As a ten-year-old schoolgirl Ricki Thomas enjoyed reading scary novels by Stephen King and James Herbert and was told by her teacher to follow a career as a writer.

She chose to ignore the teacher's advice and instead qualified as an accountant.

Now three decades later the Scunthorpe single mum of four has made the bestsellers list with a psychological thriller called Unlikely Killer.

Ricki, 43, recalled: "When I reached my 30s I took the decision to close my business in order to write full-time.

"I started with comedy and it took nine years of trying very hard before the first novel went to print. It's not an easy career by any means."

During her nine years in the literary wilderness Ricki wrote four books, 16 film and feature scripts and numerous short stories and biographies.

The breakthrough came last year with Unlikely Killer, about the hunt for a serial killer who recreates infamous murders from history.

Ed Wolf, the editor in chief of her publishing company, said: "Unlikely Killer has been a very good seller, especially in ebook format. It has sold more than 20,000 copies and continues to dominate the Amazon Kindle Thriller Chart. It has been at number one or two for almost six months.

"We're proud to have Ricki as part of Wild Wolf Publishing and will certainly be looking at her future work with keen interest."

Ricki said: "Unlikely Killer was the only manuscript which was passed out to friends and it went down very well. But circumstances have changed and I have to believe and trust in my work now which hopefully is enough."

Currently the Scunthorpe author is in talks with publishers over two more thrillers called Bonfire Night and Bloody Mary and she has started work on a novel under the working title of Black Park.

She said: "I have no idea where the plots come from. I'm very inquisitive by nature and very often a "what if" in my mind will lead to the next story or sub-plot. I love writing with a believable twist and for me these have to write themselves or otherwise they seem contrived.

"It can take weeks or even months to work out where I feel I've gone wrong. The way I deal with it is to work on something else or take few days out, just to take my mind off it.

"I find that the problem will dawn on me at some stage. It can be frustrating but for me it appears to be a necessary part of the process."