I've been writing since I was a little girl in Caernarfon. Even when I couldn't write, I'd pretend to. Mam would ask what I was doing and I'd say 'writing a book'!

I started writing historical novels under my real name, and then murder novels. My publisher said people expect a historical novel when they see my name, so I should use a different name and I carried on doing it for different projects. My other names are Veronica Black, Catherine Derby and Levanah Lloyd.

As Veronica Black, I write a series about a nun who is a detective. They do quite well in America - so well that I got a mention in Murder She Wrote. I felt quite famous for five minutes.

I chose a nun because they have got a lot of time on their hands. I have friends who are real nuns and they give me information on their lives, but mine's a bit more unconventional. Every time she goes to a convent, she finds a dead body - Cornwall is littered with them.

It was an American publisher who asked if I would be willing to write a series 'about murder, incest, necrophilia and anything typically Welsh' - so I began The Fallon series, which is set in Caernarfon starting from the 16th century onwards.

In my books, Caernarfon's rather rough. There's lots of fighting and people escaping through The Hole in the Wall, because they did actually have a hole in the wall so the Welsh could escape to fight the English.

Another book, Trumpet Morning, is about my family. One of the main characters is my great grandfather, John Peters, who was very eccentric. He was a hellfire preacher of the Methodist conviction but he was married to a woman who wove spells and hexed cattle - totally different!

On a Sunday morning he used to walk down to the beach at Brynsiencyn with a Bible and a trumpet, his Bible open at the part which talks about the heavens opening and the Lord coming down, separating the sheep from the goats. Then he'd look up to heaven and say 'Well if today's the day Lord, John Peters is ready'.

When my dad was staying with him for a holiday he would have to blow a blast on the trumpet. He could remember being terrified that the heavens would open and the angels would come flying down.

His cottage, The Pilgrim and Child, is still there. It used to be a stopping off point for medieval pilgrims.

Maureen continues her story.