A LOCAL novelist is having her first novel published, and she’s already received an offer from the same publishing house for a second.

Kathrine Dale, who writes under the pen name of KD Thomas, has actually written four novels, but her fourth ‘Twin Cities’ is the first to be published by US based publisher J Ellington Ashton Press.

She said: “The idea for this story came from nowhere to be honest, I already knew the name of the main character, Tom, even before I had the full plot. When I looked up the meaning of the name Tom, I discovered it means twin, so the story basically wrote itself.”

Twin Cities tells the story of Tom, an ordinary man living an ordinary life, who begins to have visions of scenes of violence, rape and murder which make him question everything he thought he knew about himself, and wonder if it might be possible that he’s the one committing the crimes he’s seeing.

Ms Dale, a cardiac nurse, has been writing for more than 25 years, but only started trying to get published two years ago after she was made redundant from the NHS.

She added: “My stories mostly involve local places although some are based in other parts of the country where I've lived. They're basically stories about ordinary people living extraordinary lives. I have spent years planning on who I would dedicate my books too so it was a bitter-sweet pleasure to dedicate this one to my mum who died three years ago and my brother-in-law Mel who died 18 months ago.”

Twin Cities is available to purchase from Amazon in e-book and paperback form, with a second novel ‘Blue Moon’ due to be released in the next few months.