Please
give a warm Coffee Pot welcome to historical fiction author, David Pryce.
David is going to share with us his inspirations behind his latest book…
1170: The Legend
of Prince Madoc
Author’s Inspiration
300 Years before Columbus…
Native American tradition tells of a brave group of pale skinned
explorers who many generations ago crossed a ‘Great Water’ to get to their
lands; these people called themselves ‘Welsh’ and this is their story…
Join Prince Madoc and his intrepid band of
followers as they turn their backs on treachery and duplicity and undertake a
voyage that will test their togetherness, belief and fighting spirit; taking
them beyond the known boundaries of civilization to distant lands far to the
west.
Prince Madoc ap Owain was an
illegitimate son of the great Prince of Wales, Owain Gwynedd. Destined like
many of his siblings to be consigned to historical anonymity, it seems that
Madoc had other ideas. Instead of
obscurity, adventure beckoned and trailing in the footsteps of Norse explorer
of yore, Madoc and his followers headed across the Atlantic Ocean, making final
landfall at Mobile Bay in modern day Alabama; some three hundred years before
Signore Colombo. It is hypothesized that from there they eventually headed up
river into the interior of the country (remains of stone forts that some
attribute to the Welsh explorers can be found in Alabama, Georgia and
Tennessee).
My own Prince Madoc adventure began in more
modest circumstances, with an e-mail from my brother-in-law back home in North
Wales. Had I heard of a Welsh prince who’d discovered America? I hadn’t, but
that soon changed as I voraciously researched.
Initially my ambitions stretched no further than
a factual article or two, perhaps a modest blog, but the more I dug the more I
felt that Madoc deserved more. Perhaps I was driven on by the fact that I was
also a Welshman who had journeyed across the Atlantic - albeit in considerably
more comfort and with distinctly less peril - to call this continent home?
Could I really write a book though? I’d dabbled
as a child, but nothing since. I scoured the internet for tips and advice and
discovered a whole community out there for budding authors. I started a
spreadsheet to track my daily and weekly word totals and every day I lost
myself in 12th century Wales. My characters took on life and writing allowed me
to disappear from the everyday mundane.
I decided to pen the tale as a trilogy and several
months later the first book was finished. Exciting? Well to be honest, I felt a
little flat. I started to have withdrawal symptoms; what was I going to do
without my daily fix of Madoc, Cynwrig, Fergal, Ioan and the rest of my
protagonists? Then there was the editing…Long story short; after completing
books two and three, a chance conversation convinced me to combine and re-edit
the three books into one, and 1170 was born…or should that be reborn?
David Pryce
Links for Purchase
About
the Author
David Pryce was born and bred in North Wales;
after graduating with a Mining Engineering degree he spent the next seven years
living and working in Southern Africa.
He currently resides in Colorado, but returns to
North Wales on a regular basis to visit family and rediscover his intrinsic
‘Welshness’. This also affords him the opportunity to eat some decent fish and
chips and sink a pint or three of real beer!
You can visit David online at
www.wales2america.com and connect with him on twitter @Madog1170
What a fascinating post, David! Thank you for sharing your inspiration with us.
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