Maggie Cox loved to write almost as soon as she learned to read. Her favorite occupation was daydreaming and making up stories in her head, and this particular pastime has stayed with her through all the years of growing up, starting work, marrying and raising a family. No matter what was going on in her life, whether joy, happiness, struggle or disappointment, she'd go to bed each night and lose herself in her imagination. Through all the years of her secretarial career she kept on filling exercise books and the "joy oh joy" her word processor with her writing, never showing anyone what she wrote and basically keeping her stories for her own enjoyment alone. It wasn't until she met her second husband and the "love of her life" that she was persuaded to start sharing those stories with a publisher. She settled on Mills & Boon (Harlequin) as she had loved romance novels since she was a teenager and read at least one or two paperbacks a week. After several rejections, the letters that were sent back from the publisher started to become more and more positive and encouraging, and in July 2002 she sold her first book A Passionate Protector. Since then she has continued written. The fact that she is being published is truly a dream come true; however, each book she writes is still a journey in "courage and hope," and a quest to learn and grow and be "the best writer she can." Her advice to aspiring authors is: "Don't give up at the first hurdle, or even the second, third or fourth, but keep on keeping on until your dream is realized because if you are truly passionate about writing and learning the craft, as Paulo Coehlo states in his book The Alchemist: "The Universe will conspire to help you make it a reality."