance publisher and to be quite frank all except one had been a disappointment.

I write for myself, it’s a sure-fire way of getting a book I enjoy.

I began with the intention of writing books for that particular publisher of short romance novels, naïve or what?

A year later I had written two books, had both rejected and when I read them now I cringe. So I began another and this time spent as much time getting peer reviews as I spent writing.

It was often a painful experience but I learnt a lot about how the whole thing works and my writing improved too, a lot!

I grew a really thick skin! There are some really heartless people out there happy to trash other people’s work but lots of nice ones too who want others to grow as writers. I listen to what they have to say and ignore the trolls.

Again I wasted months getting the book rejected but by now ebooks were beginning to grow in popularity and I thought ‘why not have ago?’

Submitting to publishers wastes time, I do my own thing.

I write under the nom de plume Maggie Pritchard in memory of Mum and now have four e books available on Kindle.

They trace my journey as a would-be-writer. The first two, Llangorfan and The Scent of His Woman are simply romance novels, contemporary, sexy, you either like that or not. The next one, Vengeful Lord Defiant Lady, is a Regency romance dedicated to my Mum.

I love this book, it has had some nice reviews and it really does sell itself.

My fourth book, The Dancing Lights is I think the first that is truly ‘me’. It’s a romance (that’s what I write) but it’s not in the style of any publisher, it is simply a story that I wrote.

I always set my books in Wales but this one is set in the valley where I live and it draws on the turbulent history of this area. From the Rebecca Riots of the 1840’s to the recent fight by Welsh miners for the money that was supposed to compensate for their lost breath, the book weaves a story of love and hate brought together across two centuries.

Find them at http://www.amazon.co.uk/s?_encoding=UTF8&search-alias=digital-text&field-author=Maggie%20Pritchard and do let me know what you think.

Kind regards!

Maggie.