Award-winning Grays author Michelle Harrison, is celebrating after getting rave reviews for her latest novel and a second print run only one month after being published.

The 36 year old author of the popular Thirteen Treasures series was at Lakeside Waterstones this month to sign copies of her latest novel ‘The Other Alice’.

The writer, who lives in North Stifford, has now written six books in total, including a trilogy based on her debut novel Thirteen Treasures which scooped the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize in 2009.

Michelle, who said she started writing books when she was 14, spoke to the Gazette about the struggle of writing her first novel, which was rejected a whopping 25 times by publishers.

Describing the struggle, the prize-winning writer said revising her first novel, where she “didn’t really know what she was doing” took five years.

She said: “It went all over the place because I was getting so many ideas. When I got to chapter 12, finally I thought, I can actually do this.”

In total she has now sold around 250,000 books in 17 different countries, including the USA, China and Turkey.

She said: “The first rejection I got, I cried. Then I thought, no, don’t be silly, just send it out to the next one.

The budding authoress went to William Edwards School, studied illustration at Stafford University and worked in a bookshop to make ends meet, after which she worked at Oxford University Press for several years.

After a 'massive' re-write of her first book, she bagged an agent Julia Churchill AMP and from there, everything started to take off.

Her latest book ‘The Other Alice’ was named by the Guardian named it one of the 'best new children's books for the summer' and said it was 'beautifully written.'

A children’s fantasy aimed at ages 9 to 12, the book features a brand new set of characters including sixteen-year-old girl Alice, who’s a writer.

Everything starts to go wrong for Alice when she doesn’t finish her stories, and the characters come out of the book and come to life.

When she goes missing, her brother Midge, 12, finds a smiling cat in her room and strange characters roaming around the local town.

Other characters in the book include Piper, a gypsy boy of Alice’s age who is based on the mythical Pied Piper.

The mum of one, two year old Jack, who grew up in Stifford Clays, said: “I never even dreamed I would get this far when I started out. I just wanted to get my novel published in the UK.

“It was such an English story I didn’t think it would take off in other countries.”

Michelle’s new book can be ordered online at https://www.amazon.co.uk/ or is available at Lakeside Waterstones and other bookshops.