Author Benita Brown may be known for her gritty Northern sagas, but as she tells Women's Editor Lindsay Jennings, it's a long way from her literary beginnings - writing the popular photo-story scripts for Jackie magazine.

The Captain's Daughters (Headline, £6.99): IF there is one genre author Benita Brown is suited to, it is the saga.

But although it is beloved by many in the North-East, it took Benita a while to find her literary path.

With several Rainbow Romances tucked under her belt, she went to a writers' conference in Pitlochry, Scotland, where there was a competition to enter the first chapter of a saga novel. Benita duly won the competition and scooped the first prize - a tartan biro - which she still has, ten years later, sitting by her phone.

"I'd never even thought of writing sagas and I couldn't understand why I hadn't, because once I started, I loved writing them," she says. "Mine are set in Tyneside in Victorian and Edwardian times, an era I love because so much is happening."

Benita, 68, of Ashington, Northumberland, was also able to draw on her upbringing for her novels. She was born in Newcastle to an Indian doctor and a Byker-born mother and the family grew up in Whitley Bay. She later went to London to study drama at the Royal Academy of Music and met her husband, Norman, who was working as a studio manager for the BBC, in a pub in the city on Valentine's Day.

The couple returned to Whitley Bay after four years. In between having her four children - Catherine, Tessa, Amanda and Martin - Benita worked as an English and drama supply teacher. It was from there that she went on to write stories for radio and send scripts to Scottish publishers DC Thomson, which published the teen magazine Jackie. Soon, Benita was scripting the famous photo-stories - and it was definitely a family affair.

"They used to be great fun," she laughs. "My husband was a keen photographer and at weekends we would get together and do them and my son and his friend would be models. They weren't too keen at first until they realised they would get paid a few pounds for it. The girls were in the photo-stories too and their friends would come along, it was great fun. I used to like writing for young people and particularly the younger ones in magazines such as Mandy and Judy, which was a lot more jolly hockey sticks."

Benita always wanted to write novels, but she says it was difficult with four children growing up. Finally, when her son was in the sixth form and the girls were either married or students, she set about writing her first novel, a 50,000-word piece of work which she sent off to Robert Hale, publishers of the Rainbow Romances series.

"Within six weeks the postman came and brought it back and I flung it in the corner of the bedroom saying 'they don't want my book'," she laughs. "But then Norman made me open it and they said they did like it but it was about 20,000 words too long and could I cut some of it?"

Benita went on to write four Rainbow Romances books and three for A Dark Legacy, an imprint set up by a former Mills and Boon editor. After discovering her love of sagas, she later joined Headline, bringing out five books, the fifth of which, The Captain's Daughters, has just been released in paperback.

"The characters tend to come to me first and I'm also interested in exploring relationships so The Captain's Daughters is focused on the relationship between two sisters. But there's always the suspense, and a bit of mystery in there too."

There is also a good dose of love, passion, local history and heartache, which draws inevitable comparisons with Catherine Cookson. Benita says simply: "It's nice if people think I'm writing that kind of book, but there's no-one like her."

She may have been slow to recognise a love of sagas, but she says she is clear about her future literary direction - and it has nothing to do with photo-stories.

"I love writing sagas," she smiles. "And I think I'll carry on writing them."

Published: 08/03/2005