Write on

CRIME writer Sheila Quigley looks across the room and stares into the distance.

"I can see, but it's foggy. I can see, but it's blurred," she says. The Sunderland grandmother who made the headlines when she landed a £300,000 book deal is talking about the fear of going blind that's blighted her new-found fame and fortune.

"The most horrifying thing was the day I woke up, looked in the mirror and all I saw was a blur,"

she says. "This last year has been terrible. I've nearly gone blind. It was absolutely frightening. I thought I've finally got my dream and now I'm not going to be able to write'."

She's not asking for sympathy. She's not had an easy life - starting work at 15 as a presser in a tailoring factory, marrying at 18 and raising four children, doing a succession of jobs and finally, in her mid-50s, becoming a bestselling author.

She's facing the prospect of losing her sight with a matter-of-fact attitude, annoyed that her illness is threatening to spoil the good life she can now afford to enjoy. "I finished my last book with my nose half-inch off the screen," she says.

She's undergoing an 18-month course of treatment for cataracts and, if that doesn't work, she'll have to submit to an operation to correct her sight.

Last month saw the paperback publication of Every Breath You Take, the latest in her series of novels set on and around the fictional Seahills estate in the North-East - not a million miles, one must assume, from the real life Homelands Estate in Houghton-le-Spring, near Sunderland, where she lived for 30 years.

WE begin the interview outside the Crown Hotel in Harrogate, so she can grab a cigarette.

She's among the authors attending the launch of the 2008 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival.

Hers is a remarkable story that must give hope to unpublished authors everywhere. When she was seven she couldn't read a word and was embarrassed by her teacher asking her to read out loud in class. She went home and picked up the local paper, selecting a word and asking her mother what it was. "I learnt five words a night by just staring at the word and repeating it and, within three weeks, I was top of the class," she says.

She'd always written, but it wasn't until her family had grown up that she thought seriously about getting published. "I was sending manuscripts away to agents and they weren't getting anywhere so I thought I'll fix you' and wrote a screenplay. It was me versus the publishing world," she recalls.

Five years ago she put her rejected manuscripts in the bottom drawer and sent a comedy screenplay about cigarette smuggling in the North-East to a literary agent.

"He phoned me straight up and said he liked the characters and everything but it was practically impossible to sell a screenplay by an unknown, but would I write a gangster story set in the North- East," recalls Quigley.

It was an offer she couldn't refuse. At the time, she was on the dole after having a variety of jobs over the years. "I've knocked on doors in the freezing cold, sold double glazing, worked on the markets, worked in factories, picked tatties...". Her voice trails off as the list grows ever longer. She was also getting divorced, having seen her three daughters marry and start families of her own. Her son was still living with her.

The agent liked what he read of her screenplay and advised her on how to improve it. When the book was put up for sale a bidding war broke out for the publishing rights, with Random House emerging the winner.

Her first novel, Run For Home, was published in 2004. A fresh book, about characters living on the fictional Seahills estate, has appeared every year since. Bad Moon Rising, Living On A Prayer and Every Breath You Take will be followed by Road to Hell this year and Thorn In My Side in 2009.

Although set in the North-East, she says the stories could take place on any estate anywhere in the country.

Her novels are violent and she's not squeamish about violence.

The next in the series takes characters to Holy Island and "a very ferocious murder".

Where does it all come from? "I don't know," says Quigley. "This old woman stopped me in the street and said now that two of the characters are together were they going to have mad passionate sex?

I told her They say write what you know and I've never had mad passionate sex'."

Other emails from readers reflect their concerns about her characters. "One of them is an old woman, Doris, who's going more senile during each book. They can see where it's going. There have been horrific murders but they're worried Doris is going senile," says Quigley.

Her gritty novels are a far cry from her early childhood reading, first Enid Blyton, and then a switch to science fiction at 14. "I stuck with that a good few years and then went into fantasy and from that into horror. I stuck with horror for years, but I like books that had comedy in them as well. I didn't think I'd end up writing crime," she says.

Her new-found success has enabled her to move to a nicer house not far from Homelands but only, she's keen to point out, because they were pulling down the estate.

When she's not writing - from two in the afternoon through to 11 at night - she likes walking her dogs and swimming. She's also a big football fan, though must be torn as to which team to support as her mother was a Geordie and her father a Mackem. She's often to be found watching her footballing grandsons at weekends.

She's not letting her eye problem spoil her life.

She tells how she goes to Talking Blind functions every year. "The first time three years ago I felt so humble, now I'm one of them," she says.

Her illness could even feature in her writing. "It may find its way into the books. I may have one of the characters going blind," she adds.

* Every Breath You Take (Arrow, £6.99).

OLD PECULIER CRIME WRITING FESTIVAL

Brave Two Zero author Andy McNab will be making a rare appearance at the 2008 Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate.

Other writers include Peter Robinson, who grew up in Yorkshire and is the author of 13 Inspector Banks novels, New York Times bestselling author Jeffery Deaver, whose novels include The Bone Collector, and Tess Gerritsen, dubbed "the medical suspense queen".

The festival takes place at the Crown Hotel, Harrogate, from July 17-20. Accommodation and weekend rover ticket packages are available on 01423-562303. Individual tickets and day passes are also available on 0845-1308840.

For further details visit www.harrogatefestival.

org.uk/crime