As we walk through her beloved Houghton-le-Spring under a leaden sky, Sheila Quigley quips that "it's cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

Houghton-le-Spring has been the mainspring for her success as a crime writer.

After 30 years of writing and rejection letters hitting the floor with resounding regularity, Sheila had a meteoric rise from living on benefits on a sink estate to becoming a best-selling author.

It was May 2003 when she clinched a book deal that made her the toast of the literary world.

She was in a state of shock at the news when I called at her council house in Laurel Crescent on the Homelands Estate at Houghton. It was there where she brought up her family of four, forged friendships as precious as gold and whose neighbours knew her for the salt of the earth she is.

Sheila may have moved up in the world to a bungalow at Bournmoor, but she's the same old Sheila, with her feet firmly on the ground and rooted in Houghton for all time.

Say what you like but success hasn't changed her. Taking stock, the grandmother of nine, who last year feared her writing career could be over because she was terrified of having a cataract op, is in fine fettle and on top of the world.

Sheila, 60, a diabetic, had both eyes operated on at Sunderland Eye Infirmary and wrote Every Breath You Take with her nose pressed up against the computer screen.

She smiles at the memory of how when she was bringing up her bairns – Dawn now 42, Janine, 40, Dianne, 39, and Michael, 29, she used to start writing on a night

"I used to do my writing by hand at first," she explained. "Then I got an old bashed-up typewriter from a car boot and that was what Run For Home was written on."

That was the book that changed her life after a literary agent, Darley
Anderson, asked her if she could write a gangster novel set in the North East.

"Aye, I can easily do that," she told him. And the day she saw her book in the window of a London bookshop remains the best moment ever.

She had just got divorced and has continued to write about what she knows best, bringing out a book every year.

With her latest thriller, The Road To Hell just out, in typical Sheila fashion she says: "I've got my head in another book, Thorn In My Side, set on Holy Island, and I've also got another one I'm working on, Stand By Me, and that's back in Houghton, then Nowhere Man is back to Holy Island."

Creating a new series set in Holy Island is, she hopes, a sure-fire winner, like the series set in the imaginary Seahills estate at Houghton.

There's this vast expanse of land behind the Beehive pub near to where Sheila lived on the Homelands and which was her inspiration for her first novel.


And as she knows: "If it works, don't knock it. "

So all five of her books have been set in Houghton and the characters on the Seahills estate are so well-loved by her fans that many she says actually think they exist.

But she has shifted her murder scene from Houghton to Holy Island because, she laughs,"someone wrote that there seemed to be more murders in Houghton-le-Spring than in Midsomer, so I thought I'd better go and murder people elsewhere."

She admits: "I haven't got a clue where I get the inspiration from. I can sit down at any time of the day and start writing and I am there for hours. I'm still writing in my sleep, constantly.

"It's all up there and amazingly, when I need it, it's there and when I go to the rewrite it all comes back.

"I go to bed and I'm asleep within two minutes.

Many a time I've woken up the next morning with exactly what is going to happen or what I should have put in the day before."

Sheila gets emails every day from fans at home and from as far afield as Russia, Germany and Australia.

But Her success hasn't changed her one iota. Her gritty, realism is the hallmark of her books and her life.

She says: "If they made a programme on my life story the whole world would be gobsmacked. It's a good job I can smile. I have always had a sense of humour. "

And she's certainly needed it: "I was given away at 10 days old. They must have taken one look and thought 'Trouble.'

That's how she tells the story of being adopted by Danny and Margaret Burgess in Silksworth.

It was a bombshell when a kid at school told her she was adopted.

Her schooldays were hard and Sheila, who was passed over by the teacher, says: "When I was about seven I couldn't read at all."

The humilation of not being able to read when it came to her turn in class, fired her

"I went home and picked up the Sunderland Echo and said to my mam 'What's that word?'" she says.

"And we sat on the stairs and she said that word over and over. I was learning five to six words a night and within three weeks I was top of the class for reading.

"And that teacher didn't like me because I taught myself.

"I suppose you could say it was the Sunderland Echo that taught me to read."

Growing up in a pit village – her dad was a miner – Sheila's dreams of adventure were stymied.

"As a kid I wanted to climb a mountain, nowhere in particular," she says.

"Give me a mountain and I will climb it. But in a village like Silksworth where the hell would you go?"

And so at 15 she was working as a presser at Hepworths clothing factory in Pallion, by 18 married and then had her family.

She's worked on market stalls, as a double glazing saleswoman and picked tatties to make ends meet.

Her rags to riches tale is interwoven with overcoming obstacles all her life long.

She is an unparallelled storyteller with the gift to take her reader into the streets of Houghton where all her thrillers have been set.

She writes like she talks – direct and down to earth, often using strong language that has brought her criticism.

Sheila can take it and with a heart as big as lion.

She also has a stubborn streak that has carried her when she hasn't known which way to turn and her best friend was her benefits book.

While she wouldn't for the world want to go back to those days, I wonder if she wishes she still lived on the Homelands estate.

With conviction she says: "Yes I would be back there tomorrow."

But she's positively looking to the future. And with no storm clouds on her horizon is grateful that against the odds she's enjoying such sweet success, which like her books, can only continue ...

* The Road To Hell, published by Blaydon-based Tonto books is £18.99.

Don't miss Sheila Quigley's new column in the Echo, starting on New Year's Eve.

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