Pembrokeshire author Brian John is celebrating the sale of 100,000 copies of his ‘Angel Mountain’ novels - exactly 20 years since he suffered from a night of delirium on the island of Gran Canaria.

It’s a spooky tale, and somewhat hard to believe, but he says that the creative urge to write the books came to him over the course of a single night when he was seriously ill. He says that he was struck down on a flight from Gatwick to Gran Canaria, suffering from a high temperature, splitting headache, heavy limbs and other flu-like symptoms. On arrival at the holiday apartment, he went straight to bed, and spent the whole night wide awake, in a delirious fever.

But during the hours of darkness, he says that he was ‘given’ the life story of a young woman called Martha Morgan, who lived in the early 19th century on a ruinous estate on the flank of Carningli, a small mountain near Newport in Pembrokeshire.

“The story was there in every detail,” he says, “narrated to me by Martha herself. I picked up a fast-moving and adventurous narrative, with all of the characters involved, all of the places, and even details of conversations. In the morning, the fever disappeared and I felt much better. When I told my wife about this strange experience, her response was simply to say that I’d better start writing!”

Brian - already a prolific author - had never written any fiction before, but he obeyed his wife’s instruction, recording in detail everything that he could remember about the early episodes in the narrative. Two years later ‘On Angel Mountain’ was published, with instant success. That title has just gone into its 10th printing, and it has been followed by seven other titles, each one following Martha’s adventures as she grows from pregnant, suicidal teenager to a powerful and very eccentric matriarch.

Now the books are counted among the best-selling fiction titles ever published in Wales - and Brian is still eternally grateful for one night of delirium and the voice that came out of the darkness.

“I’m in constant touch with my legion of fans,” he says, “and many of them wish that they could have been Mistress Martha! As a writer, I love the emotional bond that exists between reader and writer. But there is more to it than that, since this story is really the story of Wales, an allegory that just happens to have been set in Pembrokeshire and just happens to span six of the most momentous decades in Welsh history.”